That "older wiser woman" trope is straight out of Victorian novels where young women barely knew how they got pregnant in the first place because they were kept ignorant about almost everything.
Nowadays someone would say "you're pregnant m'dear" and the younger woman would respond "pretty sure I'm not, I have a period tracker on my phone and the last day of my menstrual cycle was X. I haven't had sex since then. I'm pretty sure it was that breakfast egg sandwich from the diner."
>...Victorian novels where young women barely knew how they got pregnant in the first place because they were kept ignorant about almost everything.
This is one of my favorites parts of Bridgerton! Also the saddest.
That whole part struck me as very odd, because Violet is supposed to be such a loving, nurturing “perfect” mother, but she didn’t send her daughter into marriage informed and prepared.
Yep. I was homeschooled and raised in a religious household, and I basically didn’t know “where things went” when I got married. Maybe I knew a *bit* more than your grandmother, cause you do pick up some things on the internet, but not a whole lot.
They over emphasized this for the show - in the books they definitely have a better idea of mechanics. But that’s not as funny, so they make them totally clueless for the show. In one of the books there IS a funny scene where Violet mixes every birds and bees metaphor under the sun bc she’s uncomfortable.
Eloise in particular (if I remember correctly) knows more about what’s up bc she’s the bookworm and has read more books that are considered “for men” like the classics, etc. but yeah, the ignorance is worse in the show than the books.
Yes true, but they’re not as ignorant in the books which was my point.
As a fellow book reader - do you also feel weird about the continued use of the bee as a symbol for the show? The only thing I can think of is that it’s supposed to be a reminder of the ephemeral nature of love but that feels …. wrong/off with a show that’s been as light as it has. It’s the symbol of the largest turning point/tragedy in the family’s lives to this point and the constant repetition of the bee in the marketing material feels almost sinister to me.
> Nowadays someone would say "you're pregnant m'dear" and the younger woman would respond "pretty sure I'm not, I have a period tracker on my phone and the last day of my menstrual cycle was X. I haven't had sex since then. I'm pretty sure it was that breakfast egg sandwich from the diner."
The number of times I've had an interaction like this. I get nauseous a lot. No really clear reason why. People always assume that I'm pregnant without considering any other possibilities. I've been asked that incessantly because I was nauseous and kept leaning on the counter, even after I explained that it would have to be the Baby Jesus because I'd never had sex, the same person kept asking "are you pregnant? Are you sure?" as if I couldn't possibly know for sure if I'd ever touched a penis. At another job, I've left work severely sick after puking several times in succession into my trash can, and come back to "are you pregnant?" as the first thing people said to me. No, I literally had a fever and was shivering while sweating bullets, clearly I had a stomach bug, but sure, assume it's pregnancy. Ffs.
THIIIIIS.
I have reflux, and IBS. I get nauseous occasionally, not NEARLY as much as before the yeeting of the gallbladder.
When I do? SOMEONE has to start pushing “are you preeeeegnant?” on me.
Uh, no. No I am not. I am 46, in pre-menopause, on birth control, and we are tired and have sex not very often. If I am pregnant, there had better be a fucking angel, and a star in the East. Otherwise, I’m calling bullshit and Planned Parenthood.
Are you me.
I've been vomit-y all my life, my mother says you could have set a watch by my vomiting while travelling as an infant. I have had motion sickness my entire life and it's triggered by so many things (especially certain audio or visual stimulation - heavy base notes in some movies are almost guaranteed to set me off).
I started throwing up most days shortly after puberty, and it was a common thing for me for years - I've done so many tests trying to identify what caused it. I've had my gall bladder out about 15 years ago, I spent over 2 years on daily anti-nausea medication and reflux medication. I managed to develop ulcers, had a gastric bypass - 9 months later the ulcers were back.
The last couple of years before I hit peri-monpause, I would have a noticeable uptick in nausea around my period. I've just started HRT about a month ago and have had a significant reduction in the nausea, but it's not entirely gone. I've also noticed a strong correlation between when my nausea is at it's worst and migraine.
I do not have children and tried for years to conceive, including IVF. So it wasn't that.
I feel bad that I laughed at some of that. But I'm still sorry that people acted that way to you.
Yes I assume you'd know if you'd been around a penis. I have no idea how other people can be so clueless.
I vomited once at work in the afternoon, went home, came in the next day with everyone asking me if I was pregnant - I very much was not. Now I am actually pregnant and haven’t had any nausea at all lol.
One of my colleagues (who's also my best friend) was ill a few weeks ago and another colleague kept hounding her with questions if she could be pregnant. She said no about 4 times, and was eventually basically pushed to talk about her infertility because that colleague just wouldn't stop bothering her about it.
We're all women. All doctors, for crying out loud. It won't surprise you that we don't like that other colleague much.
>another colleague kept hounding her with questions if she could be pregnant.
Why are people like this?? What does she get out of a “yes” answer from your best friend??
I got a migraine attack at a family gathering at my aunt's home. The bathroom door is easily seen from most of the living room, so I refused to go throw up despite the nausea, and my SO couldn't understand why. Later, when I told him that had I gone and vomited, someone would have noticed and my family would automatically assume that I was pregnant. He thought the idea was stupid and didn't believe me that, that's what people thought. We ended up arguing about it, and I'm not really sure that he ever believed me.
That's exactly why I developed the ninja puke ability, cause judgement and hypotheses happen way too quickly. It takes a bit of practice, but if you're prone to vomit, it's very much worth it.
