30 Clever Women On Twitter Inspire Pregnant People Everywhere How To Handle Unsolicited Pregnancy Advice
It's amazing how entitled to the time and bodies of pregnant people that even complete strangers think they are.
Pregnancy is a distinct time in a person's life, whether the journey is deeply personal or not. For most of us, pregnancy is beautiful, even at its worst and lowest moments (you know, the vomiting, the sweating, the incontinence, GERD, and hemorrhoids are far from beautiful...)
Pregnancy is such a common experience that some people sort of lose their manners and common sense when it comes to other people's bodies. Family, friends, and complete strangers alike have this awful habit of inserting themselves into the lives, space, and bodies of pregnant people far more often than should be so easy for us to talk about.
Jaclene Paolucci, aka Twitter user Diamond_Jax, turned to Twitter to share an instance that left her a bit gobsmacked, but also with an opportunity to teach the Twitter universe how to handle such atrocious occasions of people not minding their own business. The responses, of course, included far too many instances where other pregnant people had experienced crossed boundaries.
However, as is frequent with the resilience and wit of women, the stories shared on Twitter in response to Jaclene were all clapback in nature and left us cheering for more! Some people really needed the lessons these individuals so generously provided.
In an interview with the BBC after going full-blown viral, Jaclene said:
"I've discovered that if you want unsolicited advice, then you should get pregnant. It feels like the moment you do get pregnant, you lose your body's autonomy. People start touching you, and everybody has an opinion on how you should act, what you should wear—everything. The only people who should be able to do that are you and your doctor."
Diamond_Jax1. What else can ya do?
petitegourmande2. Sometimes you gotta
MomLegally
3. Not that there's anything wrong with wet nursing, but why would your brain go straight to anything other than assuming it was the appropriate parent nursing their infant?
queenlsteiner
nursebuff
4. That'll learn her
protectSaka
5. Mind. Your. Business.
ilenecas
Prior to pregnancy, the uterus is quite small, around the size of the average orange, to be precise. By the time the third trimester rolls around, the uterus expands to around the size of a watermelon, and on average, it expands up to 500 times where it started during the full duration of pregnancy.
6. Just. Don't.
mycatisthebest1
7. Quit geekin'
Jell0wYell0w
8. Honestly, it's hard to imagine the intentions weren't snarky to begin with.
FierceOkatu
9. That's convenient!
ACarlReifsteck
On average, pregnancy lasts 270 days. Most people believe that a crisp 9 months is the standard time for pregnancy, but 10-11 months is not uncommon at all.
Most people don't know the history behind estimating due dates either, or how outdated the concept is to begin with! Have you ever heard of Franz Karl Naegele?
Naegele was an early 1800s German doctor who created the Naegele Method used to determine due dates to this very day, despite the fact that it's been over 200 years. Naegele concluded, based on his personal observations (not any methodical research), that pregnancy lasted 10 lunar months, or 40 weeks.
His calculation assumes that pregnancy lasts 280 days from the first date of the last menstrual period (LMP), or 266 days from ovulation, which he deemed always occurs on day 14 of a woman’s 28-day cycle. If this method was so precise, don't you think more than 3-5% of babies, ever, anywhere, all over the world, would be born on their due dates?
10. Get the kids involved in the joke, that's the way to do it.
JuicyCorriander
11. You might want to store this retort in your personal memory bank.
Athenae
12. Don't touch other people's kids, y'all. Just, don't.
CheesyBread9
giphy
13. This is it. This is the best. Oh lort.
dearydarling
14. COOKED
TjMansell
15. Price check on aisle 8, please?
BonnieBruce
16. Make. People. Feel. Awkward. They deserve it for being so nosy.
AlexPalombo
17. Sometimes it's appropriate to go Level 10 Karen
Hera_Caine
giphy
18. Healthiest is subjective. BEST is subjective. Leave people alone.
ilenecas
19. Enjoy your burgers, y'all.
lttlovelylauren
The body goes through an incredible amount of transformations during pregnancy. The body produces more blood, the heart grows, your sense of smell can change, and even your joints loosen!
Some people even develop gestational diabetes; it happens in 2-10% of pregnancies. Gestational diabetes is a type of diabetes that develops during pregnancy with no history of diabetes, and it usually completely resolves postpartum (though having gestational diabetes does increase your long-term risk of developing type 2 diabetes.)
20. Thanks, belly.
DeborrahS
21. That's as embarrassing as it needs to be.
DunphyMoira
22. Threat Level: Pregnant
Keljo1991
23. Nice
hot4mysoldier
tenor
24. "You can't sit with us."
IIEESEEII
25. Sometimes baristas are, quite frankly, the worst.
margempke
26. What a cute lil hernia.
FlamingTornado1
27. That's a solid plan.
jsdaviso
28. What else? A hippopotamus?
adaddinsane
29. Sadly, not everyone has a clapback. That's why it's all the more important for those who can bite back to do so.
gojirama
30. Here is another pro-tip for your memory bank!
mcrate_s
According to research, up to 80% of pregnant people experience some degree of memory impairment. So, if you've ever heard the term "pregnancy brain," you now know it's real.
If anything is memorable and clear, though, it's that seeing a pregnant person in public or private does not entitle you to absolutely anything. That said, if you've ever experienced unsolicited parenting or pregnancy advice, please feel free to mock the perpetrators in the comment section now.
