To roll my eyes at pregnancy excuse

[Fuzzyduck31]

It must be my age but recently I’ve had more friends and acquaintances being pregnant and I am surprised (bemused?) by the ideas some people have.
I get that morning sickness/ nausea is bad but I have a friend who is acting completely incapacitated by it? It’s not HG just the normal nausea sicky feeling in first trimester.
I have another friend who can not organise a baby shower for her sister because she is also pregnant?!
Another friend has just had a baby and has called her mum to look after the baby while she sleeps all day?
AIBU as I went through this twice not looking for the type of complete support that these other women feel entitled to?
I am happy for them all and feel like a bad person thinking this but just wondered if anyone else has noticed a trend towards this complete incapacitation as a pregnant/ new mum?

You only commuted with swollen ankles? You had it lucky! I was 48 weeks pregnant, vomiting like Linda Blair 24/7, I was a chimney sweep working 26 hours a day and I still had a home cooked rabbit pie on the table and a bow in my hair for my hard working husband at the end of the day. Honestly, precious and lazy women like you make the rest of us look bad. Grow some balls next time. I wish I only had swollen ankles!

But then I was a young spritely thing of 16 and you were probably an old hag so that would explain it [wink{

It's because not everyone thinks it's a moral virtue to make your life ten times harder than it needs to be. Why is getting yourself into a state where you fall asleep at work so admirable? Who benefits?

Same! My pregnancy was horrific. I had PGP so bad I ended up on crutches and really struggled in a 3 storey house where the kitchen is in the cellar. I could barely walk the length of the living room without feeling like my hip was going to pop out and getting serious shooting pain. I also had HG and constant migraines. When baby was born (caesarean section) people couldn't believe how quickly I was darting about. The pain of the PGP was ten times worse than the c-section! I have found my newborn an absolute breeze in comparison, even with sleep deprivation. But my god, pregnancy was gruelling! I would never judge anyone's pregnancy experience.

Sadly women think they will benefit because they think people will notice and commend them on their strength and fortitude. But it never happens. Ever. Actually the opposite happens. They just have people (mainly partners) thinking ‘great, I can take the piss as she’s still doing everything even when she’s knackered’ and the more she ‘gets on with it’ the more she widens the circles of how much piss-taking can occur. Before you know it, she’s 3 kids deep bearing the full meant load, still doing the school run when extremely ill, still doing housework after an operation and is tricked into thinking Nigel is a catch because he makes her a cup of tea on the morning.

Theres actually a word for this mis-belief of power and I can’t think what it is.

My daughter is 6 months old and still not sleeping brilliantly so currently in the thick of it. We're all different and our tolerance for discomfort and lack of sleep etc. is different too. Personally I feel like I missed out on the first few weeks of my daughter's life because I was so exhausted and my poor Mum lives so far away, she couldn't really help. She visited when Alice was 4 weeks old and during that week I was rested and cared for and I actually got to enjoy being a mum because I wasn't delirious, desperate for sleep and running on fumes.
Whether it is reasonable or not, if my daughter ever has children I will do my absolute best to be on hand as much as she needs or wants me to be so that she can enjoy her journey into motherhood and be well in herself too.

Definitely being unreasonable. You maybe had a very easy pregnancy. Lucky you! As someone who is currently pregnant, I would say I wasn’t expecting to find it as hard as it has been with all the various symptoms. You’ve either forgotten or you were very lucky!

Gosh shouldn’t women be given a break when pregnant? What’s wrong with that? They grow a whole human, it’s beyond hard. We should be going above and beyond to SUPPORT pregnant women and mothers

As people used to say, you aren’t ill, you’re just pregnant.

I'd rather be ill. I've never felt as shit in my life as I have in pregnancy, at least if you're ill (unless seriously) you might feel better in a few days, in pregnancy it feels endless. And plenty of women are seriously ill with HG during pregnancy so that saying is a load of misogynistic BS!

This

Totally noticed it

also known here on MN as “pfb”

nauseating.

You sound mean and bitter. Can you not imagine that some people may be worse than others?
I was absolutely floored in my second pregnancy. I was sick 24/7 and so incredibly fatigued, honestly it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t have any help but if I there had been someone willing to look after my eldest or help me out I would have been extremely grateful.

