“I was walking down the hall and saw two very pregnant students and it really caught me off guard.” Ms. Wiemann, a Wakeland CTE teacher, had to remind herself that students were wearing fake bellies.

Child Development is a class that helps to teach students about parenthood and good family dynamics. One of the activities the class participates in is the pregnant belly project.

For multiple weeks, students in Child Development took turns wearing the pregnant bellies in order to understand the struggles and difficulties that women go through in the state of pregnancy. The pregnancy bellies are 25 lb bags, made of sand and water. They are then strapped around the stomach area and connected to their back as well. The purpose of this project is to teach students what it is like to be pregnant and to sympathize with pregnant women.

Sophomore Paige Mills talks about her experience with the pregnant belly, “doing stuff with my baby bump is not super hard, because… you can move it when you need to reach down and get something, but it is hard getting up because it weighs so much.”  Jordan Schmelzer also explained how she thinks this project “will prepare [her] for motherhood, because it shows [her] how heavy [the belly] really is” and “how [differently] people will treat you” when they think you are a pregnant teen.

Nevertheless, the students in Child Development learned a lot about this educational topic.