The #1 Thing I’d Tell Meghan Markle About Pregnancy

The need to puke is our body’s way to protect us from dangerous substance or microorganisms. In a pregnant woman’s case, it protects the baby. So nausea (when not provoked) should always be appreciated ?

Thank you so much for sharing, M! I think it’s so interesting that we had such different perspectives and experiences.

I found out that I was pregnant the morning I was supposed to start IVF, after months of failed fertility treatments. I felt so grateful to be pregnant and it felt like everyone around me kept warning me about what was coming, rather than sharing in my joy. When people heard I was pregnant and started telling me
horror stories about their kids’ difficult phases (and OH are there difficult phases!) I wanted to scream: “Do you know how badly I have wanted this baby?!?”

It really highlights the wisdom of your approach of asking questions and really listening. Having other people who can validate your experience is so important. <3

@Joanna Goddard totally! That’s my point—we all wonder about what our own babies will look like (I loved the post where you speculated about Toby!) and what our friends’ babies will look like, but for some reason the media world puts a super-weighted focus on what babies of mixed-race kids will look like. I don’t think it’s malicious at all, and I don’t necessarily know what conclusion(s) to draw from it, but, as with all things related to race, I do think it’s worth noticing and thinking about. I think Cup of Jo does such an incredible job of being inclusive and having real conversations, even when they’re potentially uncomfortable—it’s one of the reasons I look so forward to reading your posts every day. I just wanted to bring this issue up as a discussion point and maybe something to consider going forward.

You sound fairly biased to expect that race is forefront in the mind of everyone meeting your children, but that’s an assumption, not fact.

It’s one of the most common things I’ve heard in reaction to pregnancy news (any pregnancy), typically harmless, baby shower-type blather – “Ooh, which parent will they look most like?” Usually I think that’s just code for, “I wonder if the kid turn out ugly or cute?” People are always nosy about babies.

People speculated on what each of William and Kate’s children would look like. I inherited my dad’s thick, unruly hair and my mom’s nose–they contributed different genetic qualities from their family lines even though we’re all white. So whatever, I became a mixture of them, which makes me unique from each of them. Everyone is something new.

That sounds so frustrating Beth, I understand why you would feel extra-sensitive about that. I speculate about everyone’s babies, and love seeing what aspects they have inherited from among their family, and even variations of a feature amongst siblings, it’s beautiful. Even though my husband and I are both Caucasian we have completely opposite colouring (super pale skin, blue eyes, blonde & deep olive, black hair, dark eyes) and so who knows what that cocktail is going to look like in a kid!

I had some soul searching to do after this comment, thank you. I speculate on a baby’s looks all the time: whose eyes/nose/feet did she get, did the pieces of her parents fit together well, etc. My own family was obsessed with who inherited what from whom – I was literally introduced as “here’s Hannah, she’s the only one in the family who got her grandfather’s blue eyes.” My son is adopted and we only met the birth mom, so I keep imagining what the birth father looked like based on my son’s features.

So far all of that sounds pretty superficial, so what did I learn in my soul searching? When I think of a mixed-race baby, my first thought is “ooooh, that’s going to be a beautiful, exotic looking baby.” It had not occurred to me before that it’s a way of thinking of the baby as “other” and that even my assumption that the baby would be beautiful was stereotyping. I thank you for your comment, and I will strive to do better.

@beth and @K @ To those commenters who have expressed that both parents are caucasian and it is the same thing as mixed race when receiving comments about what the baby will look like, I have to say it is completely different because caucasian features no matter how varied and diverse are mere physical features whereas minority race features such as skin and hair color, eyes and nose shapes that have been wrongly linked with perjorative and an inferior status. I have heard innocent comments such as I’m excited to see what ‘the baby will look like you or you husband!’ but to more racially toned comments that make me and my baby feel like a zoo animal under scrutiny such as oh the baby looks so ‘asian’ which in many ways has a negative undertone or the baby looks so ‘white’ intended as a compliment, which I have heard from people of both race and multiple culture. I don’t believe it is ever intended in malice but the society we live in now, there is a tendency for there to be an invasive curiosity to a mixed-race kids that is considered ‘not standard’. Either way, non racial or racial comments always make me a little tense up because i didn’t know what their next comment will be.
– thanks for voicing this!

