I, sometimes to my own demise, spend too much time in online forums –specifically pregnancy and parenting forums. It’s not uncommon for me to have suddenly whittled away hours reading endless ramblings from pregnant women about cravings or name wars with relatives. How or why this addiction has formed… who knows but I’m betting it’s something to do with long breastfeeding sessions and a husband who doesn’t want to discuss random elements of pregnancy.
Lately I have fallen (yet again) down the rabbit hole of arguments about gender disappointment. And it aggravates me, continuously, and I wish I could just shut up. So I do… then two days later I find myself so infuriated that my finger is rushing across my iPhone screen trying to politely tell people to get back in their box and piss off back to their own birth clubs.
For the record, I have no issue what so ever with people being disappointed in the gender of their baby. Who knows…I might join them one day but so far I have a child the gender I wanted and yes I did have a preference and I do have this one that is on the way. I also have no issue with people who couldn’t care less about the gender of their baby. People are different. It’s not exactly rocket science. Some people have a preference and others don’t. Some people don’t want to bring a particular gender into a particular family due to abuse, their own experience or like me really hate the idea of having to teach a boy to pee. Some reasons are well founded and others are just what we feel. Because they are feelings – no more than that. And sometimes those feelings change into disappointment. It happens and it can’t be argued that it doesn’t.
The other day I was reading an article on a not so crash website about why most women have a preference for girls and that somewhere around 70% of women will (in the privacy of surveys and not in a public audience) prefer to have a girl. The writer speculated about why, reasoning the familiar and known along with a possible genetic need to reproduce yourself. Yet, time and time again in the online forum world it appears that people cannot accept that anyone has a preference. When one particular poster had sought help and assistance over the disappointment, which was quite intense, of her baby boy to be she had constantly been told her feelings were not normal and implied that she was ungrateful, a freak and doesn’t deserve to be pregnant at all. In my opinion, a little on the harsh side for someone seeking help to solve their situation.
The thing that gets me, the thing that means I have to reply, is simply that you cannot tell someone else their feelings are not normal. To start with normal is usually defined by the person making the statement so it actually means nothing else but to hurl insult and create hurt in the person you are telling is not normal. It is never helpful to tell someone that their feelings are not real, not valid or not normal. It’s like taking someone currently being tortured by their emotions (picture a person under a plank of wood with all those emotions jumping up and down squishing them) and piling a few more giant bricks on their head (chuck a few more evil elves holding medicine balls jumping on the wood). All these people, these anonymous online crusaders (in their opinion) are doing is crushing someone who is suffering and hurting even further. It is nothing more than cruel.
Telling someone that their situation isn’t as bad as the next person, in this case all of those women who struggled with infertility or pregnancy losses, does nothing to help them.
I know I’m strange, but I just don’t understand why you would say something if it isn’t helpful and/or encouraging. I don’t understand why one individual’s pain means they can hurt others or state that their pain and situation is more important or worse. And if I see people online or in person belittling someone else for how they feel I will stand up and respond. It’s not ok and I’m happy to be called a troll if all I’m doing is defending someone who is suffering!!
wordsofnotsomuchwisdom 