Announcing one's pregnancy

At 6 months, I am FINALLY starting to show, and I am over the "looking fat but not (yet) pregnant" phase (thank goodness). People are giving up seats for me on the Metro, and things that fall off my fork/chopsticks during meals land on my bulging tummy, not on my lap. The best part is that I feel confident when walking into a maternity clothes store.

I have also begun (belatedly) to tell people that I am pregnant. Instead of making a big deal out of it, I try to discreetly slip it in conversations. People's reactions can be categorized into three: (1) those who seem genuinely happy for me, proceed to ask numerous questions, and thus the conversation changes entirely; (2) those who say "congratulations", but limit questions to my health and my future plans; and (3) those who say something to the effect of "I guess I should congratulate you", ask when the baby is due, and then go back to the conversation we were having before the announcement.

Needless to say, such reactions depend on the kind of position and feelings each person has vis-a-vis having children. Those who respond as (1) tend to be mothers/fathers themselves, or they want to be mothers/fathers. The former tend to welcome me to the club and give me advice, while the latter tells me their plans/dreams of one day (soon) having children. Those who fall in the (2) category are the ones who have mixed feelings on the issue; they are not sure they want children, or haven't thought about it very much, so they ask the minimum questions deemed necessary but are usually uncomfortable having a deeper conversation on the issue. (3) is quite simple--they have no desire to dwell on this point than any other, because they are clearly not interested in having children or in dealing with people who do.

Having been in positions (2) and (3) in the immediate past, I can easily identify with those who react in such ways. The question I always used to pose, whenever people made such announcements was: "why did you decide to have a child?" This is a question that I have yet to be asked by anyone... yet I feel it is a crucial question that need to be considered by anyone and everyone who chooses to have children.

Why should an environmentalist who is always trying to minimze her ecological footprint choose to have a child, when we know that the average person in the developed world consumes 32 times more resources than someone in the developing world, and every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation (the large majority of them being children under the age of 5)?

Why are people who choose NOT to have children constantly questioned about their decision, while those who choose to have children are never asked about theirs?

My reasons for wanting to have a child are quite personal. But I do know that at this point in my life I am ready, with my partner, to go through a fundamental change in our lives. To quote from the movie "Lost in Translation":

Your life, as you know it... is gone. Never to return. But... [the kids] turn out to be the most delightful people you will ever meet in your life.

Wish us luck!

(for some more quotes from the film, go to: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335266/quotes).