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The moment you get pregnant, it&#8217;s as if your family, your friends, and even complete strangers are issued a license to offer unsolicited opinions about your body, your eating habits, your birth plan, and occasionally your entire future.
As I write this, I&#8217;m less than a month away from giving birth to our son — or, as I prefer to call it, serving him with his official eviction notice. I&#8217;ve always been jealous of those women who say they love being pregnant. That is not me.
What I do love, though, is motherhood. It&#8217;s been by far the best chapter of my life. I&#8217;m obsessed with being a mom, and it&#8217;s made me a better person in more ways than I can count. If having children didn&#8217;t require pregnancy, I&#8217;d probably have 20 of them. It&#8217;s the cooking process that&#8217;s a horror show for me.
From the moment I get pregnant, my body seems to launch a full-scale rebellion. I swell up. Think of Violet Beauregarde from &#8220;Willy Wonka.&#8221; That&#8217;s me. I spend nine months counting down the days until I can comfortably tie my own shoes again.
Part of the reason pregnancy is such a sensitive subject for me is that my first experience was emotionally and physically traumatic. Around the 20-week mark, my husband and I were told our daughter was measuring small and might not be getting enough nutrition. Thankfully, she arrived perfectly healthy. She&#8217;s still petite and still not a big eater, which turns out is just who she is.
As difficult as that pregnancy was mentally and physically, it paled in comparison to the fear. For half my pregnancy, I lived with the possibility that something might be wrong with my baby, and there was nothing I could do except wait. Everything hurt, but the uncertainty hurt the most.
By the time it was over, I was convinced I never wanted to do it again. Thankfully, God had other plans. And my daughter can&#8217;t wait to have a built-in best friend.
What I wasn&#8217;t prepared for the second time around was how many people would treat my pregnancy like a public discussion forum. So before you approach a pregnant woman with an observation, a prediction, a warning, or a &#8220;helpful&#8221; piece of advice, allow me to offer a few examples of what not to say.
1. &#8220;Are you going to breastfeed?&#8221;
I have never understood why complete strangers feel entitled to ask pregnant women about their future feeding plans. Imagine walking up to someone and asking detailed questions about their breasts. Weird, right? Yet somehow, the moment a woman gets pregnant, all social norms go out the window and everyone suddenly becomes a lactation consultant.
The truth is that breastfeeding can be an incredibly personal and emotional topic. Some women breastfeed for years. Some can&#8217;t breastfeed despite desperately wanting to. Some choose not to. Some supplement with formula. And some spend weeks crying in the middle of the night feeling like a failure because breastfeeding isn&#8217;t going the way they hoped.
Before my daughter was born, I thought breastfeeding would come naturally. It didn&#8217;t. Because she was so small, she was losing weight, and I wasn&#8217;t producing enough milk to keep up with her needs. I ended up supplementing with formula during a nationwide formula shortage. (Living through that is a story for another day.)
Like so many parts of motherhood, feeding your baby comes with a learning curve, frustration, guilt, and plenty of moments when you wonder if you&#8217;re doing enough. A pregnant woman doesn&#8217;t owe anyone an explanation for how she plans to feed her baby. If she wants to talk about it, she will. If not, trust me, there are plenty of other topics to discuss.
2. &#8220;Sleep while you can.&#8221; 
 
