A Surreal Work Experience

As my pregnancy progresses, I am getting bigger. That's how it works, right? So at the end of October, I went on a 3-day work trip to San Antonio. The airlines don't seem to be concerned about my size yet, but I always feel a little self-conscious when I get involved in a professional environment. However, it seems I didn't have to be concerned with this particular engagement.
The first day of working, I met the guy who I would be consulting with. His name was Chris. Turns out, he drinks a lot of decaf coffee. That worked for me. And, he also was a new father of a 4-month old. This also worked out, when queries were running, we had something in common to talk about. Plus, he was perfectly comfortable hanging out with a pregnant woman. We even discussed the advantages of a natural birth over lunch and he told me how hard it was to convince their OB that no, they didn't want to schedule a c-section to accommodate the doctor's schedule, but wanted to wait for the baby to come naturally.


However odd it might be to discuss natural birth with a guy who I just met, that wasn't the surreal part of this work trip. The final day of the trip was on Halloween. I was going into work early to attend the local Toastmaster meeting since Chris was also involved in Toastmasters. I signed in with security, then found Chris at the Toastmaster meeting. He was dressed for Halloween as a pregnant woman! This was slightly disturbing, but he reassured me that no, he wasn't mocking me, this had been planned in advance. There was a pregnant woman in their department. They had told her that their entire office was dressing up as doctors for Halloween. But secretly they were all dressing up as pregnant women and she would get to be the "Maternity Ward" doctor. Here is the sign they put on the door to their department.


And, here is the picture of Chris in his Halloween costume, platinum blond wig and all.


One of the activities that the departments do on Halloween is wander around to the other departments to show off their costumes and see the other costumes. I tried to bow out of this activity since I could be perfectly productive staying in the office. Plus, it's not like I was dressed in a Halloween costume. But they dragged me around with all of the fake pregnant women (3 women, 2 men in costume) and the actually pregnant "maternity doctor." Not what I expected when I signed on to this contract. A surreal work experience indeed!