Anyone who’s been pregnant before has endured their share of random comments from strangers. You know the ones I mean—during one of my pregnancies I was in the habit of hitting up the same place for lunch every day (Helloooooo, grilled panini cravings!), and every single afternoon the cashier just couldn’t resist saying, “Are you sure you don’t have twins in there?” or “WOW, you really are gettin’ BIG!” or, my personal favorite, “You still haven’t had that baby yet?”
As if maybe the ultrasound tech had miscounted the number of fetuses I was carrying, or maybe I hadn’t noticed that I couldn’t see my feet anymore, or maybe I’d actually given birth over the weekend and was just smuggling the baby around under those maternity tops that I was OMG SO SICK OF WEARING.
Seriously, people— expecting mamas do not need your input on their appearance.
In this video from my hilarious friend Jill Krause (Baby Rabies), she says it best when she declares, “I don’t care if she looks like Jabba the Hutt incubating a small planet,” no one is allowed to say anything to pregnant strangers other than a few simple words. Can you guess what they are?
I’ll give you a hint. It’s not, “Are you having triplets?”
I’ll offer one final word of caution. Please consider that it is possible that the woman you are approaching to talk about her impending child, isn’t actually pregnant AT ALL.
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My mom wisely taught me not to say anything to my pregnant fellows. But! If I had to say something, out of giddiness or sheerly the need to blurt, all I should say is “Congratulations!”
That actually backfired for me, when I was starting med school we took this course about how to treat patients and we were sent to see them and just talk to them, so one day my friend and I go to a room, a pregnant young girl, hospitalized for something not related to the pregnancy, so we started with congratulations and she just goes: “don’t congratulate me, I wish I was dead” we were so taken aback by that response, my friend panicked and just straight told her: “you know what, we’re only here to see if you like the hospital’s food” even though we were all dresses up with the white coat and the stethoscope, we immediately fled the room