I recently ran across a brief article with a quote from Helena Bonham Carter, talking about the insatiable need everyone has to participate in pregnancy:
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‘Carter, who’s eight months expecting with Tim Burton’s baby, told blackbookmag.com, “People - particularly men - saying with surprise, ‘You’re still drinking caffeine?’ as if I’m performing a criminal act on my unborn as I tuck into my treasured one-a-day cup of tea/coffee. Yeah. You try nine months of gestation and self-abnegation before you start censoring my diet. Your mother was probably on vodka, and do you have three heads?‒ – taken from The New York Post
I haven’t been pregnant for a long time, but I can relate. I listen to it all around me. I overhead someone tell a newly pregnant woman she shouldn’t curl.
90 year-old men and women curl with ill effect. How on earth curling could hurt a 12 week fetus is beyond me.
But we’ve all heard it, haven’t we? Don’t drink this, don’t eat that, don’t go there, don’t do this. I had someone look at me in horror when I spoke about how awesome our sex life was during pregnancy. I felt like asking if they really thought the baby got hit on the head each time. I didn’t dare talk about using sex to kick-start my labour.
How on earth did we ever get out of the trees? You’d think that with all the dangerous stuff we do, we’d be moorlocks living underground with 3 heads and flippers. And women, geez, we can’t possibly know our bodies well enough-we need to be told at every opportunity that what we’re doing is wrong and harmful.
What most people don’t understand, to my never ending annoyance, is that the tiny little baby tucked away deep inside someone’s uterus is much better protected that people are led to believe. You can continue running. You can continue exercising. You can still do everything you did before you were pregnant-in some cases, you may need to alter things a little bit. But aside from the don’t drink/smoke meth/eat lithium rules that we all know and obey, we’re fairly hardy, us women and our babies.
It just never ceases to amaze me that people take such liberties with the private lives of others….
So tell me ladies-what’s the strangest thing you ever heard that you couldn’t do when pregnant?
by Thordora
[tags]woman, women, pregnancy, health, concerns, society, intrusion, appropriateness, uterus, fetus[/tags]
Photo graciously provided by J. Star, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
2 responses so far ↓
nan // Nov 21, 2007 at 5:45 pm
I was so sick and exhausted with my third pregnancy, I had to have a big iced coffee every morning just to get going. And I OFTEN collapsed with a beer on an evening. I was consumed with guilt of course, especially since I was so ultra-careful with my first two! Well, luckily Max seems to be unscathed. It is more of a relief than I like to admit!
Some local gems:
Don’t drink coca-cola, or your baby will have a dark complexion.
Don’t raise your arms above your head, or the cord will get tangled and suffocate baby.
Never squat, or the baby will pop out. (oh, IF ONLY!!)
In my third pregnancy, (having proved myself super-fertile and able to produce boys) I was asked several different times to hammer a nail into fruit trees, to convince them to bear well.
After having my third boy, I was asked for my hand in marriage. However once I got skinny again I was less desirable! Good thing Sean doesn’t mind me skinny!
I was once wringing out nappies when a neighbour stopped me in horror. “no wonder your baby has colic! If you wring the diapers, the baby belly would wring up!!”
Boys must be breastfed for two years, girls for six months. (!!!)
I must have another baby. If it is a girl, she will be blessed because she has three brothers.
Eat slimy food like okras, and the baby will slip out easily.
When Sean and I got married, his myriad aunts on the Khan side were sure that I was a bad influence and it would come to no good. Once I had 3 boys in quick succession, I was obviously Blessed and Highly Favoured, and of course they knew it all along! Gee, aren’t I clever??
Ginger // Dec 23, 2007 at 10:05 pm
OMG! I don’t know how I missed this post (andt he comment from Nan but you both have me laughing and crying and shouting! I haven’t been pregnant for a long time, either. I can’t remember the hilarious, crazy or over-involved comments, but I do remember that about five of my neighbors all had babies around the same time as I did. When our kids were about a year old, we met at 5PM (the witching hour for some reason) and all shared stories of the day, de-stressed, and GASP! often shared a beer. And yes, we were nursing! I think someone in our group told us that’s how they did it in England, and look how well mannered everyone there is! LOL. It calmed us all down, and I think it calmed the babes, too.
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