Drinking While Pregnant and Other Things Worth Judging

While I think we should do less judging of pregnant women in general. Feel free to judge this woman. She totally deserves it.

Becky and I toasted to being 33 weeks pregnant tonight. It turns out it feels a little weird to clink a couple of glasses filled with wine together to celebrate a growing fetus. I guess this is a smaller version of how Becky feels anytime she’s got a glass of wine in her hand these days. It’s not like she drinks all the time. In fact, I bet you could count on two hands the number of glasses of wine she’s even had a swig from in the last nine months, but it still effects her a lot. She won’t order wine at a restaurant, doesn’t feel comfortable at bars and hates going into the liquor store. While her apprehension says something about the problem that there are enough women boozing during pregnancy that Becky fears she will be mistaken for one, I think it brings up a bigger point.

Pregnant women are always being judged by other people.

It’s crazy, really, how many times I see Becky get judged every day. Everybody has a opinion about how she looks (you look ready to pop, you look miserable, you look like you might be having twins), about what she should be eating (try this, try that, don’t eat that) and about how she should be preparing for the child (read this book, get this type of car seat, take this piece of advice). If that wasn’t enough, everyone from best friends to strangers touches her belly without warning or permission.

How can we put an end to this judging? How can make people realize that just because pregnant women are sharing their bodies with another human, doesn’t mean they have to share them with everybody else. If anybody has an idea on how to solve this, I’d love to hear it. And if anybody comes up with a solution that actually does some good, I’ll toast to that.