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?

Walk a mile in their shoes before you roll your eyes at them.

My mum frequently looked after mine while I had a nap. I was 21. He’s 48 now so “handing over the reins” is clearly neither recent nor age related.

I know several women who were fit and well before pregnancy who got severe SPD in pregnancy and could barely move.

Just thought I'd get that one in before anyone trots out the usual "Pregnancy is not a disability" line.

Had to raise a safeguarding concern at school when we found out a 12 year old was putting her 4 siblings to bed and making them 'dinner' because her pregnant mum was, wait for it....tired. No medical issue, just 'tired'. We raised a second one when baby was put to share a room with the 12 year old and the poor kid was changing nappies in the night 'so that mum could sleep' and arriving at school exhausted.
Stop having babies if you can't cope. She soon sorted herself out.

I love a good false equivalence on a Tuesday afternoon.

So you think other women should refuse help because your husband is a nobhead? Why exactly?

Sounds like you’ve always had easy pregnancies. Well done.

I don't think your pregnancy experience and how you managed it bears any relevance to someone else's.

Which other of your standards do you expect every other woman to meet, exactly?

In shocking news, people react differently to things. Join us next week as OP discovers that water is wet.

Tbh I had only a bit of G&A with my first birth and nothing at all with my second. Should I assume that

a) I got lucky with the amount of pain and with the fact that I do handle pain well, and conclude that it's a good thing that women have access to pain relief to make birth more manageable

or B) all women who have pain relief are pansies, my experience was universal and thus I am a superior mother and human being all round

?

I think some people have a hard time and others are just princesses. My boss when I returned from maternity leave was a princess. In our weekly team meeting there would be a little interlude before we began where she’d try a few chairs and seating positions to find which best suited ‘bump’. I recall her telling us ‘bump’ didn’t like the sun in her eyes. And the venue for the Christmas do that year was dictated by distance from her home as ‘bump’ couldn’t travel far. She lived about eight miles from the offices and I was 30 miles away and had a baby and a toddler son who DH bundled in the car when he came to pick me up.

Didn’t keep in touch when I left.

What a hideous post!

I am genuinely sorry that you had so little support during your pregnancies and after birth. You need to acknowledge that severe morning sickness, crushing pelvic pain and a difficult birth are not 'excuses' but very valid reasons as to why you should have been doing less. You put your physical and mental health at risk and whilst I appreciate that you felt you had no choice, please don't do a disservice to women by implying that anyone doing less than you is a 'precious rose'. I understand if you feel bitter about what you went through but direct that anger towards whatever reasons there were that meant you had no real support as opposed to other women who you feel are getting an easier ride than you.

Pregnancy can be as different for women as a cold versus the flu. The symptoms at a high level may sound similar but the lived experience can be completely different. There is feeling a bit nauseous and there is nausea that requires you to be on some pretty hardcore medicine and frequent IV drips just to survive. There are pain and aches and there is hip pain so crippling that you need to use a wheelchair. Unless you are in a pregnant woman's body then you really can't judge.

I had forceps with my first and an emergency section with my second. You must now go and get major abdominal surgery, even though you don't need it, because I had to have it so I don't see why you should be let off.

😂😂😂😂😂

Yabu

I agree with you, it’s very common for women to have ‘complicated’ pregnancies even if they don’t. Problem is there is total access (online) to various conditions & problems that pregnancy can bring but generally they are uncommon but nearly every other woman seems to suffer from these ailments nowadays since google

I would also say the complete opposite is true in my experience.

I'm five years older than when most of my mum friends had their firsts. They had a huge lifestyle shock from twenty-something partying to being mums. Whereas frankly, I'm already living a "mum life" minus the baby. My older mum friends say the baby slots right into a domestic routine, the ones who started younger were giving things up.

But then my mum is part of an NHS patient feedback group, and she says the difference in how she's treated - as a doddery old woman - is astounding to how they react when they realise that SHE is there to review THEM.

So I wouldn't set much stock in NHS research by default. Many of them have very fixed preconceptions of how patients are. (my own work has included dealing with how vulnerable people access and present for various services and have found similar issues)

I agree

As everyone knows, pregnancy-related health issues were invented in 2010.

First pregnancy I felt the same as you. Yeh I felt tired and groggy but it’s not that bad. Second pregnancy, I took back every single thought I ever had like that. I didn’t have hg but I felt rotten every day all day, found it hard to get out of bed and any non essential socialising or leaving the house was cancelled. The saying every pregnancy is different is really true.

Well done you. I'm glad you managed well in pregnancy. But leave the others alone, you don't know how bad they're feeling.

I don't think the assumption that women get more help now is necessarily correct.

My MIL spent up to a week in hospital after her births so she could recover and establish feeding. The babies were kept in the nursery over night so the mums could sleep.

Her own mother gave birth at home, but was expected to stay in bed with the baby for a week while female relatives looked after things.

I was home in less than 24 hours after giving birth and didn't get any proper sleep for months.

My mother says 5 to 7 days in hospital after even a straightforward birth was the norm in the 80s.

That would be a huge societal shift in four years op.

Do you think you are intolerant of Mums who do share their pregnancy difficulties because you didn't share yours?

I personally can't relate to parents who worry about their dc being average academically. I just get on with caring for my own kids who are significantly disabled.

We never know what kind of trauma people have their lives and it is not for us to judge.

A little compassion goes a long way.

No, my debilitating, disabling pain was definitely my pelvic joints and not google. Google helped me realise I should get signed off and not just struggle through temporary paralysis if I sat down for longer than 5 minutes. Thanks, Google!