People will tell you your whole pregnancy what to do with your body and your new baby. All that while you’re just wrapping your head around being responsible for another human. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with all of the advise being spewed at you constantly. Here’s a few things that all of those people who ‘know better’ than you do should stop saying:
“Oh, I never got stretch marks.” Ahem. I happen to have stretch marks- LOTS of them. It’s not because I didn’t use shea or cocoa butter or expensive scar creams. It’s because despite all of those investments in lotion, that’s how my body responds to pregnancy. I too own devices that can access the internet. At the first sign of a mark I googled the heck out of how to prevent them from getting worse. Guess what- it got worse anyway. It’s also REALLY not helpful to a pregnant woman’s confidence to say how we ‘failed’ to prevent the stretch marks to begin with- regardless of IF we tried to prevent them to begin with. If you look like you’ve never had a baby good for you! However, I don’t want to hear about it when I am waddling about looking like my toddler took a marker to my belly.
“Are you sure that’s a good name?” This is my favorite. “Your kids going to get beat up with a name like that.” What sort of thing is that to say to an expectant mother? We’ve spent all this time arguing with our partner over names and then some ‘helpful’ human comes along and tries to kibosh the whole thing? I don’t understand why people think it’s an okay thing to say. Like a family is going to call them up and say, “Oh thank goodness we ran into you, you really saved us from a gigantic naming mistake. Our child will definitely not get the snot knocked out them in school now.” Just say “oh, that’s nice” like a normal person.
“Are you sure you are not carrying twins?” or “You’re About to Pop!” Stop it. Unless you know how far along a pregnant person is, you do not know if they are ‘about to pop’, for all you know they’ve got months left. By 8 months, most women know if they are having twins so there’s really no need to ask. All you are doing is making her feel huge. There are enough societal pressures to have tiny, mark-less bumps and no jiggly bits!
I swear I’m not angry – it’s just the hormones. 😉
