ExpectingWords.com - Helping expecting couples find the right words at the right times

Two days after I gave birth at a hospital in Manhattan, my husband and I joyfully embarked upon our ride home with our new baby boy. We videotaped our efforts to hail a cab (we decided a cab would be easier than parking our car in a garage blocks away), fumble with the car seat and buckle in our baby boy. As I tended to my boy in the back of the taxi, everything was wonderful, until I overheard the driver joke to my husband sitting in the front seat, “When she’s due? She looks like she still has a bun in the oven.” NOT FUNNY! And my husband didn’t miss a beat admonishing the driver. But, having been through nine months of pregnancy, I had already heard it all.

I don’t know of any pregnant mom who doesn’t have a story that begins with, “You won’t believe what someone said to me!” Often, I couldn’t.

1. “You look like you’re getting fat.“
My friend, who avidly reads this blog (thank you!), announced her pregnancy at work about four months in. Her boss’s response? “Oh so that explains your belly bulge. I didn’t think you were the kind of woman who would let herself go like that.”

2. (more…)

What really goes on behind the bedroom doors? I interviewed 12 women from around the country and found out that lies and more lies rest between those satin sheets. Let’s just say that names have been changed to protect the guilty.

“I went to the doctor six weeks after I gave birth and he told me it was okay for me to start having sex again. Yeah right!” said Sarah from New York in response to her doctor’s suggestion. “I was exhausted and my boobs were for one person only – the baby. When I got home I might have twisted the truth just a bit. I told my husband that the doctor said I had to wait two more months.”

Jodi from Los Angeles shared, “A couple months after I had a C-section, we had sex again,” “Five months later, I’m still rarely in the mood, but I pretend I am because he does things for me that he doesn’t really want to do. It’s only fair. Plus, sex puts him in a better mood, which makes both of our lives better. Sometimes I’ll even initiate sex in the morning knowing it will lead to us having a good day together. Sometimes I get the sense that If I don’t have sex with him he feels like I don’t love him.” (more…)