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Pregnancy – a worldwide celebrated time period of a woman life, even in the past times, it was celebrated in our culture too (yes even been allergic to each and every kind of celebrations). We show modesty and celebrate obviously with our own sad twist like some people don’t leave space for any reason to be happy, even when they are welcoming addition to their family. You must be wondering or might have an idea where my thought train is going. Because we all have the bite the bullet or some might be biting right on, our cultural clairvoyance of pregnancies… our very own clairvoyance of desi aunties.
Like I said, it’s the most celebrated and cherished time for women in any culture. We always notice how pregnant women have cravings, early morning sickness or even sense of smell gets overly sensitive but here comes our very own clairvoyance of aunties around us who make sure that a pregnant woman gets emotionally abused to the extreme extent till it starts affecting her physical conditions. By giving unwanted pieces of advice and sharing their own experiences till they put rain on their parade, is totally unacceptable.
You must be wondering what emotional abuse I have witnessed during pregnancies which forced me to pen this. Okay, let’s start with the day when a girl realized that she is going to be a mother and when she told this to an elderly woman around her and she will come up with the worst scenario of her condition, with the example of her own. Instead of helping her on medical and psychological health, they make it worse by telling folklores about pregnancies of what happened to somebody they knew and how it ends well for themselves but the new mom has a lesser chance on this.
First, they come up with how lazy girls don’t want to get pregnant and set it as their first priority, how today’s girls wanted to rest in pregnancies and how active the clairvoyant aunties were when they were moms to be. Whenever a mom-to-be wants to step out of her home, she must have to listen to all the myths and totkas related to pregnancies. In addition, they tell her what to do to stop morning sickness as if it’s her own choice to get nausea early morning and choke herself to death by vomiting endlessly.
I think morning sickness is so royal now (because even Kate Middleton got morning sickness but I am sure these ladies don’t know who she is, so the plea to the mercy of being mango people is wasted). Another thing or bashing moms-to-be face when any clairvoyant aunties see her taking pills (which are the usual vitamins and calcium) which are suggested by doctors after long lists of tests. It starts the endless battle between how naturopath they are and how they can fulfill calcium deficiency by drinking liters of milk. I mean seriously after renown companies confessions on what they do to milk, could anybody think that it’s going to fulfill calcium deficiency?
And as second trimester passes away, every Tom, Dick, and Harry try to guess the gender of the baby on the size of the belly? Yes, they still do this after the invention of ultrasound, medical science is still in need of these clairvoyant aunties. Then the stories of how proudly they have delivered boys in past like they get pregnant with planned parenthood and the idea of how to deliver a baby as if delivering a baby normal or C-section is a woman’s own choice. Just to avoid a pain of few hours, she will risk her life to C-section, which causes her major breathing problems, reactions to anesthesia, major blood loss, increased risk in future pregnancies.
These aunties don’t even think for a second that their little talks cause great psychological stress to a woman who’s pregnant. In Pakistan, nobody discusses psychological stresses and mood swings of a mom-to-be which is because of psychological and hormonal changes. It can cause depression, anxiety, panic attacks and the most common one (after brook shields) postpartum depression. It can cause serious health issues to the mom-to-be and baby. If you really want to help the mothers, you can suggest a good and healthy regime to her or how to relax.
Everybody has their own battles to fight and have their own threshold to stress. Even if somebody is not pregnant, one should not spread negative vibes by telling hate stories. Positivity can’t be overrated. It has its own advantages for our own self and people around us. This is something to think about when negative people are doing their best to rain on someone’s parade. So, the next time someone who knows nothing and tries to make your life miserable, don’t give your remote control in their hands.
