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As soon as you share your pregnancy news, you will get all the usual questions! Here are 10 questions you can’t avoid when you’re pregnant. It’s originally from www.bellybelly.com.au, posted by Fiona Peacock . Fiona s a writer, researcher and lover of all things to do with pregnancy, birth and motherhood (apart from the lack of sleep). She is a home birth advocate, passionate about gentle parenting and is also really tired. BellyBelly is “Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting Website For Thinking Women and Men”. Image courtesy of Dean Drobot via Bigstockphoto.
You’re newly pregnant and desperate to share the news.
You find yourself longing to talk about the pregnancy.
Twelve weeks can feel like a long time to keep your secret – especially when you’re bursting with excitement and desperate to shout it from the rooftops.
In hindsight, once baby has arrived, you might realise those early weeks were a break from the monotony of being asked questions.
There’s a seemingly endless number of pregnancy questions strangers, friends and family just have to know the answers to.
As soon as you share the news and start to show, you will spend all of your time fielding these questions.
You’ll probably have to quit your job to free up some time so you can actually answer, over and over again, the same ten questions. Here are the offending questions.
Let us know if we’ve left any off the list:
This question totally ignores something every single one of us knows: due dates are completely useless.
About 3-5% of babies arrive on their due date. That means your baby has more chance of arriving on the back of a glittery, coloured unicorn than on the due date.
You might tell yourself you’re not going to get hung up on the due date. You’ll think of it more as a ‘due month’, and be totally relaxed about when your baby chooses to arrive.
But when you get asked about your due date six times a day for months and months, it’s pretty hard not to obsess about the date.
Yep, I do. A really terrible case of morning sickness. Just kidding. I’m having a lot of heartburn. Ha, no, it’ s really constipation.
Oh, you meant what am I having? Sure. A dinosaur. No, a purple dog. Or a bright green spotted dragon with huge talons and a love of disco music.
OK, fine. I’m having a baby. At least I hope so. Yes, I’m having a baby, so stop asking me stupid questions, Denise. No, sorry, I don’t know the sex.
This is a pretty personal question, isn’t it? All those hours spent poring over books of baby names, desperately trying to find a name you both love, could come crumbling down around your ears if you dare to answer this question honestly.
Risk telling people your chosen name too soon and you’ll be met with a sea of pinched faces, sharp intakes of breath and helpful comments like, “Oh, really? I knew a Gary once. He’s in prison now”.
Just keep that beautiful name to yourself until you’re really ready to share it – maybe when Gary arrives and everybody will just have to suck it up and be polite.
Annoying as this question might be, at least they asked. At least they weren’t one of the creepy mofos who just reach out and stroke a part of your anatomy without asking.
At least they didn’t see your body as something they could grab at their leisure. Small mercies, sure, but at least they thought your consent was important.
Don’t think you have to be polite and say yes, and then stand there awkwardly while your body is manhandled by people trying to feel hints of the baby beneath your skin. It’s your bump and you can say no if you want to.
Oh, hi, not really a personal question! So, this is basically your dad, or mother-in-law, or the supermarket cashier, asking you about your sex life.
They’re really asking you whether you were careless about birth control. That’s a bit of a weird question, isn’t it?
It also means they assume you’ve fallen pregnant by mistake, as if they couldn’t believe you might have done such a thing intentionally. Whether the pregnancy was planned or not, you don’t have to share your personal business with everyone who asks.
The baby is currently the size of a hamster but that won’t stop people asking you questions about a time so far in the future you can barely even imagine it.
You haven’t even met your baby yet and you’re already being asked about when you’re going to leave him. It’s just too early to know the answer to that one, isn’t it?
You know, the ones who breastfeed or the ones who don’t. The mums who bang on about saving the planet while washing their cloth nappies, or the ones who are filling the oceans with baby wipes. The ones who never talk about anything but their kids or those who never say a word about them as if they aren’t worthy of a mention.
Perhaps the ones who compete with other parents, or the antisocial ones who stay out of the rat race. Or the mums who feed their babies fast food, or those who puree every organic vegetable they see.
It doesn’t matter what kind of mother you turn out to be, there’ll always be somebody who thinks you’re doing it all wrong. They’re wrong though. You just do you.
Oh, the world just loves to have an opinion. Did you know by becoming pregnant you agreed to sacrifice ownership of your body and now the entire world is allowed to judge you for every single thing you do?
Should you really be eating soft serve ice-cream in your condition? Should you really be standing on that chair? And should you really be going for a run?
Should you really be drinking that? Should you really be doing that? And should you really still be you now that you’re pregnant? Aren’t you just a human incubator?
You get asked this a lot when you’re pregnant, but it comes from a good place. People know pregnancy is tough and they want you to know they care about you. They probably also want to remind themselves of how awful pregnancy is so they don’t do it again.
If you want to stop them asking this in future, just launch into a very detailed description of your haemorrhoids and the associated daily ointment routine. They won’t ask again.
The terrible thing about pregnancy is that it is very hard to get ‘all ready’ because you have no idea what you’re doing. You’ve never been a parent before. You don’t know whether you need to buy a top and tail bath and, assuming you do (in fact you don’t), you have no idea which is the best one to get.
Every decision is a big one, and requires research. It can all feel a little overwhelming at times, can’t it? And that’s difficult enough to deal with, without being asked whether you’re ‘all ready for the baby’ approximately 15 times a day, every day for the last trimester.
