Pregnancy is an amazing time in a woman’s life.
The act of growing a human inside you is miraculous and some women blossom and glow while others experience uncomfortable swelling and suffer rashes or skin discolouration due to rampant hormones.
There is no telling which type of pregnant woman you will be, but the one thing that unites all expecting ladies is they will be sensitive to the changes within their body.
With this in mind, as a bystander the safest thing to ever say to a woman with child is either nothing, or simply that you hope she’s feeling well, or even a “you look lovely” can be fine if you’re feeling daring.
Instead, people seem to think that comments such as “my god, you’ve gotten fat,” or “look how enormous you are, are you sure it’s not twins,” slide somewhere into the realm of propriety.
Old wives tales play a significant role in the foot in mouth issue, perpetuated by myths about boys making your bottoms bigger or girls making their mother’s less attractive.
Upon revealing that she was expecting a girl, Gabrielle was congratulated with, “I just knew you were having a girl. Girls always rob their mums of their beauty.”
Girl babies seem to get the blame for a lot, because Gabrielle is not alone in this type of inappropriate comment. In her classroom one day, Rebecca’s bottom size was first scrutinised and then criticised.
“I was teaching when pregnant with my first and a parent of one of my students said, ‘I thought you were having a girl as your bum has gotten so big!” she said.
Of course, rear growth during pregnancy and gender are completely unrelated, however people just love to jump on the gender prediction train.
“My Nan told me I was having a boy, because my bum was square. To quote, “you look like a truck from behind”. She was right incidentally, it was a boy,” says Jacqui. Lucky guess, Nan, nothing more, except a tad rude.
It isn’t only gender that people make chit-chat about, because many people mistakenly feel that a pregnant woman’s weight is generally open for discussion.
“A gent in his 70s said “it must be killing you to look like that” (8 months pregnant). When I said I would start walking once the baby was born he said “oh, you’ll never get your figure back”. I was gobsmacked,” tells Sarah.
“I got told by one of my best friends that I looked more Homer Simpson than pregnant,” said Melia. “ Don’t you wish your best friends would lie sometimes?”
You would hope that at least in your home, with the person with whom you share your bed, you would be safe from insensitive cracks but sometimes even partners get it terribly wrong.
“My husband said I’ll need my own postcode if I get any bigger. I’m fat and pregnant, that’s just mean” says Anita.
Often people don’t mean to be obnoxious, and they get most affronted if you take offense at their comments. Sometimes people are actually well-meaning, but are incredibly insensitive in their execution.
“A lovely old lady was talking to my first daughter once, then turned to me, nodded to my very pregnant belly and said “oh good, you’re having another baby. You should always have more than one child, in case one dies,” says Kylie. “I suddenly felt absolutely gutted that her life experiences had taught her that lesson. But I also wanted to run away from the scary old lady”
The guffs don’t stop when the baby is born, however, with the fun-times rolling on to mums who are both sleep-deprived and hormonal. This is when they should truly be approached with caution and cups of tea instead of boorish abandon.
Kerry says: “I had some random bloke look at my baby son (who was a big chubby baby) and tell me that I was “a good milker” – & then he turned to my husband & said that “he should keep me ‘cos I’m obviously a good breeder!!” What am I? A cow?”
Basically this is a cautionary tale, and if there is one suitable adage that covers all things child-bearing –
If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
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