Smug reactions do not help with tough pregnancy

Dear Carolyn: I’m unexpectedly pregnant less than a year after having our first. I have a lot of mixed feelings about this and am working through them in therapy. As we share the news, I am shocked by how rude people are. Lots of smugness about how they “knew I’d want to have another” (I had a miserable first pregnancy, this wasn’t planned) and plenty of horror about how tough the next few years will be (I know).

I’m just struggling so much with putting on a happy face about something that has left me in tears almost every day, when the people I thought were our closest family and friends are being such glassbowls. I wish I could come up with a response in the moment to get across how rude and hurtful they’re being, but I don’t have the energy.

Do you have any wisdom?

Help Me Become a Duck

I hope no one is pressuring you to put on a happy face, not even you. Choosing to carry the pregnancy to term didn’t obligate you to transform instantaneously into a joyous and unconflicted vessel. You made a complex moral decision. Now take, without apology, all the months nature grants you to settle into that decision and its implications.

As for a response to all the conversational bricks everyone’s dropping, I will offer a start.

To those you trust most to handle it, share your frustration. Unburden. To everyone else, say, “Thank you”- that’s it. For everything. If the comments are kind, then it’s appropriate. If the comments are smug/nosy/rude, then, “Thank you!” is a very polite and pointed, “Erf you.”