Pregnancy sure is magical, isn’t it? With the possible exception of eating ethnic food just before bed, it’s the only time a person can feel like life is growing inside of them. Now, there are downsides, of course, from nausea to swollen limbs, but as always, the worst pains can only be inflicted on us by other people. These are the worst things ever said to pregnant women.
He was delicious, too
Granted, we have no idea who the person who asked if everything was okay between the pregnant woman and the baby’s father is. It may have been someone close to her, but we suspect it wasn’t. After all, if they were close to the mom-to-be, wouldn’t they already know what the situation was?
So, that option having been ruled out, we’re left with an acquaintance at best or a stranger at worst sticking their nose into someone’s personal life. Forget world peace – we sincerely believe the world would be a better place if people just minded their own business.
Just the facts, ma’am
We mean… Yeah, it IS a life changer. But is that really the nicest thing this supposed friend could possibly have said? They are friends, after all, so somewhere in there it’s implied that showing a minimal amount of joy at hearing the news isn’t uncalled for.
Even if she doesn’t like children or ever plans on having them herself, could she not have been happy for her friend? Heck, could she not have FAKED being happy for her friend? We think it might be time for mom to get new friends.
Momzilla, meet grandmazilla
Here’s the unvarnished truth: pregnancy is simultaneously one of the best and worst things a human can go through. Sure, hardly anything’s more empowering than physically feeling you’re harboring the spark of new life inside your body.
At the same time, though, you’re tired, you’re nauseous, and you’re bloated – and those are the good days! What we’re trying to say is that pregnancy is hard enough as it is without your mom telling you how much you resemble a whale – or buying you a dress that you can use to cover a mid-sized sedan with.
That shut her up
When this woman walked into her own baby shower, her neighbor Karen couldn’t keep her comment to herself. The pregnant lady’s best friend came to her rescue with a jabbing comment about Karen’s jealousy of having a child.
Sarah had never been one to hold her tongue, but seeing Karen’s face fall made this mom-to-be feel bad— especially since she was just about to announce at the baby shower that she was in fact having twins! Karen was right, but this would still teach her to think before she spoke.
World’s best aunt, world’s worst sister
Man, if we had a dollar for every time a family member told another family member they literally prayed for them to have a miscarriage… we’d have zero dollars, because good God, who does that? This person’s family, that’s who.
Apparently, not only is their aunt of the belief that the mom should lose the baby, but the uncle is as well. It’s heartwarming, in a way – if even two of the worst people in the world could find someone, then surely everyone else on the planet has a chance at love as well.
Uh, don’t think that’s quite how that works
Here’s an interesting bit of trivia that some people may be unaware of – this woman’s mother certainly wasn’t: you can have a paying job and pay your taxes and still need financial assistance. It happens. Crazy, right? Anyway, that’s not even the real issue.
The real issue is the level of entitlement felt by her mother when she decided that paying her taxes, and her daughter being on Medicaid, somehow made the baby hers. What would she even do with it? On the basis of this statement alone, it’s probably best if she didn’t parent anybody else.
Why do people need to know that?
Before we talk about anything else, can we just say we love the phrasing of “So was THIS ONE planned?” You know, “this one” as opposed to the first one, who wasn’t? We mean, maybe the first kid really wasn’t, but still…
Anyway, yeah, if random people on the street could stay out of strangers’ family planning, that would be great. Going forward, let’s just all assume that both parents looked at a calendar and can remember their first child’s age at all times, and just stay out of their business, deal? Deal.
Dads always know what to say
Everyone has drama in their family, and relationships between parents and their children can sometimes be strained. The nice thing about welcoming a new baby into the world, though, is that it’s a chance for a fresh start.
Parents who are now becoming grandparents can mellow out and just have fun with the pressure off them, while children becoming parents can now see things from a new perspective and maybe gain some insight. Ideally, at any rate. This woman’s father seemed content to maintain his cold, selfish attitude but hey – he’s not depriving anyone of anything but himself.
We bet they’re an awful person
We don’t know where these people work, but someone should amend their employee manual to explicitly state that you should never imply losing a child may somehow be the mother’s fault. It doesn’t matter what the actual circumstances were.
It doesn’t even matter if it WAS her fault. In fact, especially if that’s the case – there’s no scenario in which it’s okay to mention that. Not a thing on this world is more devastating than a parent losing a small child. Just say, “Congrats, happy for you” and go on with your workday like a normal person.
Thanks for the creepy observation, random stranger!
