10 Weeks: Intrusive Advice Roundup

The amount of intrusive advice I get from strangers about my pregnancy is stunning. At first, it was charming. After all, they mean well and it's exciting to have people acknowledge that you're pregnant--at first. As the pregnancy progresses, that all changes. Intrusive advice becomes a lot like telling women to smile: an unwanted interruption to which I have to respond, no matter how much of my time doing so wastes.

Because the random people who shower me with advice think they're being nice, I can't shut it down. I have to treat their comments as if they are insightful and helpful, which means wasting even more of my time. The advice-givers seem to believe I don't have any real concerns, and therefore am obligated to respond to each and every "suggestion" I receive. After all, I'm pregnant, and that means I must spend every waking second thinking of the baby. I must not have a job--certainly not after the baby arrives!--or anything I'd rather do than respond to someone dropping some "science" about how heartburn means my baby is going to be hairy.

Most strangely of all, most of the advice comes from men. They've never been pregnant, never will be pregnant, and therefore have no idea how much intrusive advice I have to field. Instead, they seem to see themselves as great witnesses to truth; my doctor, my midwife, the many pregnant women I know, the books I have read...none of them could possibly tell me anything useful. Nope. I need a random, creepy man to explain what pregnancy is really like to me.

So I might make this a regular feature, or I might never do it again, but here is a random sampling of the advice I've gotten this week.