Crazy Things People Say to Pregnant Women

I have heard from pregnant women before, 'You won't believe what people say to you or how complete strangers will come up to you in the supermarket and touch your belly without asking.'


I of course, decided that when I got pregnant, I would speak up to these people and politely say, 'Please don't put your hand on me without asking.' I mean, why is it okay to put your hand on a strangers belly? What if I were just fat? Would they put their hand on my stomach then? Do strangers approach me and put their hand on my butt? No.


To date, I have not had any strangers put their hand on my belly. Perhaps that is because I am not clearly showing. But I do have one coworker who feels he is able to touch my belly any time he wants to. I have aggressively and angrily pushed/thrown his arm off of me after he did this. It was not as polite as I would have imagined by asking nicely 'Please do not put your hand on me without asking.' But I couldn't help myself. I felt so uncomfortable. As I am not even out of my first trimester, my uterus is only the size of a grapefruit. And to be nice, my stomach is not that small. I had a little gut to begin with, plus the grapfruit, plus some carbs to curb my nauseau and there is my current bump. Although it is extremely exciting that I am pregnant, I'd say my bump is only 20% baby, and that is under my skin, flesh and fat. So when someone touches my belly at this point, they are simply touching my fat. Again I ask, Would they put their hand on my stomach if I were fat? No. But that is what this coworker has continued to do. I have since made sure that I am carrying something at stomach level, a coat over my arm or a purse to block my belly from being touched.


Being pregnant, and so early pregnant, I thought I would be immune to such belling touching and inappropriate comments. I was wrong. Apparently being pregnant means anyone and everyone can give you unsolicited advice. I might as well wear a shirt that says 'I'm pregnant. Please approach me, touch my belly and/or provide me with unsolicited advice and/or scary pregnant stories.' It is truly unbelievable. It actually makes me wonder how many times I have said inappropriate things to others. I do remember being in sixth grade and constantly telling my family things they didn't want to hear but starting or ending the statement with 'No offense.' As if 'no offense' excused the horrible comment I had just said. Like, 'No offense but that dress makes you look fat.' Or 'I just don't like you, no offense.' That was my mind when I was 12. I truly hope that I have outgrown that and no longer tell people inappropriate things. What is that saying? If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.


Here are some things that people have said to me in the less than 13 weeks I have been pregnant:

1. I saw you on Wednesday and thought you might be pregnant. Yeah, I came in, saw your stomach and thought to myself, 'she's definitely pregnant.' But I didn't want to say anything just in case.

2. I have had 8 miscarriages between 6 and 11 weeks.

3. I saw you at Target and saw your bump and you are definitely pregnant! I didn't start showing until the end of my second trimester.

Note from Kate on #3: Screw you lady. We are not all stick thin with the metabolism of a gazelle.

4. My friend had an awful labor. So long and painful. And she really tore.

5. You're pregnant? Oh, I just thought you were putting on weight.

6. You're going to take a nap?!?!?!?!? You just woke up!

Note from Kate on #6: Screw you man. You try building a brain, a heart, lungs and a full body. Then talk to me about if it's okay to take a nap.

7. You should really do pilates. I read that it can really help with labor. You should really make sure that you're keeping active. Do you want the number to my gym? (Advice given by a man whose wife has never been pregnant and after reading an article on keeping active during pregnancy.)

8. Chocolate? You don't really need to be eating that.

Note from Kate on #8: You must be kidding right? I'm pregnant!

9. Do you know what night it happened?

10. Waiting for the next inappropriate comment to take this slot. Will it be your comment?


As most of you know, I do not like being told what to do. But I especially do not like being told what to do if I do not invite some sort of opinion from the other person. It's who I am. But, I believe 9 months of hearing such things will probably help me to improve. There has to be good out of all of these crazy comments, right?


Sincerely,

The fat, tired, chocolate eating pregnant Kate:)

Thank you to shoemaker Hoby of St. James's Street London, Hiram Hutchinson and Charles Goodyear

Steve and I celebrated Christmas on 19th December 2009 this past season. Since we were going home for the holidays, we decided to have 'our' Christmas before we left and to have a small Christmas with few gifts. It was a Sunday night after I had just finished packing for our trip.

One gift for me, one gift for Steve. One gift for me, one gift for Steve. It went on like that for four and a half rounds. Five presents for me and four for Steve. He opened is last present which was an index card. There was a clue! I love games! It was the beginning of a scavenger hunt.

