Pregnancy Friends
February 6, 2009 by babyunivers
Filed under Baby Articles
It is well documented that pregnant women – well, all women really – need a support network around them, for the benefit of the mental and emotional health. This may be family, neighbours, friends, work colleagues and a plethora of other social connections. Like, your Friday night drinking partner, for example.
During pregnancy, whilst all these support networks are lovely to have for the purpose of looking after other children, tying your shoelaces or scrubbing the floor of your shower, there is nothing so beneficial as the Pregnancy Friend.
This is very distinct from the Pregnant Friend, defined as a friend/colleague/acquaintance/kinder mum who happens to be in the same up-duff-like state that you are currently in.
No, the Pregnancy Friend is the true friend (or friends) you have when you are pregnant.
There are a number of benefits to the Pregnancy Friend. For example, they:
? won’t pass comment – or judgement – when you consume a glass of wine, cup of coffee, tub of honeycomb ice-cream or family sized block of chocolate.
? will probably not only join you in partaking of the abovementioned offending items, but have supplied you them in the first place;
? will come to your immediate defence should any third party make any comment about what you are consuming, your rapidly expanding girth or the fact that you have already found out the sex of your baby;
? will know that not only won’t you be offended by their purchase of a super-sized box of 486,000 super-sized sanitary pads for your baby shower, but will, in fact, be greatly appreciative of such a gift;
? not only take a ranty, ravey, hormonal phone call at all hours, but actually expect them;
? will go to great lengths to do all the things that really annoy you about other people when you’re pregnant, but take absolutely no offence to the “F$%@ off†retort you come back with. In fact, you can use this last one a great deal with your Pregnancy Friends, and at no time will offence be taken. They will, in all reality, just laugh at you. It’s a great relief.
There are a number of things you need to be aware of, however, when with your Pregnancy Friends. These are:
? Never, ever tell them what comments from other people bother you when you’re pregnant. They will go to extremes to make these very same comments at every opportunity (and non-opportunity), causing you tell inform them, very politely, to “F$%@ offâ€;
? They will never make the comment “My god, you’re HUGE!†but will utilise your expanding belly to shelter their own offspring in inclement weather;
? They will happily supply you with excessive amounts of decadent chocolate ice-cream, complete with chocolate chunks (not chocolate chips, mind, but chocolate chunks), possibly to ensure belly large enough to shelter their offspring, and their own new shoes in times of need;
? They will confirm you look perfectly ok in comfortable tracksuit pants, inadvertently leading you to believe that its ok to actually wear them out in public, not just around the house during the day.
While they may grope your belly at every opportunity – because they know you hate it, and because they can – they will also physically prevent anyone else from doing so. The Belly is their domain! You know you’re not going to be lumped with stupid comments, stupid unwearable gifts or another million stupid teddy bears with your Pregnancy Friends.
Best of all, it doesn’t matter how many times you tell them where to go – they never do!
Written by Mad Cow (aka Amanda Cox), wife, mother of three boys, WAHM and founder of fluff-free reality parenting website www.realmums.com.au
© Amanda Cox (Real Mums Pty Ltd). You are free to use this article on your website or other online or offline (print) material, in emails and e-newsletters or e-zines on the condition that it is printed in full, as above, includes the resource/bio information and a link to www.realmums.com.au and/or the original article itself. No part of this article may be reproduced in part only or without reference to the author and link to the site/original article.
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