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?

Yeah, YBU.

I had a lovely first pregnancy, bar the anxiety, but this one has been horrific so far and I am fully taking advantage of being allowed some slack at work, and at home, because I feel just awful. I've had ongoing nausea (no sickness thankfully but I can barely eat because I feel so sick), I've lost over a stone in weight, I have a 2 year old and looking after her and being pregnant does me in, I fall asleep at the drop of the hat, whether I want to or not, and I've had such horrendous bleeding (now anaemic because of it) that on two occasions the hospital told me to 'prepare for the worst outcome'. I'm exhausted, anxious, bloated, nauseous and if I want to take it easy, bugger anyone else and their opinions.

Stop being a miserable chuff.

Parroting most other posters but YABVU. Tell me you've never had a complicated pregnancy without actually saying it. Mothers with incompetent cervixes on bed rest, clots, HG, the list goes on. Personally I used the pregnancy excuse many a time, especially to do less hours at work as I had a threatened miscarriage early on and a pulmonary embolism later on and I seriously hope no one rolled their eyes at me as I was on the verge of a breakdown with anxiety all day every day.

Yes, well, nor is ignorant sneering at women for having pregnancy-related health issues, but here you are. Whatever you get out of doing that won't be as rewarding as having a wanted child, so maybe it's just a case of different strokes.

Congratulations, you've won at pregnancy. Well done.

Pregnancy is dire. For me, genuinely horrific. But I love my son and aleady love his baby brother. Despite being hospitalised at various points for both kiddos. I also work full time. Which is extra exhaustion on top (fortunately with understanding employers). I am lucky to have an amazing husband and wider support network of friends and family. They help me when I struggle. I help them when they struggle. I don't think that's handing over the reins - I think it is common sense and reflective of healthy relationships.

I'm not sure why everything needs to be made into a suffering Olympics at times. OP YABU.

My daughter had extreme nausea throughout her third pregnancy. It wiped her out as she couldn't face many foods. Apparently it wasn't HG because she wasn't actually sick.

However her friends who've recently had babies have all worked throughout their pregnancies and age thrown themselves into a social life.

Because the OH can. Yes, some men can really do the ironing. He won’t leave you or have an affair I promise. I’m busy making a human. Also, I don’t want to. Good enough reason?

I was also like an elephant with both my pregnancies and anything required reaching out with my arms last six months gestation was nigh on impossible 😂

Did anyone else have nausea but not morning sickness? I remember dry heaving but not being able to be sick, like a constant car sickness. Only in early pregnancy though. Being a fatty bum bum in the third trimester was a breeze.

Because no one is psychic and can see the kind of pregnancy they will have?

It's not always home that's the problem, though. It's often the workplace. In my case, I was pretty close to making partner in the US equivalent of a city law firm and felt (probably rightly) that to show any weakness related to pregnancy was going to screw my trajectory. I vomited numerous times a day and once literally spent a weekend hospitalised on a drip with HG and then went home, showered, and went to the office Monday morning. Looking back, I can't understand why I allowed myself to drink that particular kool aid.

I'm pleased that things are somewhat improved in that respect, and my experience was actually really valuable in my approach to other women coming up and wanting to have families (and men - always encourage men to take as much parental leave as possible), but there's still very obviously vast amounts of room for improvement.

And the very last thing we need is women holding other women to ridiculous standards. I did it so you should too should be banned from ever being uttered.

I was nauseous all the time, but never actually sick.

There are definitely professional certain circles that want women who work for them to be very un-women annd hide anny ‘women problems’ and the legal field is absolutely one of them!

I didn't want to shame you, @WeetabixTowels, but I note you only made the rabbit pie, so can I assume you didn't shoot and dress the rabbit yourself? Lazy, lazy, lazy.
😂

🤣🤣🤣

Pregnancy affects people in different ways and to different levels, so it's really not possible to judge if someone is making a bigger fuss than they should. Morning sickness can be a mild inconvenience to some, whereas almost unbearably extreme for others. Back pain can be a niggle for some, whereas it renders others almost immobile! Hormone changes can affect some more than others, especially if there is history of mental health issues already. Some women may also have health issues/worries about the baby which they don't want to share with everyone, but which affect their day to day well-being. I'd recommend that all pregnant ladies, and their partners if possible, get as much rest and time to be kind to themselves prior to the birth because the first few months can be ridiculously tiring and stressful (despite also being a joyful time).