Once he opened the index card he stared at me. I had gotten this idea from a gift my dad gave my mom one year. In Moorestown, where the house has many, many rooms, my dad sent my mom on a scavenger hunt. In the family room, then the study, then the bedroom, then the kitchen, then another upstairs bathroom, the laundry room, then finally back to the family room where her Rolex watch was in the cabinet where the remote controls are stored.

So when Steve stared at me, I explained my inspiration followed by, 'No, your end prize is not a Rolex.'

And so he started. The Moorestown house where my family lived had 15 rooms (including bathrooms). Our teeny, tiny apartment had 3. This was going to be a challenge. Plus, I had to figure out how to plant the clues throughout the rooms without Steve seeing. But he piped on anyway. After the first index card, he was off to the bathroom, then to the kitchen, then to the laundry room, then to the library (small corner in our family room with a chair and shelf of books) and finally under the rubbish bin in the kitchen.

Ahhh, the golden present. It must be a good gift to require a scavenger hunt, right? Well, Steve liked it. The present was tickets to the Golden Plains Festival. A weekend camping and music festival. Just what Steve likes. He was very happy with his gift.

You may remember last year, December 2008 when Steve and I went to another music festival (Meredith Music Festival). It was my first and Steve's umpteenth. (Picture below.) It was challenging to say the least. After that experience, I am shocked that I considered going to another let alone bought tickets as a gift for Steve. It rained the entire time we were there. It was ridiculously muddy. I walked around in wet, muddy sneakers all weekend and had to continue to wear the same pair of wet, soggy, muddy socks as they were the only non-cotton socks I had taken with me. It was a nightmare. We slept a ton and barely any beer had been drunk. But the worst part, and I suppose the best part, was that that had to be the absolute worst conditions to ever see a festival in. It could only go up from here. And it had. Sunday morning we saw sunshine - on our way out. But I had survived, with minimal complaining.

Coincidentally, the Golden Plains Music Festival was to be held at the same amphitheatre. But it was in March and the beginning of autumn. It was going to be a lot of fun as we had four additional people going with us this year.

We arrived early, got a great campsite and set up camp. I can't even remember when it started. When the first drop of invasive rain fell. I almost felt like it hadn't stopped since December of '08 or that this country town has a permanent rain cloud over it. Surely it couldn't rain again, could it? No, it was just a sprinkling. Phew! Close call.

No, I was wrong. In December 2008 when I thought there was no way another festival at this amphitheatre could be that rainy and muddy again...I was wrong. It was. It rained the entire time! Except on the morning we were leaving - why does that always happen? It poured. It hailed. It was cold. It was wet. It was muddy. It was miserable weather. This couldn't be possible. I'm never doing this again, ever!

There was an upside though. After the festival in December 2008 and on our drive back to Melbourne, we stopped at an outdoors store and bought gumboots. They remind me of gardening boots. Basically, they are rain boots. They sat in storage for over a year. 'So glad we purchased them and I'll never get to use them' I would think sarcastically. But Steve suggested we bring them this weekend 'just in case.' I couldn't have been happier. I had the driest feet around. Last year when I was wearing muddy, soggy, wet sneakers with the same muddy, soggy, wet socks I had worn for three days, I had so much gumboot envy as other girls had prepared for the rain. Well, this year I was prepared too! I had gumboots, rain pants and a raincoat. (Picture below.) It was bearable and actually still fun!

I don't know if I'll ever do a festival like that again. When I think of the rain I think no way. When I think it can't possibly happen for a third time, I think I may be able to.

Anyway, to tie it all together...thank you to shoemaker Hoby of St. James's Street London for manufacturing the design of the calfskin leather boot. Thank you to Charles Goodyear for inventing the vulcanization process for natural rubber. And finally, thank you to Hiram Hutchinson who bought the patent to manufacture the footwear and took the rubber from Goodyear and calfskin leather from Hoby to combine them and make the 'Wellington boot' aka the gumboot aka the best footwear that kept my feet warm and dry during this very wet music festival.

These men helped to make my experience bearable and fun! I am actually considering going to another music festival again someday. (Plus, I got lots of compliments on the cute design I had chosen for the gumboots.)

Cheers,

Dry Feet Kate

The Dingo Ate My Thong

Not my thong...Steve's thong. And not underwear, but a flip flop. (Thong is an Aussie term for flip flop; a US thong is called a g-string her in Australia...FYI). Anyway, TRUE STORY!!!!!


