Ignorance is killing my reviews of The Baby Blessing, which is based on two medical facts - one of which I have pasted below. Yes. Pregnancy makes you stronger, faster and more flexible. It is not fantasy.

Do women run faster after pregnancy? (Wickipedia)

I have never been pregnant but I have heard that women who ran late in pregnancy sometimes did get faster especially if they only missed a short time for recovery after having the baby. Your body is used to carrying the extra weight and then at least some of it is gone quickly so your speed is better. In come cases better than before. Like I said, this is not first hand experience but it makes sense. I am sure it will matter how long that you need to recover after giving birth as to how much faster you will be. Good luck with the delivery and report here if you are faster. I would be interested to know how it works out.

From The Sunday Times September 14, 2009 - Sportswomen Benefit From Pregnancy
James Pivarnik, a professor of kinesiology and epidemiology at Michigan State University, has studied athletes during and after pregnancy at his Human Energy Research laboratory and found there is a 60 per cent increase in blood volume and that this could improve the body’s ability to carry oxygen to the muscles by up to 30 per cent.
“This could improve aerobic capacity, enabling a woman to run, cycle or swim at a certain pace for longer,” says Greg Whyte, professor of applied sport and exercise science at Liverpool John Moores University. But there are other adaptations in the first trimester that could also make a difference: “A surge in hormones — predominantly progesterone and oestrogen, but also the male hormones including testosterone — could increase muscle strength,” Whyte says. “Increases in other hormones like relaxin, which loosens the hip joints to prepare a woman for birth, could also improve joint mobility to a beneficial degree.”

Kim Clijsters, Paula Radcliffe, Catriona Matthew and other athletes performed better after childbirth.

ask yourself this. Is your prospective readership in the 'real world' any more likely to have assimilated these medical facts and therefore buy into your literary conceit than the readers here? If not, maybe you need to quote the above in the epigraph to clue them in.

In the meantime, don't call those who offer you the privilege of being read here 'ignorant' and don't get so hung up on your book being 'killed'. That is assuredly fantasy. Either that, or loose use of language. "A,B&E", "Not In My Name" and "52FF" (flash fiction anthology) all available on Amazon Kindle

"How a psychopath makes sweet love. I can get you ringside. Royal box even."

my point is that for those particular reviewers, your explanation/allusion to the logic of it wasn't clear enough for them to pick up on. It might be worth you reconsidering your treatment of it within the sample you've posted here. "A,B&E", "Not In My Name" and "52FF" (flash fiction anthology) all available on Amazon Kindle

"How a psychopath makes sweet love. I can get you ringside. Royal box even."

I've given birth and never noticed that phenomenon. But I'm willing to believe it is so. I haven't read your story, but there may well be other factors complicating a plot in which a woman suddenly runs faster after giving birth. I won't go into details.

This thing where readers don't believe what a narrative voice tells them reminds me of a brief online conversation I had once with an author who used to be here, and at some other place too, and who is now doing very well with her self published books.

I was one of the reviewers who asked, 'What's jitsu? Do you mean jiu-jitsu?' I'd lived in Japan and even practised karate for a few years, yet for some reason I'd never heard of jitsu in my life.

But this author knows all about jitsu because her daughter did it, or something like that. That's why she incorporated it into her story. I was one of many reviewers who queried her about whether it was a typo, maybe.

I don't know what she did about it in the end, but she said she was thinking of maybe just changing it to 'jiujitsu', damnit, because it was only mentioned in passing, not integral to the plot, and it didn't really matter anyway... except she was RIGHT! And the world should know about jitsu!

So, I guess another question is, do 'published' works which arrive as printed books carry more weight than excerpts we have uploaded to a website in which we're asking, begging and pleading sometimes, for readers to go through with a fine-tooth comb, expressing our doubts and confusions, opening ourselves up to accusations of misinterpretation and exposing our own ignorances? Sometimes writers forget that reviewers are opening a little piece of ourselves up, too, when we query someone about this or that, or when we are willing to admit that we simply don't know what's going on...

I could give you lots of similar examples from my own reviews too -- mainly geography based because not that many readers on here are familiar with Australasian culture (and yeah, I have been told by an English reviewer that 'there's no such word as 'Australasia')-- but I thought that one about jitsu was classic.

So I agree with other commenters here - it's not really worth being 'right' sometimes. I think Malcolm's got some great ideas for getting around your particular pregnancy problem.

Indeed. Here's a bit of education -- and perhaps a moral lecture -- from a very famous blockbuster. I guess you can all guess which one:

Taking away a person's control of her own life -- meaning her bank account -- is one of the greatest infringements a democracy can impose, especially when it applies to young people. It is an infringement even if the intent may be perceived as benign and socially valid. Questions of guardianship are therefore potentially sensitive political issues, and are protected by rigorous regulations and controlled by the Guardianship Agency. This agency comes under the county administrative board and is controlled, in turn, by the Parliamentary Ombudsman.

And on and on it continues...