This was yet another suggestion by an awesome mommy!
You know it's happened to you. My first was the greeter lady at Wal Mart. "Oh, he's a preemie? My daughter had a preemie. He died." I didn't even get a smiley face sticker with that little nugget.
It seems like the second people find out you're expecting, they a) assume you know nothing and can observe nothing on your own, and b) want to share every dark detail of their own scarring experience. Delivery room fish tales of 14-pound babies that caused tearing worse than what the Berlin Wall experienced. Epidurals that didn't work or caused strokes. Nursing babies that were born with teeth. Surprise twins. Surprise gender mistakes. Surprise labor. Surprise disorders. Hermaphrodites. Dictator doctors. And the absolute worst story you can hear: those who lost their babies.
These are all sad, crazy, mind-blowing stories. The women who experienced them are real and had real obstacles to overcome. But are they gems that help an excited pregnant woman in any way? NO. Cautionary tales are one thing. Freaking out a helpless mommy-to-be is quite another. What ever happened to "Congratulations"? (Which, by the way, is spelled with a T, not a D, people!) Pregnant woman are often like the old vets you see sitting outside of Cracker Barrel, playing giant checkers in those ridiculously expensive rocking chairs. We swap stories, try to one-up each other on either smoothness or misery of pregnancy. But needlessly terrifying each other? It's cruel. It does nothing but satisfy the person who is telling the story.
I have a problem in that I am almost entirely non-confrontational, so while I have plenty of witty responses in my head, I have no backbone to deliver them. So this is one I'd love to hear you sound off on. What was YOUR response to the person who inevitably told you something awful about pregnancy and/or delivery?
3 comments:
Amen! I would NEVER follow congratulating someone with the ugliness of what happened to me.
Same here! It's a constant fear in the back of every pregnant woman's mind, and once you know it CAN happen, it's even worse! I'm scared enough after having lost my own, I don't need to be mourning the loss of my friend's aunt's cousin's co-worker's baby!
My own birth was scary enough (and I've heard the stories enough times at this point to re-enact the story nearly as well as my mom). When I had delusions of grandeur when I was preggo with my son (ie - a 3 page birth plan down to bringing my own music (duh), dimmed lights (why?) and my hubby announcing boy or girl (which my own dr totally ruined)) I should have known better. This time around, things have been totally different *knocks on wood* & I'm hoping they stay that way.
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