Telling someone in line next to you at the grocery store that they must have gained 30 pounds since becoming pregnant is rude, sure. There’s no arguing that. But more than that, it carries extremely unnerving and creepy implications. We mean, the working theory was that they’re just jerks who couldn’t go on living without letting a pregnant stranger know they gained weight.
But what if they’ve been secretly monitoring the pregnancy, biding their time until they can kidnap the newborn into their international assassin training program? We mean, it’s probably the first thing, but still – creepy!
No, but she certainly belongs in there
Male or female, if you’ve never been pregnant then you have no idea how nerve-racking it is not to feel your baby moving. It’s such a fundamental part of pregnancy – you’re growing life inside of you, so surely it should be moving.
When it doesn’t happen, even if you know the baby’s fine and it’s just because your anterior placenta is acting as a cushion between it and your belly, it’s really rough. Here’s the thing, though. We know her mom was pregnant at least once – she had her – so what’s her excuse?
A double whammy of judgement
Someday, and that day can’t come soon enough as far as we’re concerned, there’ll be so many tattooed people around that no one will ever think anything of it again, and the stigma would be broken. We’re clearly not quite there yet, though, as this random elderly lady demonstrated.
The future mom seems like she made a number of bad choices in life? Well, maybe. But then again, maybe you have, lady, if where you ended up was judging someone you’ve never met before on the basis of their ink.
How do you even begin answering that?
We’ll never understand the “Was it planned?” crowd. Like, what answer would you be satisfied with? Why are you even asking about something so intensely private? But whatever, we’ve heard it a million times. What we’ve never heard before is someone following that question up with “But… Why?”
What do you mean why? They wanted to have a baby, so they had a baby. What more is there to say? We’re pretty sure they didn’t have the baby because one of them had a premonition that one day it would unite the planet against an alien invasion.
All about that silver lining
Okay, we need a moment. We have no idea which festival of humanity supplied us with this line, but we’d really like to meet them. It’s horrifying on so many levels. There are little things, like the assumption that since the first baby turned out to be a boy, the mom obviously now wants a girl.
And then there are big things, like casually tying having one of each into LOSING HER CURRENT PREGNANCY. The ship has sailed. It’s a boy. Let’s not talk about losing him and cross our fingers for a girl on baby three, okay?
Is it really happening if she’s not live-blogging it?
This is truly a sign of the thoroughly depressing times we live in right now. So this person, with seemingly zero provocation, accused a woman of faking her pregnancy for the past eight months, based solely on the fact that she hasn’t been obsessively cataloguing every minute step of it.
We mean… There ARE other options. Maybe she and her partner are private, or maybe they try to stay off the social media grid altogether. Look, all we’re saying is there are a few steps they missed on the way to Mass Deceptionville.
Can you say rude?
When this woman was pregnant, she was just minding her own business in line at a coffee shop when the woman next to her started hissing outrageously rude and intrusive questions at her about the paternity of the baby and calling her names.
Shocked and appalled, the woman couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Suddenly, the rude woman looked at her more closely and her face went white. “I’m so sorry, Ma’am, I thought you were someone else, I would never have spoken to you like that otherwise, I’m terribly sorry.” The woman didn’t accept the apology and eloquently called her out on her judgmental and abusive behavior. The whole coffeeshop erupted in applause. The rude woman slinked out, her face bright red.
Nothing hurts like family
Of all the insensitive, casually cruel things a close relative ever said to a pregnant woman, this may just be the worst. Oh, this second pregnancy isn’t as exciting for you as the first one – the one they lost – was? Well, what a difficult time this must be for you, then, grandma.
We’re glad to see she found the strength to carry on somehow, even seeing the silver lining in her granddaughter making it past week 11. See, and you were thinking she was a genuinely bad person. Silly you!
Yeah, not a millionaire yet unfortunately
You know the old saying about the road to the Bad Place being paved with good intentions? Well, this is a prime example of that. The people at this mom-to-be’s workplace WERE well-meaning when they asked her incredulously if she was still there during her third trimester.
But it’s also kind of a dumb thing to say, because A. obviously she’s still there, you can see her and B. you’re just reminding her of the (probably) painful fact that she has to keep working despite being ready to pop because otherwise she’ll starve to death.
No use, just take them out in their birthday suit
Here we have another variant on the old “But a girl can’t wear blue!” mindset. This time, it involves both the color of the nursery and, mind-bogglingly, the color of the clothes used to transport the little guy or gal home in.