Yabu I was absolutely floored by nausea and fatigue during my pregnancy, I’ve never felt so bad but I could keep food down so wasn’t as serious as to be hospitalised. Everyone is different

You have no respect that to judge other people's lives. You don't know the half of what their real situation is. Stay in your lane

I think the volume of replies to this indicate that yes you are being unreasonable.
As many have now said, just because you had a difficult time and sailed through it doesn't mean that other women are less than you. I disagree that people have gone too far and now make excuses during pregnancy, I think the attitude of you're not ill you're pregnant, often goes too far. It fosters an attitude of women just having to put up with everything and not complain at all during pregnancy, when as we are all aware there can be many reasons to complain during pregnancy!
I still vividly remember waiting for the glow and enjoyment that everyone spoke about as I spent most of my pregnancy feeling as though I was constantly living on a boat and experiencing sea sickness. I remember being exhausted but pushing through and still working extremely late shifts and being back in early the next day because I didn't want to be "that" pregnant woman who asked her employer to change her shifts. I remember being in agony with back and pelvic pain late in pregnancy walking to and from appointments in work because I didn't want to be the pregnant person who raised an issue with it and the discomfort it was causing. I remember eyebrows being raised because I asked for a chair that moved more easily as part of my role involved constantly having to move in and out of a chair and it was causing me pain towards the end having to move this heavy chair back and forth all the time and bend up and down. I was then admitted to hospital with pre-eclampsia. I'd had some symptoms which I should have recognised but again didn't want to complain about it.
So I disagree completely with your post. I think we put far too much pressure on women to just suck it up and get on with it. Good on the women you've mentioned for looking after themselves, speaking up for themselves and getting support.

This, I write this at 3am, having not had a full night's sleep for 11m, I've considered paying someone to let me sleep in the day. Good luck to the mums who's mum sits for her.

Three times a day, I wish! That would be normal pregnancy sickness I. Y opinion. Twice HG survivor here, I vomited upwards of 10x a day with both my children from 8 and 6 weeks respectively until birth. And that was with meds.
many people with HG come out with OTSD afterwards because it is so harrowing.

I also had high blood pressure both times, SPD and Pgp resulting in crutches both times and with my second gestational diabetes.
if any pregnant woman wants to rest, I will bring them the blood pillow and a magazine myself. The mentality of get on with it is just nasty. You’ve no idea how other people’s pregnancies are going or the myriad of debilitating scenarios they could be facing.

Why shouldn't you be doing it ?

For one why should you be doing it more than anyone else?

Most women have a perfectly capable partner who don’t have morning sickness, doesn’t have exhaustion, doesn’t have round ligament pain, isn’t uncomfortable with heartburn and tasks aren’t harder than normal for them as they aren’t lugging around a bump so if they don’t want to pick up some extra slack for their pregnant partner they are just a bit of a dick really.

If pregnancy is so hard, why do you choose to do it? I presume for most it's a choice. It's irritating listening to people complaining about situations of their own making. You do realise having babies isn't mandatory.

Plenty of women have easy pregnancies, and then there are women who have awful ones.
The women who end up in hospital or on crutches or with a very early delivery due to something going wrong obviously didn’t have a direct choice.

If you choose to cross the road and then get hit by a car does that mean you can’t complain about it 5 surgeries later?

YABU. I had horrific sickness and nausea for my full pregnancy. Even putting a toothbrush near my mouth to clean my teeth made me vomit! I had a manager that sounded exactly like you and I could hear her tutting and feel her eye roll on the other end of the phone. It was humiliating to be made to feel like I should just 'be getting on with it'.

My last trimester was bang in the summer, I was huge and it was scorching hot, coupled with feeling like crap, barely able to waddle and constant nausea, it was sheer hell. You're very unreasonable to think that it everything is an excuse or a trend.

Logic fail.

For one, you don't know how it'll affect you personally until you've done it. Some women do breeze through, and it's not uncommon to find it generally fine. For another, even when you've done it before, you don't know how this pregnancy is going to go, and plenty of women have one that's much worse than the other/s. We've heard from both groups of women in this thread.

Then also, even if one expects pregnancy to be unpleasant and debilitating, it doesn't mean the pros don't outweigh the cons. Especially for those of us who do actually have access to help and a support system and haven't been daft enough to valorise battling on regardless so as not to inconvenience anyone.

Lastly, your irritation is a you problem. Other people being annoyed when pregnant women complain is simply beneath my notice.

This is such an odd way of thinking to me. Marathons are optional but if my partner did one I’d still run him a bath afterwards and do the cooking. Laser eye surgery is optional but I’d still expect my partner to pick me up afterwards and care for me. Babies are optional (mostly) on an individual level but not on a population level. It’s nine months: short in the scheme of things to give someone extra help and leeway, long when you’re in the thick of it.

There’s also no way of knowing whether you’ll sail through an easy pregnancy, glowing and exercising right to the end, or be hospitalised. You don’t get a choice.