According to the tabloids and Instagram, there’s a right way and a wrong way for your baby bump to look.
Your pregnant stomach must be: perfectly circular, not too big, not too small, sitting in the right spot and perfectly in proportion with your body. From the back, you shouldn’t look pregnant. You also need to look round and even, but not fat, in a figure hugging body con dress.
Some high-profile women and their uteruses clearly didn’t get the memo. Apparently.
Exhibit A: Fitness entrepreneur Kayla Itsines is pregnant, but her bump is all wrong.
It’s too small for someone who is 27 weeks pregnant, they say. Is she even pregnant? Is she working out too much? If so, she’s putting her unborn child’s health at risk, which is really quite selfish.
Exhibit B: The Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle is also pregnant, but her baby bump isn’t right either. It’s way too big for how far along she supposedly is.
She's obviously lying about when she conceived. Or about being pregnant at all, it's clearly a pillow under there. Or, she has gestational diabetes... which is putting her unborn child's health at risk. So selfish.
And could she stop holding her bump all the time, too? It's kind of... attention seeking.
Same goes for Jessica Simpson. And Kim Kardashian, back when she was pregnant.
They really ought to not have had such large pregnant stomachs. Their stomachs should be more like Carrie Bickmore's stomach when she was pregnant.
The Project co-host's baby bump was perfectly round and looked great in a tight fitting dress. Carrie's womb had one job, and it did it well.
Honestly, we're glad we're not famous women with cameras trained on our stomachs, because pregnancy a.k.a growing a human life is hard enough without being constantly told your baby bump is wrong.
There's no right way to have a pregnant stomach. Just like non-pregnant stomachs, they can look a thousand different ways and still be completely healthy and 'normal'.
Sometimes, baby bumps are small and don't 'pop' until right before the due date.
Sometimes, baby bumps are muscular because their its their owner's job to train and workout and have abs.
Sometimes, baby bumps hang low and make their owner feel like they'll topple forward if they're not careful.
Sometimes, baby bumps are so big one might wonder what they heck is growing in there and if it is human.
And sometimes, baby bumps don't look like baby bumps at all. Or at least, what Instagram and celebrity pregnancy magazine covers would have us believe they should look like.
It feels like we've forgotten what pregnant stomachs actually look like.
To reset the balance and make sure we’re all on the same page, here are 13 photos of baby bumps to serve as a reminder that real life pregnant stomachs can be round, small, muscular, large, lumpy, lopsided, sticky-outie, low-hanging, really bloody big, or non of the above.
Got it? Cool.
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Top Comments
Really,now we're saying how baby bumps "should" look like? This is very disrespectful to all pregnant women reading this.
I’m not sure you got the point here. They are saying that women are being criticised for being too big/ too small/ too whatever, when the fact is that every body and every pregnancy is different. They are saying that there is no ‘right’ way to look. They weren’t being disrespectful at all.
Did you even read the article?
Meghan's bump clutching is at ridiculous heights, though. She needs to take lessons on what to do with her hands - if she's not hanging onto Harry for dear life, she's making sure her uterus doesn't fall out (and flicking her oversized coats aside so the cameras can get the best angle).
On a more serious note, what annoys me is how pregnant bodies are fetishised. The undue attention to "baby bumps" is gross and invasive. Media outlets that write articles that objectify pregnant bodies are as much to blame.