How can the Bloggess reliably tell the difference between someone saying "shouldn't have" and "shouldn't of"? That seems rife with imprecision.

How can the Bloggess reliably tell the difference between someone saying "shouldn't have" and "shouldn't of"? That seems rife with imprecision.

I think it is specifically her husband, so maybe it is familiarity with how he says both?

Not having read the Bloggess' post, I have to say that I usually make a double contraction out of "shouldn't have" into "shouldn't've." Maybe everyone thinks I'm saying "shouldn't of." Crapsticks.

Your wife "went through" it.

Men don't go through pregnancy, I agree, but there should be some way to describe a spouse's experience, or the experience of someone using a surrogate. Not sure how to say it, however.

there should be some way to describe a spouse's experience

"Got drunk with Don Draper"?

there should be some way to describe a spouse's experience

What's wrong with "my wife/partner is pregnant" ?

[Sorry, that probably sounded snippy. I guess I'm just not understanding what can't be communicated using words we already have.]

What's wrong with "my wife/partner is pregnant" ?

Is "we're expecting" bad? Because they both are expecting a baby; the woman is just expecting to deliver the baby.

I totally don't know this stuff.

"Expecting" is fine, I think. A little old-fashioned, but way better than "we're pregnant." (Unless the "we" in question is a lesbian couple who are each having a baby. Otherwise, no "we"!)

What's wrong with "my wife/partner is pregnant" ?

I think I was unclear. I didn't mean a way to express the fact that one's spouse is pregnant. I just meant that there is an experiential truth to the idea that pregnancy is meaningful even if you aren't the pregnant person. I wouldn't say my husband got pregnant, in other words, but I wouldn't balk at the idea that he wanted to express some ownership over that experience.

I didn't read the original exchange ita referred to. If all it was was some guy saying "I'm pregnant" instead of "my wife is pregnant" or "we're expecting" then yeah, kinda weird.

He was saying that pregnancies shouldn't be outsourced to external wombs. He starts off by saying that pregnancy is natural and pregnant women are beautiful and the experience is wonderful.

I said that evaluation was best left to the people who actually get pregnant, and he said he's been through it twice before, because he's a dad.

My takeaway from that and discussion is that pregnancy is just beautiful enough for him, and I haven't been a father, so I couldn't understand, and I can't raise any points of unpleasant pregnancies for some women. If we're going to rate people's visceral involvement in pregnancy and childbirth, you pretty much put the pregnant woman at the top, and everyone can scrabble about it as circumstance dictates.

Good, god, my doctor is letting me run out of methadone again. I really have no idea what their process is for drugs like this. So far I've had a pissy doctor turn in the script, and then I've had a less pissy admin take it to the pharmacy for me. This is absolutely not the sensible way to do it (good for me, because I'm lazy), but it's dumb.