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Pregnancy

29th Dec 2018

Woman ruins daughter’s pregnancy announcement by body shaming her

Keeley Ryan

A mum-to-be has taken to the internet to vent about what had happened after she told her own mum she was going to be a grandmother again.

 

She began the Reddit post by explaining that she was “bummed” by her mum’s reaction, saying that she made the announcement about herself “and my body.”

She said she wanted to  wait until the holidays to tell her parents about her pregnancy – which is her second. She decided to keep it low key, but after her announcement her mum exclaimed: “I knew it!”

Which is an innocent enough reaction in itself – but, actually, it gets so much worse.

The soon-to-be mum-of-two continued:

“Y’all, I gave her so many outs. I was like, ‘Oh, because I took a two-hour nap today?’ No. ‘Because I haven’t touched any booze this whole evening?’ No, not that. ‘Because I barely ate any food?’ Nope. She had so many choices.

“Instead, she said, ‘I was looking at your body at Thanksgiving and saw how it had changed!’ Except: I am 8 weeks along. I didn’t take my pregnancy test until the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so there’s no way I was showing three days before that.

“In fact, I’ve been working out a bunch lately and am in comparatively great shape.

“So: eff you, mom. I was feeling great about my body and my pregnancy, and now I just feel like a body you can critique. I spent the rest of the evening crying quietly, because you can’t tell her she’s hurt your feelings because then SHE gets offended.”

Many of the other Redactors were unfortunately able to relate to how the original poster felt.

One person said:

“Oh I’m so sorry she did that to you. Please don’t let it change how you feel about yourself. People are so crazy and weird about pregnant bodies – I have a definite bump at 17 weeks and gained a bit too much in the first tri due to carbs easing nausea, and people are both like ‘oh ya that’s a bump!’

“And ‘you can’t even tell!’ ’with the second I’m like THANKS so you think I walk around with a pot belly always… it sucks but they are just saying something to say something I think.”

Another person shared:

“My husband’s stepmother did a really similar thing to me when we announced our first pregnancy. I was 10 weeks and when we told them she said, “I noticed you’d put weight on and I didn’t think that was the plan so close to the wedding!” (We were getting married about 6 weeks from then).

“I was so upset by her comment and I went and cried in the bathroom. I weighed myself the next day and I’d gained 2lbs.

“Looking back on photos from that time, I was really slim and hadn’t noticeably gained weight at all. She’s just one of those people who has to pretend they know everything before they get told. Your mum might be the same.”

A different mum commented:

“Next time just call her out. We had one person (SIL) say, ‘I knew it!’ So my husband and I just were like “No, you didn’t”. I’m lucky that in the moment, my husband and I were able to call BS on it, and it’s my new favorite response to people.”