Frazer Island over Australia Day weekend (Steve's belated birthday present). A weekend of camping and 4-wheel driving on this strictly beach island. It is literally a beach island. The beach is not used for sunbathing. It is a highway. And the middle of ths island is all sand as well, so it made for a very bumpy ride but a very happy birthday boy.
















This island is off of Queensland and has a population of wild dingoes. Everywhere you go are signs reading 'Be Dingo Safe.' It lists what to do in case of emergencies of a dingo encounter (look it in the eye, cross your arms, if you are with another adult stand back-to-back, do not run away, always accompany small children). It also listed how to prevent encounters with dingoes such as storing food in the car overnight and under no circumstances should you feed a dingo.

















Easy enough. Although I was still scared that a dingo may attack me. They are cute. They look just like dogs. And they are not afraid of people in the sense that they came onto our campsite every night and stood about 6 feet from us. But they are scared if they feel they are being threatened. For instance, as I was scared of being attack, I was on the lookout for dingoes one evening after dinner. It was dark out so it's hard to see sometimes. Every movement of the wind in the bushes would scare me. And finally, a dingo was trotting along out of a bush on the side of our campsite I jumped up and screamed. The poor thing, I scared it more than it scared me. It flinched and scampered away tripping over itself.


The morning after the night we arrived I was packing up our site. We had just learned that Keith and Becky welcomed Maddie into the world!!!! Steve was sitting in the tent doorway looking perplexed. "Where are my thongs?" he asked me. "What do you mean, didn't you take them inside the tent last night?" I pointed to the outside of the tent. Of course I would assume he took everything inside the tent. That's what I would do. Just incase there is a masked murderer or a thief on the island trying to get whatever they can from innocent people sleeping. Always bring everything in the tent so not to tempt those people.


"No, I left them outside the tent. The dingoes must have gotten them." I thought it was a possibility. I mean, if I was afraid of a masked murderer traveling all the way to this remote island, getting through on a 4WD and taking the lives of innocent people, why would it be unlikely that a dingo (animals which were prevalent on the island and which we had seen just the night before) had taken them. Besides, hadn't a dingo eaten a baby before?


Still, as I didn't have proof, I couldn't be 100% positive. Innocent until proven guilty, right?


We finished packing up the site and were spending a few moments enjoying the weather before driving to our next destination. Steve did a scope of the site ensuring we didn't forget anything. And you'll never guess....there on the hill, 10 feet from the entrance to our tent were the platforms or base of Steve's thongs. Unless it was the masked murder, the dingo had taken his thong from right outside our tent in the middle of the night (we didn't even hear them!), taken the thongs only 10 feet away and proceeded to eat the strap on both thongs, again we didn't hear them/it chewing away at the thongs (They are so sneaky quiet).





















But mystery solved. "The dingo ate my thong!" Steve proclaimed. It was a funny moment. Not only do they look like dogs, but they have similar interests as well (eating and chewing on people's shoes). Luckily Steve had a pair of boots he could wear for the rest of the trip.


Other than that exciting Aussie initiation, Frazer Island had gorgeous pure water lakes. One was so blue and clear with white sand beaches that I felt like I was in the carribean. Another lake was the color of honey - it was just beautiful and so peaceful. It was a great trip and Steve was very happy with his birthday present.
















Don't forget to be Dingo Safe - be sure to accompany your children, and thongs, at all times.

Holy Crap it's February!

WTF? February already, and really it's March tomorrow. So Holy Crap it's March!

Where did the time go? 2009 was here and gone in an instant. Here are a few blogs being thrown your way.

We had a great time home for the holidays this past season. It was really nice to be home for Christmas with the appropriate corresponding weather. Snow! We saw snow! I know you all are probably so sick of the snow. In fact, I know a lot of you are as your emails and Facebook status' state this. But for us, it was great to see the snow, to feel the cold, to have the heat on in the house during Christmas (or not on in the case of the Fitzgerald's house).

Again, it was a whirlwind of a visit, not staying more than 2 consecutive nights at one house. A fast 18 days but we did manage to see most people. Those that we did not, we look forward to seeing you again in early 2011. Wow, 2011! Talk about where does time go.

My unbirthday was a lot of fun and a good intro into being 30 plus a fabulous farewell from the states - once again. We are so lucky to have such amazing friends and family.

Not to fret, it is about nine months until we are home for good!

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season!