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 can bring out the best and worst in people, especially when strangers decide they suddenly have opinions about someone else’s body. In this story, Jaclene Paolucci, known on Twitter as Diamond_Jax, shared a moment that left her stunned and sparked a wave of responses from other pregnant people who had dealt with the same kind of boundary-crossing behavior.
What followed was a stream of sharp, funny clapbacks from women who were clearly done being polite about unsolicited pregnancy advice. Their replies turned awkward encounters into viral lessons in how to shut nosy people down fast.
The responses are blunt, funny, and very relatable, and the whole thread makes one thing obvious: some people really need to mind their own business.
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
That kind of comment says more about the person saying it than the pregnant person hearing it.
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
That one landed exactly where it needed to.
It’s giving “AITA” energy like the person who announced her pregnancy at a friend’s baby shower and the celebratory moment turned messy.
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
That’s the kind of comeback that ends the conversation on the spot.
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
So, if you've ever heard the term "pregnancy brain," you now know it's real. That said, if you've ever experienced unsolicited parenting or pregnancy advice, please feel free to mock the perpetrators in the comment section now.
After the backlash Jaclene described, see what happened when someone debated announcing pregnancy at a best friend’s engagement party after a heated argument, would she be the antagonist.
