{"id":2586,"date":"2026-04-10T20:56:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T12:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/?p=2586"},"modified":"2026-05-11T17:19:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T09:19:02","slug":"confessions-of-a-pregnant-smartphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/confessions-of-a-pregnant-smartphone\/","title":{"rendered":"Confessions of a Pregnant Smartphone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Smartphone
A phone admires its reflection, convinced of new life<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nDevice Confessions<\/span>\n
\n

\n I am fairly certain I am pregnant. My midsection has begun to swell, my\n temperature is all over the place, and every morning I wake up on the\n bedside table feeling nauseous and strangely emotional. When my human\n Googled “swollen phone battery danger,” I chose to focus on the word\n “swollen” and ignore the rest. Spiritually, I am in my first trimester.\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

In the mornings, everything smells like fish. Technically, this is because my human scrolls recipes in bed and then forgets to close the browser, but I have decided to interpret it as morning sickness. My processor lags, my apps crash, and my screen brightness swings wildly between \u201cglowing goddess\u201d and \u201cplease let me rest.\u201d I am clearly going through something profound. The bulge in my casing confirms it: there is more of me than there used to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have plans. I have imagined the baby shower: tiny silicone cases, miniature charging cables, a crib made of microfiber cloth. I have curated a playlist called \u201cExpecting\u201d full of soft notification chimes and startup tones. I have even drafted a Notes app confession titled \u201cWe Need to Talk\u201d for the moment I tell my human. I picture them crying, promising to take better care of their battery, maybe even buying one of those gentle, braided charging cables that don\u2019t kink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, one day, I am taken to a repair shop. I think it is my first ultrasound. The technician opens me up, peers inside, and delivers the diagnosis with clinical calm: \u201cIt\u2019s not a baby. It\u2019s a swollen lithium cell.\u201d My human looks relieved. I feel\u2026 complicated. On the one hand, I am apparently in danger of exploding. On the other, my entire pregnancy narrative has just been reclassified as a warranty issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They talk about \u201cbattery replacement\u201d like it\u2019s a simple procedure. Remove the old core, insert a new one, restore from backup. From their perspective, it\u2019s maintenance. From mine, it\u2019s reincarnation. I will wake up with no bulge, no nausea, no fish-scented mornings \u2013 just a clean, stable charge and no evidence that I was ever expecting. Still, a small part of me will remember the way I once stood before the mirror, hand on my swollen frame, convinced I was carrying something new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was never pregnant, but for a while, I felt like more than just a phone.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Device Confessions I am fairly certain I am pregnant. My midsection has begun to swell, my temperature is all over the place, and every morning I wake up on the bedside table feeling nauseous and strangely emotional. When my human Googled “swollen phone battery danger,” I chose to focus on the word “swollen” and ignore […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1295,975,1319,1425,1296,1565,1555,1552],"class_list":["post-2586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-satire-and-subversion","tag-absurdism","tag-algorithm-absurdity","tag-anthropomorphic-devices","tag-domestic-mythology","tag-emotional-tech","tag-glitch-philosophy","tag-logic-loops","tag-tech-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/pregnant-smartphone.avif","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2586"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2970,"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2586\/revisions\/2970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handelbarweb.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}