Yes, some people prefer not to know what they’re having, so it can be a nice delivery room surprise. You can dig it or not, entirely up to you. But questioning it on the basis of the color of the onesie they’ll have the baby wear home is straight up hilarious.
Well, that story certainly took a turn
The phrase “That escalated quickly” originated in Anchorman, to describe the newsmen’s all-out brawl. Crazy as it was, though, we’re pretty sure that it’s never been more appropriate to describe a situation than here. The story starts out innocently enough, with saying how beautiful future mom looked and how much she resembled this person’s friend.
But then it veers off right into The Twilight Zone and the person’s friend losing their baby on the same week. In fact, is she sure they weren’t literally describing a Twilight Zone episode? What sane person would tell a pregnant woman that story if it was real?
Don’t mind her, just saving some lives while growing a human
Calling a pregnant woman in her second trimester “Mrs. Waddles” is not okay even if she wasn’t a life-saving medical professional. We don’t care if you’re the baby’s father, if you’re the mom’s father or if you fathered the entire world like the great Mesopotamian Lord of the Constellations Anu.
If you’re trying to keep all your teeth in your mouth, don’t call a pregnant woman “Mrs. Waddles” period. If that pregnant lady is a surgeon who just spent somewhere north of 20 hours on her feet, though? That crosses over from insensitive to sociopathic.
Looking forward to never speaking to them again
If you’ve never heard anyone tout this silly and ridiculous old wives’ tale – oh, how we envy you. It’s true, though – the aforementioned relative is far from the only person who believes girls steal their mom’s beauty during the pregnancy, while boys enhance it.
Aside from the small detail that there’s no way biological way for that to be true, the fact is that pregnant women – regardless of the embryo’s gender – are exhausted, plagued by wildly fluctuating hormones, and suffer “morning” sickness. That’s a recipe for many things, but winning Miss Universe usually ain’t one of them.
The mother of all backhanded compliments
Okay, this is fudging with the premise a little bit, but let’s not lose sight of something – while only the mom is physically pregnant, the process is something both parents go through.
And yes, sometimes that means suffering the snide remarks of strangers who simply had to take time out of their no doubt busy schedules to let you know what a hideous ogre they think you are. We had this whole spiel ready about how looks aren’t everything in a relationship, but geez, why are we even arguing this point? Just be nice.
Well, has she tried NOT being nauseous?
There’s actually a little more to this story that makes it even more abundantly clear how much this unsolicited advice was useless. Basically, the future mom’s nausea was so bad that she’d vomit 30 or more times a day.
It eventually became life-threatening, so she had to have a permanent IV line installed in her chest to keep her hydrated and dosed with medication against the nausea. But hey, maybe, just maybe, it never occurred to her to try crackers and ginger ale before having an invasive, life-altering procedure. Better go up to her and find out!
It was her civic duty, to be fair
While the exchange described here is infuriating and terrifying enough as it is, it gets even worse when you think about the subtext of how it came about. Presumably, this woman’s co-worker was fuming all day, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to air out her grievances at her pregnant co-worker.
Then, when she saw her heading for the bathroom, she knew she had to seize the chance and ran in after her to tell her what a mistake she was making. The whole thing is more intensely creepy than the entire runtime of Silence of the Lambs.
Fake ring, real job – awful people
Fun fact: it’s no longer the 1950s. Sounds like something most everyone should be aware of by now, but time and again we see that it isn’t the case. Some backstory – the pregnant woman relating this tale is a cashier, and she had an old lady rant at her for being pregnant and unmarried.
The best part, though, was her father allowing a man to “tarnish the family name” with such behavior. Seriously, what year is this? Nevertheless, it’s nice to know you can count on your superiors’ support when faced with unsolicited criticism of your personal life from strangers.
Perfectly normal checkout conversation
Coming from a close friend or a sister, the quote at the beginning here isn’t that abnormal. Okay, sure, there’s no verifiable evidence that the position has any effect on the gender of the baby – it’s always a 50/50 coin toss – but it’s just fun girl gossip.
Or it would be, at any rate, if it didn’t take place at a grocery store checkout line with a complete stranger. At that point, just asking the mom point blank about it without any introduction whatsoever is just the icing on this trash cake.
Yes… It’s obviously that and nothing else
The most stunning thing about this exchange between a pregnant lady and her boss isn’t that it took place to begin with. No, the most stunning thing is that said boss is apparently a nurse, and should therefore really know better.
Just place yourself in the pregnant woman’s shoes, which are probably too tight as it is. In front of all your co-workers, your supervisor tells you it’s “obvious” you miscarried the baby. What do you even say to that? “No, I felt it kicking a while back so I’m pretty sure it’s still alive”? “I quit”? Yeah, probably that second one.