I’m always curious who the baby will look like! I’m from a very white catholic family. I felt I didnt look like either parent growing up. And my brothers and I dont look a thing alike. I always said we were 5 random people put together. Fast forward I now see I am clearly my father’s child. I love looking at kids and figuring out which parent. Sometimes its immediate and other times it takes a while and then it clicks! I cant believe I didnt see it before! Side note, I dont worry about our future child appearances but it will be fun to see, I worry about personality. Both my husband and I have mothers with strong strong personalities. My m-i-l has strong genes. I’m praying it skips over our child ??

I so appreciate all the responses to my comment! That truly was my primary goal: to bring this topic to the surface and encourage dialogue around it. I feel like, as a country, we are in a time of reckoning, and with that comes a lot of, as @hannah said, soul-searching—both individually and collectively. I’ve been doing a lot of it myself, and to be honest, I’ve noticed some things I’m not incredibly proud of (hi, white fragility). I’ve made a shift in the past seven years (my oldest son is 7, so no coincidence there) from being fairly naive about what it means to be a minority in this country to being hyper-aware—at least, as aware as it’s possible for a white woman to be (I realize I’ll never understand the half of it). Mostly, I try to listen, notice, and ask a lot of questions.

Like many of you said, I personally think it’s so much fun to speculate on what ALL babies will look like, regardless of the parents’ ethnic background. I just wish the speculation around mixed-race babies didn’t feel tinged with a bit of celebrating the “exotic” (@MS I so feel you on that!). I also wonder, when both parents are people of color, do they get those same breathless “Your baby is going to be so beautiful!” comments? Or do we reserve our reverence for when the baby is half white? And if it’s the latter, what’s behind that? I don’t have the answers, just a whole bunch of questions.

@JN, you asked for my insights on how to talk about this with your sister-in-law and her Iranian husband. (It warms my heart that you are open and curious about this!) I would say start with questions. How do they feel about it? Does it make them uncomfortable when people automatically assume their children will be “gorgeous.” Are they open to having a super-frank and honest dialogue about it? Never too many questions :). My guess is that they know you, love you, and understand that everything you’re saying is out of love.

The last thing I want to do is make people feel like it’s taboo to talk about race when it comes to mixed-race kids. Please talk about it! Just think about what you’re saying. When people tell me my kids are beautiful, believe me, the mama in me freaking loves it. What mom wouldn’t? But, as @Eunice pointed out, when they say something like “He barely even looks Asian!” about my youngest, I can’t help but wonder why they sound so excited about that. No one says “He looks more Asian!” with the same enthusiasm about my oldest. Why is that?

P.S. @sherrelle, your comment made me tear up—thank you so much for the kind words.

Thanks for your comment! I saw an Asian-Canadian comedian make a joke about that very thing: She said “People always say my baby will be SOOOOO gorgeous and that half asian babies are the absolute cutest, and I’m like… So I look okay, but with a caucasian filter I would be even better?” Obviously she was going for a laugh and I’m paraphrasing. But it did punch me in the gut to hear that because I’ve definitely made that comment (or something in the neighbourhood) and never thought about it until now. I think its really helpful that you responded this way and remained really open and kind in your follow up comments. Thanks for the reminder that the things we say are not always as benign as we think.

Go on Becky, you’re almost there, we back you up! You will be an amazing mama! <3

Ahhhh! Huge congratulations to you!!

Congrats!!

Rachel-you are my pregnancy hero.

Amen, Rachel! Love (and appreciate) your honesty so much :-)

AMEN!!!!!!!! Also: No telling the pregnant person how she must be feeling…. and no giving your opinions about the baby-to-be’s name! Also: No treating the pregnant person like an incubator. She is still first and foremost a person in her own right.

Yes! Would love a post like this. So many people need this advice.

That’s so funny, I’ve had a post like this drafted for months! I recently gave birth to my second child and you’d think having done it once before I would be used to all the opinions but alas I was just as annoyed as I was the first time lol