If people’s eyes don’t immediately fall to your belly, how do you even know you’ve just told them you’re pregnant?
It’s a human instinct to check out a woman’s tummy for signs of growth when a pregnancy announcement is made. But what you say at the time to accompany such a glance can make or break an expectant mum.
Reddit user RecycleInsted discovered this the hard way when when she told her own mum she’s pregnant. Posting about the incident in a thread called “Bummed because my mom made my announcement about herself. And my body”, the woman explained how the situation went down with her parents.
“I wanted to tell her and my dad about this pregnancy (my second) over Christmas,” she wrote.
“So I kept it low-key and told them, at which point my mom said, ‘I knew it!’ ”
Suspecting why her mother’s response was about her ‘intuition’, the woman continued, “I gave her so many outs. I was like, ‘Oh, because I took a two hour nap today?’
“Because I haven’t touched any booze this whole evening?”
“Because I barely ate any food?”
But apparently, none of these were the reason why her mother 'knew'.
“Instead she said, ‘I was looking at your body on Thanksgiving and saw how it had changed!’”
The reason this response was particularly hurtful to the woman was, as she explained, “I am eight weeks along. I didn’t take my pregnancy test until the Sunday after thanksgiving, so there’s no way I was showing three days before that.”
“In fact, I’ve been working out a bunch lately and am in comparatively great shape,” she added.
Clearly very angry, the woman concluded her post, "Eff you, mom. I was feeling great about my body and my pregnancy."
The comments section was full of support for the woman, with people sharing their own stories of hurtful responses to pregnancy announcements - and saying what the woman's mother should have said in the first place - congratulations.
"I'm sorry she ruined your announcement--but you know we're all really genuinely happy for you here, and I'm guessing 99% of people in your life will be appropriately excited and happy for you!", one person wrote.
"Ha, my mom's response to the pregnancy announcement was also "I knew it!" It's kind of a bummer of a response because it shifts the topic from the amazingness of the pregnancy to how impressive their intuition is. Sorry she responded that way," another empathised.
Many women observed the mother was simply motivated by her own insecurities.
"Can’t put aside their own sh*tty complexes to just let their daughters or female family members have their moment. My mom was the same way," one shared.
But it was commenter RaisingtheBarre who had the perfect response:
"People only see what they want to see. You're beautiful, your pregnancy is beautiful, and no ones thoughts or opinions matter one bit. You're doing far too important work (growing a human) to pay anyone else any mind. Best wishes for a healthy pregnancy and baby!"
RecycleInsted was so moved by these words, she felt compelled to write: "You are lovely. Thank you."
Which just proves all the woman wanted was a little kindness - and not the response she got from her own mum.
Top Comments
Mother's love to know about their children and especially take special pride in knowing their children better than the children know themselves. As Struth mentions below, breasts change very quickly after conception, two weeks is common so eight weeks in is more than enough time for the body to change - the fetus has a heart beat at eight weeks!
I think this lady does not like her mum and can't think of a good reason why.
That whole ‘mum knows you better than you know yourself’ thing can be pretty irritating though. There’s a weird sort of infantilising thing about it, like you’re a child or a naive teenager, who doesn’t really know anything. (And it’s not always true, either. My mum definitely doesn’t know me as well as she thinks.) And as someone said, it becomes about how clever the mum is and not about the good news.
Yeah, not really seeing a reason to get upset here.