To ask what ridiculous things people have said to you in pregnancy/parenthood?

Comments from women of another (Mediterranean) culture:

‘If you swim when pregnant your bones will open and you’ll lose the baby.’

‘If you keep on carrying the toddler when pregnant, your baby will be born with a broken arm.’

After the baby’s arrival: ‘You got that for a GIRL??’ (Re a lovely ring dh had just bought me.)

and, ‘You must cover her face with a blanket when taking her out after dark!’
(Apparently to keep evil spirits away!)

Later, ‘You MUST take the nappies off now!’ (When dd was just 12 months.)

Absolutely doesn't in a lot of cases!

My kids all have big gaps, my oldest is 19 my youngest 4 months. I always anticipate people assuming they have different dads (often people think my oldest is my youngest dad)

I didn't want to tell anyone I was pregnant with my 4th until after the 20 week scan as I was 42 and it was unplanned (and my 4th pregnancy). I expected family to say shit like "are you sure you want to go through with it? How will you cope? Etc"
I explicitly didn't want any stupid comments off my step dad who used to make jokes about smashing my husbands testicles between 2 bricks to give him a diy vasectomy. My mum ended up dying when I was 16 weeks so I never got to tell her.

This is absolutely shocking, I'm so sorry.

8 months after my twin sons died at birth I conceived again, it was very difficult and a close family member said to me "at least now you can stop talking about the others, it makes people awkward"

That one hurt. Made me realise how little she understood about the lifelong grief with the death of a child.

When I bought the pregnancy test and the lady behind the till said ‘oh is this going to be good news or bad news ‘

years ago u could take ur wee to the supermarket pharmacy and they would check it to see if u were pregnant. I did and it came back positive. I spend a horrible day ( I was 19 at the time ) getting doctors appointments and freaking the hell out. Turns out they were wrong. And when I went to complain they told me off for possibly being pregnant at 19.

When I was pregnant with my first, my mother kept telling me about people she knew who - wait for it - ‘planned’ to have postnatal depression!!! She was just making sure, in advance, that I wouldn’t ‘pull that trick’.

"Will you be trying again, you know, for a normal one"
I gave birth at 25 weeks, year in hospital and she has disabilities...... second child has disabilities too

First trip out with my first born, all proud with her on her oxygen and feed tube and a twat leaned over the pram and said "she would be better off dead" before walking away. I went home and cried and didn't take her out again for 2 months

I had an elective c-section because ds1 was transverse. It would have killed him if idc had a vaginal delivery.

"Well, you got the easy option then"
"Too posh to push"
"You could have had a natural birth anyway"

6 weeks of recuperating after major abdominal surgery was really not taking the easy option.

If you have one child people repeatedly ask if you are having another. If you have two they ask if you are finished or would like another. But if you have 3 they all say 'oh you are definitely done then!" It's as if having 4 or more is an unbelievable concept. Many of my friends who have 3 kids say the same, it's like we have finally reached the quota so no one will ever comment again.

That I should have another child incase my only dies.

The one comment I had a few times that really stuck with me even two years later I still find it hard :
’at least you’re getting to go home and have a good sleep’

Twins born at very early and very poorly, had to leave them in Nicu as no parent rooms available, was at home waking up to pump milk and cry. there was no ‘good sleep’ to be had.

i was out with my mum and breastfeeding my newborn under a cover. My mum seeing this for the first time told me to check the baby was breathing - I could feel the baby sucking fgs. She BF two babies and this baby was also my second! You think I would know what I was doing by now!

"You're definitely having a girl because they steal your beauty"

(I had a boy)

When my first child was born 10 weeks premature and had to stay in scbu, the people who said “that’s lovely, no night feeds”.

"Stop breastfeeding, it has no benefit anymore"
"Let him cry it out"
"Don't give him anything else if he refuses to eat something"

Heavily pregnant and went into work wearing a stripy tshirt which was pretty much the last item of clothing I owned that still fitted around me. A colleague asked how I was feeling and I said oh fine, just a bit enormous you know. She looked at my bump and said maybe the stripes don't help.

