The look

Walking around London with an eight-and-a-half month pregnant woman is an insane experience. One's biological instincts roar from the depths as drunken chanting forty year-old Arsenal fans stumble past, girls with yellow Selfridges bags swinging from sharp skinny elbows awkwardly strut toward the little helpless wombat on stiletto heals, and pink pie-crusted joggers trot doggedly by, often brushing the mother-ship with their undulating jelly rolls. North London footpaths (sidewalks to us modern New World types) are about as easy to negotiate as Poppystan's finest (although, admittedly, there are less piles of human shit, insensitively placed generators, lazily pointed Kalashnikovs and bullet-proof burqas).

Amongst these native beasts are a strange breed of generally round-faced, doe-eyed, often attractive women who gaze at me, an old Strindbergian Frö, with a look, I dare say, only seen by procreant primates like myself. These Pre-Raphaelite damsels all conduct precisely the same routine in which they first recognize and celebrate the existing womb by widening their eyes, tilting their heads 15 degrees to the left, and spreading their lips into a slow meaningful smile. They gush internally for a few moments, then turn their widened eyes to me. Now, for those who haven't seen me lately, my general disposition borders on the distressed, as fatherhood looms and I realize with fright that I am no longer 14 and will thus have to cease acting as such one day very soon. (A shocking predicament, indeed). But when these glazed eyes meet my fearfully widen peepers, my physiognomy races well beyond the frothy borders of distress toward the nether regions of the pathetic. A self-conscious sigh will well up within me. What are they thinking? What have I become? What is it about my conspicuous fertility that causes them to look at me so? How do I escape? How will this look manifest once the critter is out?!

How does one cope with the look?