Dear Future Dads,
So, you’re expecting a baby (by “expecting” I mean “dreading,” and by “a baby,” I mean “the consequences of using that glow-in-the-dark condom from 1989”)! That’s wonderful! You’ve planted the seed, and now, according to the article your wife or girlfriend or not-as-attractive-when-sober-stranger just read to you, it has grown to the size of a spaghetti squash or a kumquat. Next week, she reports, it will be a rutabaga, then a large jicama.
Wait a minute! A large what? Understandably, you’re confused by all of these fruits and vegetables.
Relax! It’s just a girl thing. For us gals, the only way to truly understand the size of our fetuses is to compare them to pan-fried yucca or a good old kohlrabi. Inches, schmiches! All you had to say was witloof chicory.
But as perfectly crystal clear as the old gourd-and-chard system is for women, it doesn’t seem to translate for guys. For this reason, I’ve compiled a Fetal Size Chart Using Man-Friendly References & Terminology.
Here we go:
Week 4*: Your baby has barely evolved beyond being a primitive blastocyst to being an inert globule of undifferentiated matter. It is roughly the size and complexity of your capacity for intimacy. If you don’t appreciate this estimation, let’s just say it’s the size of that Rubik’s Cube iPhone app and leave it at that.
Week 13: Your baby is now the size of a Fantasy Football cheat sheet. You know, the kind that might finally enable you to snag Peyton Manning as a first-round draft pick this year, something you never get to do because you’re the only guy in your league who is forced to leave early to go home and take care of the real children you fathered, instead of playing make-believe football. Has she never heard the term Fantasy League Commissioner?
Week 21: OK, wait. I realize it’s unfair of me to assume all men will relate to the size of a Fantasy Football cheat sheet (or even an actual football). Not all men are sports fans. In fact, there are all different types of guys! So, for week 21, I’ve developed some measurements geared toward a variety of men.
- For Movie Lovers: Your baby is the approximate length of the severed horse head from The Godfather. Or if you’re more of a word nerd, let’s say your baby roughly corresponds in inch-count to a memorized movie quotation from Pulp Fiction, Glengarry Glen Ross, or The Big Lebowksi, such as what you might use in a quotation-reciting pissing contest with one of your guy friends. For example, you can reasonably assume that your precious baby is the approximate length of: “and I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.”
- For Smart Guys with Other Interests: Your baby is now the size of the traditional Klingon sword used by Worf to kill borg drones who were caught building an interplexing beacon on the deflector dish of the USS Enterprise-E.
- For The Guy Who Actually Listens, Who Doesn’t Accuse a Woman of Having PMS Just Because She Doesn’t Like Finding Nose-Hair Shavings Within Inches Of Her Toothbrush, Who Doesn’t Complain about Watching TMZ, and Who Compliments a Woman on Her Outfit: Your baby is developing nicely in the womb of its surrogate or birth mom, who will happily turn him or her over to you and your life-partner, Bob.
Okay! Continuing on into the next trimester! We’re almost to the finish line!
Week 29: Your baby is now the size of a tie, and like a tie, this child will hang around your neck like a noose, enslaving you for life to some bourgeois American ideal that you never really wanted anyway. You had dreams, man. And like knotting a tie, raising your child will be something only your wife will be able to do without turning it into a twisted, humiliating mess.
Week 18: Lucky you. Your baby is the now the size of a supermodel’s ass.
Week 30: Your baby now has roughly as many fingers and toes as the number of words you uttered to your wife today. (Don’t worry–lots of babies are born with several missing digits and go on to live perfectly normal, healthy lives!).
Week 35: Your baby is now about 10 inches long, similar to . . . yeah, you wish.
Week 39: Finally, the time has come: your baby is about to be born!! I could come up with a size approximation (generally, a large watermelon is the standard comparison for week 39), but why bother? At this point, you don’t need me anymore–soon, you’ll know exactly how big that baby is by the gaping, cavernous abyss that it leaves in your wife’s vagina! I mean, wow, that is one BIG baby! Congratulations and enjoy!
*Not all estimates are medically accurate.
***
Original art by Ilyse Magy.
***
Please submit your own funny writing to our Rumpus submission manager powered by Submittable. See first: our Funny Women Submission Guidelines.
To read other Funny Women pieces and interviews, see the archives.
