A badge of honour or not?

You know that feeling, right?

When your cheekbones draw back like you’ve just popped a sour sweet. When your mouth starts watering, your stomach rapidly rises, and you know exactly what's coming next. It’s a feeling reminiscent of those long drink-fuelled nights and
hazy early mornings that now seem but a distant memory - but you know it well enough, well enough to know how the next scene plays out.

It’s now or never. You must vacate.

I scramble to get off my jam-packed rush-hour bus before the inevitable happens and I can never take my daily route to work again - not without being known as that girl who once spewed up all over herself at 8am on a Monday morning. These are the times you just want to scream and plead with the familiar strangers of your daily commute, ‘I’M PREGNANT NOT HUNGOVER, I PROMISE’.

Meanwhile, these are the same people that have seen you those occasional mornings pre-pregnancy when you actually were hungover, and you can both admit there’s not much difference in your appearance. But there IS a way to solve this problem, or at least make it all a bit easier. A way to get off that bus a bit faster, to get a seat a bit quicker, to suppress feeling so bloody self-consciousness about the unpredictability of your hard-working pregnant body.

It’s a little simple accessory that can be paired with any outfit. All hail the Baby On Board badge. 

Ah, the Baby On Board Badge. Brought into circulation by TFL in 2005 after popular demand, the badge helps others identify a pregnant passenger who might need a seat. This powerful pin is a luxury my mother never got to experience and on paper is a lifesaving addition to any pregnancy journey. However, is this little white badge of honour really just that? Honourable?

For me, barely looking bloated let alone pregnant during my first trimester, the first time donning my badge was filled with trepidation and an overriding sense of imposter syndrome.

Will people look at me and think I'm a fraud faking it to grab the god-tier position on public transport? Is it massively attention-seeking to wear one? Surely, I might as well just wear a t-shirt plastered with the words ‘HELLO WORLD, I’M PREGNANT’ on it and call it a day. And am I not pregnant ‘enough’?

Is wearing it now against the almighty pregnancy rules?!

Which bears the all-important question, when is ‘the right time’ to start wearing it? And can someone give me a copy of pregnancy etiquette 101 because I'm still none the wiser.

I sported my badge of honour at around the 14-week mark. Some argue this is too early and you should only pin yourself in when you start to show, say around the 6-month mark - but I don't believe these people have ever been pregnant. My choice to wear my badge ‘so early’ stemmed from the pure panic

I felt during that morning bus ride to work. I concluded that I'd rather be self-conscious of a badge than of the mess I could get myself into both physically and mentally. And spoiler alert - wearing it really wasn’t that big a deal. It was all in my head.

Go figure.

Not only did people not shout ‘fraud’ or ‘liar’ at me as I boarded but the one thing that stood out to me was the overriding kindness of strangers whilst wearing it - on and off transport. It made me realise that the badge isn’t this entitled demand for a seat, the badge is a hint to just be a little bit gentler and a little bit more understanding of someone who is growing a literal human brain on their daily commute to work - not to mention what's going on in their very own brain.

So, no matter what stage you're in in pregnancy, whether you're suffering a bout of morning sickness, all-day sickness or are just feeling mentally overwhelmed with it all, order that baby on board badge (they’re free) and wear it like the badge of honour it is.

You’re smashing it.

(Blog written by Harriet Keane  @harrietkeane )