She’s knocked up, they’re locked up.
After working at a men’s maximum security prison in California for nearly a decade, Bella Aguilar bumped into a situation that made the job extremely “uncomfortable” and “depressing.”
The brunette had become pregnant.
“It’s just not a very happy place to work at. I mean, we all know why — it’s a prison,” Aguilar, 27, a married mom of one, who’s now 40 weeks pregnant with a baby boy, told Caters News.
“I felt like, sometimes when you’re pregnant, you can already feel a bit depressed,” she said, “because you’re not feeling like yourself.”
The millennial mommy-to-be, who held the title of maintenance supervisor, as well as health and safety coordinator at the prison since age 20, has given social media fans viral glimpses at her daily struggles as an expecting woman laboring amongst criminals.
“Welcome to a morning routine of somebody who absolutely does not love their job at all,” groaned Aguilar in a trending TikTok post dedicated to her unglamorous pre-work routine.
Her tasks include waking up at the crack of dawn, primping, packing a “sad lunch,” then making an hour-long hike to the penitentiary grounds in the dark of the morning.
In a separate snippet, Aguilar lamented over the pangs of trying to hide her protruding belly in baggy clothes while also compiling with workplace uniform policies.
“I can’t stand…the attire,” she griped. “You can’t wear blue jeans, sweats, leggings, yoga pants [or] anything like that.”
“Yoga pants, leggings, sweats — those are a pregnant woman’s best friends,” said the fruitful fox of the form-fitting bottoms. “Wearing maternity pants that are a size [too] big are just so f- -king ugly.”
Aguilar explained to Caters that she’d initially tried camouflaging her bun in the oven while on the clock. She feared the optics of her changing body would attract unwanted attention from the wards.
“I’m very little, I’m five foot two, and I look very young,” she said. “So just being a young little girl that’s pregnant inside of a men’s prison — it’s just going to bring some type of eyes to you, at least for a moment.”
However, despite the big-bellied belle’s best efforts at masking her mom-bod, Aguilar’s middle eventually grew beyond disguises.
“It just got to the point where I couldn’t hide it anymore and that’s when we really cut back on the inmate contact,” the carrying mother said, adding that she’d only come in contact with about 65 prisoners twice a week.
Still, she says even the most brief interactions with the convicts had become “just uncomfortable.”
Kendra Capalbo, 46, a former social worker at Rhode Island Adult Correctional Facility, experienced similarly stomach-churning sensations during her tenure at the max-security jailhouse.
“Hearing the details of their crimes,” said Capalbo, “especially those involving women and children, and the rationale many of them used to justify their behavior, made it difficult to trust.”
Female correction officers at NYC’s Rikers Island claimed they’ve been verbally, physically and nearly sexually assaulted by detainees.
Aguilar was lucky enough to not encounter any “disrespect” from jailers. But she says the threat of violence was always looming.
“We all know that being in a prison in general, there’s always a chance of danger,” she said. “It is filled with prisoners who have done horrible things.”
“However, I didn’t feel particularly like a target because I was pregnant,” Aguilar added. “I just felt like I was being watched more and it’s just already an uncomfortable environment to be in as a woman in general, being pregnant, just added to it.”
Aguilar became overwhelmingly distressed. She ultimately left the troubling post and is now pursuing a career in beauty content creation.
“Working in a place like that, for me, personally was extremely depressing and hard on my mental health,” she said. “Now that I don’t work there, I can say I’m mentally so much happier.”
