But sifting through the competing sources (My solution to everything is to split the difference: Fetus is 2.74 inches long) is nothing compared to the challenge of calculating the conversion rates of fetal progress between them: According to one site a week ago, my genetic messenger to the future was the size of “A Jumbo Shrimp.”
Huh?
Setting aside A) the inherently oxymoronic quality of the comparison animal and B) our shared vegetarian revulsion to said critter, the reference itself left Hannah and me at odds as to what our kid’s actual size was: I thought that at 12 weeks, we had to be past the shrimp analogies altogether, and was certain the site meant to say “Prawn.”
That led to a general meditation and conversation about shrimps and prawns, which if you think about it are just big bugs that live on the ocean floor, and we didn’t appreciate this site talking about our family that way. Hannah was then subjected to an olfactory flashback of unpleasant seafood cooking odors from her youth and got very nauseated. Thanks, guys.
This week, another site has informed me that my proto-spawn is the size of “a lime.”
What kind of fucking lime?! Key limes are tiny. Lime-limes are mighty and robust, quite capable of kicking a key lime’s ass. But I’m not sure how a lime would do against either a jumbo shrimp or a prawn.
Looking ahead in the calendar doesn’t do much to bring clarity. In a few weeks, Future Kid will go from being the size of “an apple” to that of “an avocado.”
What? Aren’t many—if not most—apples larger than avocados?
I know there will be many more confusing moments than this in my future as a dad-to-be and a parent, so I’ve come to the decision to pace myself. Maybe visit the local library.
Which is why I’m not paying any further attention to the OPC or its vexing fetal size comparisons.
At least, not until the kid is a good burrito’s worth of bigness.
From Dadified, By Jeffrey Wachs
Photo courtesy of Offsprung