This one always makes me laugh because by the third trimester, sleep is already a distant memory. I haven&#8217;t slept well in months. Between the constant trips to the bathroom, the inability to get comfortable, the back pain, and a tiny human using my ribs as a jungle gym at 2 a.m., I can assure you that I&#8217;m not exactly banking extra sleep hours before the baby arrives.
Whenever someone tells me to &#8220;sleep while you can,&#8221; I&#8217;m always tempted to ask if they have any suggestions on how, exactly, I&#8217;m supposed to accomplish that.
The truth is that newborn exhaustion is real. I know I&#8217;ll probably feel like I&#8217;ve been hit with a serious case of jet lag for a while. But at least when the baby arrives, I&#8217;ll finally get to meet the tiny roommate who&#8217;s been keeping me awake all night. And somehow that makes it feel worth it.
3. &#8220;You&#8217;ve gained a lot of weight!&#8221;
I&#8217;m on the shorter side and usually weigh around 100 pounds. So when I go from 100 pounds to nearly 200 pounds during pregnancy, my appearance changes. Dramatically.
One day, while I was eight months pregnant, I was on FaceTime with a close family member. We weren&#8217;t discussing pregnancy, weight gain, or anything remotely related to my appearance when she suddenly stopped and pointed out the obvious.
&#8220;You don&#8217;t even look like yourself,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Your face is huge — you have a double chin — you&#8217;re usually a stick. I just don&#8217;t get it.&#8221;
Then came the follow-up.
&#8220;Maybe you&#8217;re just holding the camera too close to your face.&#8221;
Sadly, I wasn&#8217;t. If anything, the camera was farther away than normal because I was trying to fit my entire face into the frame.
As if that wasn&#8217;t enough, a few months earlier my husband committed his own pregnancy-related offense.
Before I tell this story, I need to defend him: My husband is one of the kindest people I know. He&#8217;s also the type of person who occasionally sticks his foot in his mouth.
During this pregnancy, I started a new remote job. A few months in, my boss wanted the new employees to get together for a team bonding trip. For most people, this probably sounds fun. For me, it was my worst nightmare.
I love clothes. I love dressing up. And suddenly I had nothing professional that fit me. I was already feeling uncomfortable in my own skin, and now I was about to meet all of my coworkers for the first time while six months pregnant and feeling approximately the size of a small parade float.
For days, it was all I talked about. I worried about what I was going to wear. I worried about how I looked. I worried about making a first impression while feeling physically miserable. At one point, I realized the only clothes I could fit into were my husband&#8217;s. I told him I was going to have to raid his closet because baby boy had made me too big to fit into any of my own clothes.
Trying to be helpful, he reminded me that I wasn&#8217;t just gaining weight because I was growing a human.
&#8220;I think the strawberry milkshakes from McDonald&#8217;s are playing a role too,&#8221; he said.
Now, to be fair, I had developed a slight addiction to McDonald&#8217;s strawberry milkshakes. So he wasn&#8217;t wrong.
But there are moments in life when being correct is not the goal. This was one of those moments.
To his credit, my husband spends the other 99% of his time making me feel beautiful, especially when I feel my worst. He simply learned the hard way that when a pregnant woman is venting about her appearance, she is not looking for a detailed breakdown of her eating habits.
And that&#8217;s really the point of both stories. If a pregnant woman has gained weight, trust me, she knows.
4.&#8221;Just wait&#8230;&#8221; 
If you&#8217;ve ever been pregnant, you know exactly what I&#8217;m talking about. No matter what you&#8217;re experiencing, someone always has a &#8220;just wait&#8221; ready to go.
Tired?
&#8220;Just wait until the baby gets here.&#8221;
Feeling overwhelmed?
&#8220;Just wait until they&#8217;re crawling.&#8221;
Then it&#8217;s walking.
Then it&#8217;s potty training.
Then it&#8217;s school.
Then it&#8217;s teenagers.
Then, somehow, it&#8217;s grandchildren.
It&#8217;s as if pregnancy and motherhood are one giant game of people trying to convince you that your current stage isn&#8217;t actually difficult because something harder is always coming.
The problem is that these comments almost always come from a good place. Most people aren&#8217;t trying to be negative. They&#8217;re trying to relate. They&#8217;re trying to share their own experiences.
But when you&#8217;re pregnant, especially for the first time, it can feel like nobody is allowing you to enjoy the stage you&#8217;re in.
Not every moment of pregnancy is magical. Trust me, I&#8217;ve spent enough time swollen, uncomfortable, and unable to tie my shoes to know that. But not every moment has to be overshadowed by what&#8217;s coming next, either.
Instead of saying &#8220;just wait,&#8221; try saying, &#8220;You&#8217;re going to love being a mom.&#8221;
After all the swelling, anxiety, weight gain, sleepless nights, the comments on this list, that&#8217;s the part that matters most. Honestly, I can&#8217;t wait. Every minute with my daughter has somehow been better than the last. The lack of sleep, the endless messes, the tantrums, the worries — it&#8217;s all been worth every second.
5. &#8220;Because she&#8217;s fat.&#8221; 
 
This one is by far my favorite because it came from my innocent daughter, who was three years old at the time and therefore legally exempt from having a filter. As every parent knows, toddlers have a unique gift for saying exactly what they&#8217;re thinking with zero regard for timing, context, or social consequences.
It was the week of Valentine&#8217;s Day, and I was driving around town (probably headed to McDonald&#8217;s for a strawberry milkshake, if we&#8217;re being honest) while happily working my way through the Valentine&#8217;s Day candy my husband had bought me.
My younger sister called, and because the phone was connected to the car, the conversation was on speaker.
&#8220;It sounds like you&#8217;re eating,&#8221; she said.
&#8220;I am,&#8221; I replied. &#8220;I&#8217;m eating the Valentine&#8217;s Day candy Hunter got me.&#8221;
Without missing a beat, a tiny voice chimed in from the backseat.
&#8220;Because she&#8217;s fat!&#8221;
Silence.
Now, in fairness to Rayne, watching her mom transform into a swollen, waddling version of herself over the course of several months was probably a little confusing. Thankfully, my sister jumped in immediately.
&#8220;Rayne! She&#8217;s pregnant! Tell your mom she&#8217;s beautiful.&#8221;
There was a brief pause. Then came the response I&#8217;ll never forget.
&#8220;Mom, you&#8217;re beautiful — and fat.&#8221;
Honestly, I don&#8217;t know whether to laugh or cry every time I think about it.
Of course, it turned into a teachable moment about how we don&#8217;t ever use the word &#8220;fat.&#8221; But it was so innocent. She wasn&#8217;t trying to hurt my feelings. She was simply making an observation in the brutally honest way only a three-year-old can.
And that&#8217;s why it remains one of my favorite pregnancy stories and one of my favorite examples of what not to say to a pregnant woman.
So if someone you know is pregnant, here&#8217;s my advice: Tell her she looks beautiful, ask how she&#8217;s feeling, and then immediately stop talking. It&#8217;s a strategy that&#8217;s worked surprisingly well for my husband ever since he survived the Great McDonald&#8217;s Strawberry Milkshake Incident of 2026.

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Five Things You Should Never Say To A Pregnant Woman