If the kid doesn’t like dinosaurs, they’re getting put up for adoption
We’re always a little surprised to discover that we’re more than two decades into the 21st century and people still think there are “boy colors” and “girl colors.” There are just colors, folks. They’re the product of stimulation of photoreceptor cells in our eyes by electromagnetic radiation, and they most certainly don’t have genders.
But what made us actually angry was the notion that only boys can find dinosaurs awesome. Um, excuse you, have you seen Bryce Dallas Howard in Jurassic World? Men may be from Mars and women from Venus, but dinosaurs are a galactic, universal truth.
Just gonna hang onto it for now if that’s okay
If we’re being completely honest with you, we’re not entirely sure what prompted someone to just assume the mother is giving her baby up for adoption.
Devoid of context, we’re left with no other choice but to assume that for whatever reason, there was an impression that she was unfit to be a mother and was therefore brave to realize what a mess she was. Still, those ARE quite a few assumptions to make, so maybe tactfully scope out the field before letting her know you think she’s not up to being a parent?
Reminder: pregnant women are still people
Forty-two weeks, sometimes even more, is a long time to be carrying a quickly-growing human inside of you. We just thought we’d mention that, as folks tend to forget. That’s a very long time to have your body act as a vessel for the nurturing and well-being of a separate creature.
And hey, no one’s looking past the importance of keeping fit and healthy while pregnant – after all, a healthy mom often means a healthy baby. But maybe, just maybe, moms-to-be are still people and allowed to have a little rocky road on their birthdays. Just a thought.
He’ll never recover if it’s not
Putting aside for a moment the disconcerting fact that gender reveal cakes are now apparently a thing, let’s talk about parenthood – specifically fatherhood. It’s 2021, and men are allowed to be excited about the prospect of becoming fathers.
They can be moved, they can be nervous, and they can even cry. And you know what’s even crazier? They’re allowed to hope their future child isn’t necessarily a boy! We mean, “For your husband’s sake”? Imagine believing that men are so fragile that they simply wouldn’t be able to compute having non-male offspring…
It’s 2021, get over yourself, lady
We just love the ice-breaker the cashier used. “You know that’s a Vietnamese name, right?” – ‘What? It is?! I was not aware of the origin of fifty-percent of my name until you thought to enlighten me just now!’
While she was still trying to compute the sheer lunacy of the question, the cashier proceeded to hit her with her baby being born ugly because it was mixed-race. All babies are beautiful, especially mixed-race ones. Even if you think they’re not, decorum states you shouldn’t call both the mom and the baby hideous. Sorry if that makes your life difficult.
Hmm, she was up until a minute ago
Reading between the lines of this short interaction, someone went up to a pregnant woman while she was literally holding hands with a man, and asked her if she knew who the father of her baby was. When she answered in the affirmative, they double-checked whether she was sure.
To be completely honest, the person who should be offended by this exchange the most has to be the dad. First they ignored his existence altogether, and then doubled down by implying there was no earthly way for him to have fathered that baby. Ouch.
Nope, still not public property
What does “You’re sure it isn’t twins?” even mean? We suspect it might signal that this weird question is the nicest possible way the other person could think of to tell a woman she looks like a beached whale.
Even on the off chance that it’s true, there’s really no need to remind her of it – whether explicitly or otherwise. Now, as far as belly touching goes – we get it. It’s fun, feeling tiny life moving about inside. But maybe try and contain yourself and wait until you bump into a pregnant woman you actually know.
It’s good to remember what’s really important here
Sometimes, the adult thing to do is simply to break away. Recognize a bad situation, cut your losses, and just break away. This mom’s account portrays her dad as being more interested in his vacation plans than in his unborn grandchild, and that’s fine – that’s his choice.
The secret to life is realizing that you can never control other people’s actions, but you CAN control how you react to them. Her reaction was exactly the right one. Let him have his vacation, and every vacation thereafter, without his daughter and her children.
Dude, you sell pickles
In the very, very short list of people who are allowed to ask a woman if she’s pregnant or just overweight, “ren faire pickle vendor” ranks just below “Starbucks barista.” In fact, we’re firmly in favor of abolishing the list altogether.
If you can’t tell, and don’t know for sure, whether a woman is pregnant or not, just don’t say anything, dude. No reason to overestimate your importance here. It’s not like she was going to spend the rest of the day fuming that the guy who sold her a freaking pickle didn’t say congrats.
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