How to be Helpful

While chatting with an old friend last week, we talked about the ways in which people say inadvertently rude things. We were specifically talking about fertility and pregnancy, and discussed the ways people can be well meaning but still say the wrong thing.  (Last time I was pregnant, several times I had one person tell me how big I looked, just to have another say I looked small.  On the same day.)

When I was pregnant with Ada, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Now that I am telling people I am carrying twins, I have heard more versions of "boy is your life over" comments.  I'd like to state for the record that this is NOT HELPFUL. I know that the next few years are going to be challenging in ways I can and can not imagine. I am still reeling a bit from the news that I will be a mother of three. Hearing that my life is going to change for the worse is just not useful.

Almost every parent will acknowledge that having an infant is a life-changing event, and that those changes are not uniformly positive. However, something about the rarity of twins or the fear it causes in other people is enough to cause otherwise polite people to try to scare the crap out of me.