Relative told my mum it was antisocial to have three children... when she (my mum) had just had her third baby.

The biggest cunt move a person can make is when you are sleep deprived and struggling with a baby and someone throws in "you think this is hard wait till the teen years!" Laughs and walks off. Honestly I can't even write what I want to do to people who do this.

Loads of stupid things have been said to me.

Most recently last week at work someone i haven't seen for about a year came in and saw im heavily pregnant and proceeds to ask me if this baby is with the same dad as my other child. Yes they are but is it really any of your business?!

I hope you replied that he definitely wouldn’t be a good husband or father if he’s in the habit of touching people when they don’t want him to.

What a colossal prick.

I overheard two immaculate mum's of newborn's chatting in a cafe today.

Their babies slept in their prams throughout. They spent the whole time snarking about other mums they knew, criticising their parenting, saying that it was their fault their babies weren't sleepy potatoes that let them have a long relaxed lunch with a lovely styled blowdry.

They sounded like utter pricks.

Explaining my IVF with PGD to a friend, including the fact that the PGD was to make sure I wasn’t going to pass on my genetic neurological condition to my child. She immediately commented “oh just relax and it’ll happen naturally!” And went on to tell me about a family member who had multiple failed rounds of IVF and then got pregnant naturally when they stopped trying. Clearly hadn’t listened to a word is said.

Probably a common one, but the consultant who came in while I was in labour. I’d been in hospital for nearly 3 days at this point, with start-stop labour and then failure to progress. I remember being so so tired, with contraction after contraction with only a few seconds between, but I was stuck at 7cm. The gas and air did nothing for me and I really started to think the contractions were going to snap my spine in half (turned out she was back to back but no one told me that at the time). A consultant was brought in to approve induction. The only thing keeping me going at that point was getting a bit angry with the pain, which came out as a sort of growling noise. The consultant told me to be quiet and save my energy for pushing. That absolutely broke me. I felt so belittled and put in my place all the fight just left me. It took away the last bit of coping ability I had left. I ended up with forceps on the operating table halfway through being prepped for an emergency c section, haemorrhaged nearly 2litres of blood while listening to someone shouting “the transfusion won’t get here in time!”, followed by severe PND, mostly based around the feeling I’d failed.

Not helping on the PND front was my mum commenting “is that all you’ve got? You’ve been at that for ages!” When I was back in hospital with double mastitis that went septic, after I’d been trying to hand express for hours.

Or the midwife who came to my home, saw me breastfeeding in a way that was working for me, immediately turned to her student, gestured at me and said “now what can you see wrong with this picture?”. She changed my position around and then left. I tried to feed in the new position for 13 solid hours, with DD screaming every time I tried to stop. Then went to hospital with the aforementioned septic mastitis.

Finally, not to me, but the woman in the waiting room at the Peri-natal Mental Health centre saying to a shellshocked looking young woman with a tiny baby, “make the most of enjoying these newborn days!” …errr I suspect she may be here precisely because she’s NOT enjoying them…

DF when visiting days after giving birth to my first DC “oh you’ve still got a bit of a belly haven’t you”

when pregnant with DC1 a colleague asked if it was a “happy accident” because DP and I are not married - it wasn’t!

when I was struggling to come to terms with my unplanned third pregnancy (my first two were a handful!), MIL brazenly told me “you can’t get rid of the baby though, it would be wrong”

Also, you wouldn’t believe how many people asked “are you having any more” when DC3 was still a newborn!!

Amen.

Absolutely loathed the man who told 8 months pregnant me to “get plenty of sleep now as you won’t get any afterwards!” Particularly as he and his wife had 4 kids and he ought to bloody know no one is getting a good night’s sleep at that stage. But in any case it’s just so negative. Having a child is amazing and I’d been through quite a lot to have her, she’s my absolute best person.