Pregnancy in the Workplace

A coworker of mine is pregnant. Unlike many people, she pretty much told everyone in the office as soon as she knew. She is also walking around trying to look more pregnant. She wears tight shirts and then slouches so her belly sticks out and her boobs sag. Is that weird?

The weirdest thing, at least to me, is how pregnancy changes a workplace. I work in a small office and we talk about our personal lives, I suppose, but it's very limited in what you say. "How was your weekend?" or "Any big vacation plans?" are usually the order of the day. Now she talks about having to go to the doctor and how they did an exam "all over" to "make sure the pregnancy is ok" and stuck her with big needles to run all sorts of tests.

Um, too much information, maybe??? The guys in the office usually suddenly find somewhere else to be, but the women are all into talking about the ins-and-outs of pregnancy. The interesting thing is that, only about half the women in the office have even had a baby. I guess the others are just fascinated with the process?

Here's the thing, though: It just seems too personal for the workplace. There are a lot of things that happen in our private lives that are properly screened from the workplace. Illnesses, fights with family, breakups and makeups and sex all over the house or whatever. Those things do not belong in the workplace. A professional environment is necessarily not about the private personal. If someone had explosive diarrhea because they accidentally ate shrimp, I don't want to know about it. So, how is it that pregnancy suddenly makes it ok to talk about pelvic exams around the water cooler???

I suddenly have sympathy for the Victorian view that pregnant women were too delicate to leave the house and went into seclusion...