Comments on: Are Pregnant Women Indeed Smug?

By: Pencils

Pencils — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:10:21 +0000

I have to agree with La Petite Acadienne, in that my best friend had a baby born with multiple birth defects, who died before his third birthday. When I was pregnant last year, I didn’t bother hoping for one sex or the other, I just wanted a healthy baby. Alex was a sweet, wonderful baby and little boy, but sometimes he suffered and it broke all our hearts.

We didn’t tell people our name choice because I know people who announced theirs and had their choice ridiculed and ruined for them. Yes, I know some opinionated people. Sigh. I loved our choice (Aurora Jane) and we didn’t want to have to find another.

By: La Petite Acadienne

La Petite Acadienne — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:51:23 +0000

(re-posted from other thread)
I also used to roll my eyes at the “as long as it’s healthy” cliche from expectant parents, but shortly after I became pregnant, a friend of mine lost his 3-year old daughter to cancer. You always assume that your kid will be perfectly healthy, but then it hits you like a ton of bricks that some people DO have kids who have horrible conditions, some of them fatal, and there is absolutely nothing that makes any of us exempt from that. So that’s when you start saying “as long as it’s healthy”, and you really, genuinely do mean it, because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

As far as the name thing goes, I can sympathize. We were thinking of Jake for a boy, and I told a few friends, one of whom said that her parents’ dog was named Jake, and to her, Jake is a dog’s name, not a person’s name. Maybe it’s the hormonal hypersensitivity, but it really did spoil the name for me a bit. We’re still considering “Jake”, but it’s hard to get that comment out of my head.

But yeah, some women are definitely smug, when they start acting as though having a baby overshadows any other life event or accomplishment. I’m very, very happy and excited that I’m having a baby, but let’s be realistic here: I’m not curing cancer, climbing a mountain, or becoming a head of state.

I do smile when I feel the kicking, though. It’s such a goofy, unusual situation, and so very novel to me, and it’s just really damn neat to feel that early connection with this tiny little person.

By: raincoaster

raincoaster — Mon, 04 May 2009 05:34:21 +0000

That’s no way to talk about our friend Glinda! (I kid, I kid!)

By: dgm

dgm — Sun, 03 May 2009 00:28:28 +0000

Certainly we can’t say they are all smug, but I love how this song captures the essence of the pregnant women who are smug. And, although I wouldn’t say I was smug (but maybe I was! Maybe that’s what other people thought!), we only told a few people the name we had picked out for our second kid because frankly, telling strangers only invites them to comment and I had no interest in hearing their opinions. So it’s not that I cared if they didn’t like it, it’s that I cared not to hear about it.

I have to say, since a certain A-list blogger has been pregnant, I find myself unable to read her blog without cringing these days.

By: Eowyn

Eowyn — Sat, 02 May 2009 05:10:49 +0000

Well, I am eight months pregnant and OH SO NOT SMUG. My ribs are being pushed in the opposite direction that they were made to curve, the bottom bone of my pelvis is popping apart in 5 different places (literally), and my femurs keep falling out of joint (apparently my body is producing an inordinate amount of the hormone relaxin). Oh, and my mother, who was going to come and help me out in a couple of days, has just been exposed to swine flu. As has my father, sister, niece, and brother-in-law, so the only help for me is for my husband to take the day off work, which he will do, because he is wonderful, but it also adds guilt on to the various poppings and snappings of my body.

OH SO NOT SMUG.

Sorry, just needed the vent.