After reading this thread it's obvious that pregnancy can be risky. So saying that you 'don't know how hard it will be' isn't logical. Every intelligent woman should know that pregnancy isn't always easy - I mean there are hundreds of threads about it. I am not denying that it isn't hard! If you don't want a tough time, don't get pregnant. Because you may or may not have an easy pregnancy. Your choice I guess.

This rests on the assumption that the negatives to the pregnant woman outweigh the positives. If they don't, the argument becomes absurd.

You're scrabbling around to come up with reasons not to get pregnant because women complaining about pregnancy irritates you. As I said previously though, that's your problem. It would be totally illogical to avoid pregnancy, or even to avoid complaining about it, because of the views of someone you don't care about.

I wish I'd taken it easier when pregnant, and asked for more help - you never know, it might have meant I didn't develop pre-eclampsia.

But there was the whole 'you're pregnant, not ill' and 'you wanted this', and my GP scaring me off medication for the sickness by implying it would harm the baby and telling me to try harder to drink, and the general feeling of you just have to get on with things.

I wish I'd taken it easier when pregnant, and asked for more help - you never know, it might have meant I didn't develop pre-eclampsia

If it’s any comfort it probably wouldn’t. I developed it while on total bed rest. And my baby was stillborn anyway.

I feel like there was a big shift between when I had my first (16 years ago) and my youngest (coming up 1) where the narrative changed from ‘you’re pregnant, not illI’ and you were supposed to just get on with it, to acknowledging that pregnancy can be really hard and allowing yourself some kindness.
I had HG with all 6 of mine and I’ve even noticed a difference in how health professionals have treated me. Hospitalised with my youngest and they seemed much keener to try and get me feeling better as opposed to rehydrating me and turfing me out.
Unfortunately I feel as though I very much internalised the ‘suck it up and don’t complain’ mindset over the years and really wish I could go back and allow others to help or to have the guts to say actually no, I’m not well enough to do x, y, z!

If you had a staff member who broke his leg while skiing and needed some adjustments made temporarily, would you criticise, sneer and resent accommodating him? He chose to go skiing and take the risk. Or the woman who chose to go to a hippy dippy outdoors wedding and got food poisoning? We know there's a risk when you eat food. Or the gym bro who dropped a weight on his foot? He chose to go to the gym, etc etc.

People had no idea about how much my hidden disability affected me. I had to ignore silly comments from colleagues who couldn't understand that not everyone is super healthy and full of energy. I luckily only had to take minimal time off during the pregnancy.

Many women can't take their usual medication while pregnant and it's quite common to be diagnosed with chronic illness while pregnant.

Yes, those situations would also annoy me, especially when it falls to me to cover their bloody workload.

Talk to your manager. An organisation should not be run to the bare bones so that it can't function when someone is off sick. And it certainly has no excuse when it's had at least 15 weeks to prepare for a woman going on mat leave. That's a failure of management, like almost everything in modern workplaces.

Or are you the manager?

I was working very physically and mentally demanding 12 hour shifts as a nurse during my first pregnancy. The day after I took the pregnancy test I bled, and that carried on until I was 20 weeks pregnant. Not to mention I had an abusive (now ex partner) who made life a misery. From the outside looking in no one really inderstood why I struggled with work or why my mental health suffered. I was made to feel like I should just get on with it, most likely from women such as yourself. My point being is no one knows what truly goes on behind closed doors, so best to keep our judgements to ourselves.

Yes YABU. I was going through this a few weeks ago and I went jnto work many times and pretended to be doing something when really I had zero energy and needed to rest. I have older kids too so my goodness I was exhausted. Everyone is so different. I've had pregnant friends who had to go on bed rest due to extreme exhaustion. I've also had friends who didn't know they were pregnant because of how ordinary they felt. We should all just be kinder and more considerate to one another. Yes some take it to the extreme but some are really very sick with it. You really are in no position to judge who is who. Best to keep your nose out and wish everyone well because you just don't know