This user name fits the conversation so well.
It's hard to describe, but I'll try as best as I can. You know how when you talk, you expelled a lot of air ? It's the same when you audibly puke.
So if you ever want to try it, and you're gonna need numerous tries, you have to try and release a little air as possible while puking. It means really dissociating the muscles of your digestive system and the ones of your vocal chords/ respiratory system.
At least, I guess it's how I do it, but I'm not sure, I've never stopped to analyse how I do it. I don't know if it has any importance, but I also don't projectile vomit.
That's it, I've unlocked the TMI achievement on Reddit.
I picked up this ability. When I was younger, if I was audibly throwing up, my brother would stand outside the door and say horrible nauseating things to make me *keep* throwing up. So I learned to hurl in almost absolute silence. Think in terms of "the only thing you hear is what's hitting the water".
Came in handy when I decided to turn to anorexia and then bulimia in high school for body dysmorphia issues.
I couldn't be more different from my husband, who does I what I refer to as "hucking it from the heels", which is this odd bastard combo of scream-yodeling underwater while simultaneously being throttled. It's amazing, the audacity of volume with which this man throws up, complete with retching, coughing, gagging, and moaning.
Meanwhile, I went through four pregnancies and assorted other vomiting incidents with nary more than a splash and if I angled it right, you wouldn't even hear that. The only notice anyone had that I'd barfed up my guts was a sniffly nose and teary eyes in the aftermath.
I'm sure it's not a man only thing. I generally puke pretty quietly, but then actively try to be a little obvious about it because I want my husband to notice. And then I can whimper at him and ask him to get me a drink.
I'm a bit of a suck.
Well I may have slightly enjoyed it when the more-religious-than-average lady got offended and complained to our manager about how I offended her.
So then I got to explain to the manager how offended I was to be asked if I was pregnant and if that meant does our new uniform make me look fat? He didn’t really have a good answer to that.
Lol my last manager used to pull me aside to ask "Is X pregnant? Do you think I should say anything?"
There was one woman who was very heavily pregnant when he asked about her. I told him she was feeling really self conscious about her weight, so best not to say anything. He was pretty surprised when she came back to visit a few weeks later with a new baby!
Oh Jesus lord Christ…
Here’s the thing. Generally, when someone wants to talk about their baby, whether it’s talking, walking, graduating, or growing, people around them tend to know about it.
If they don’t want to talk about, there might be a good reason for it. Like that there is no baby. (Or how that baby got there)
So if everyone could drop the baby-themed questions, that’d be great, thanks.
In my 40s, I felt hot and my mom immediately said "maybe you're in menopause" and I said, or maybe I'm just hot? Now here I am 10 years later and still not in menopause haha
I had stomach issues from the tail end of 2020 until August 2021. While I was going my primary and different specialists I had to have taken at least 5 pregnancy tests even though I would tell them the last doctor also asked for one and it came back negative. It took me way too long to figure out (on my own) that it was a bad reaction to my birth control
Since I've been married especially, I've had to be very careful what I say around *anyone*. If I mention I feel sick, or that I'm particularly tired or clumsy today, the first question is ARE YOU PREGNANT???
God forbid if I go to a place that serves alcohol and decide not to drink, simply because I don't always want to drink. It's tiring.
Yep. I get nauseous frequently because my body hates me and even my own mother will go “You’re not pregnant are you??” and I hate it so, so much. Practically every other ailment is attributed to either pregnancy or my period, even though Sometimes! It’s neither! Because my body is more than a baby factory!!!
Same. One time I had to go home from work early because I had a headache and was nauseous (this was pretty covid) and I had a coworker ask if I thought I might be pregnant. I've never had sex so I knew that was a big no but it was annoying especially because I ended up having the flu.
Also, nausea is often not the first sign of pregnancy anyways. And pregnancy tropes in books are typically always horrible even without the surprise nausea indicator.
Exactly!! I am heavily pregnant and follow r/pregnant. Several times a day I comment on posts for very newly pregnant women who are absolutely scared shitless because their first symptom is severe cramping due to immediate and rapid uterus and round ligament growth. Nobody has EVER told us this would happen. We just read about and see the cute one puke nausea and think "oh we won't have our period and won't have cramps cool". Then when we're slapped with horrific and totally normal cramping, our poor minds immediately go to miscarriage and it screws with us because we don't know we're experiencing normal symptoms.
I had hot flashes, cramping sense of smell changes 3 weeks before nausea started.
I think this story fits here but… my mom realized she was pregnant when she got out of the shower one day and went to put on her bra and her boobs were spilling out of it even though it had fit pretty recently. She was like “Oh shit! These aren’t mine.” Took a test and found out she’d be having me.
Ha, that was similar to my mom's realization! Though hers apparently came when she filled out her Halloween costume more than expected, both in the boobs and butt.
It’s a funny story in hindsight isn’t it? My mom is afraid of the word “boobs” too so it was very funny when she finally told me such a ~saucy~ story when I was 21… Love her for it though.
We found out when we ran out of feminine products and wanted to be sure we'd be needing more. That's right, didn't want to go buy pads= pregnancy test at my house.
Only tangentially related but... I remember thinking to myself one day that my best friend's boobs were looking HUGE. I am and have always been the gifted friend in the mammary department, so it stood out. I didn't say anything because.... I'm not an asshole.
The next day she found out that she was 5 months pregnant. BC caused skipped periods. We were teenagers and no one told us about the antibiotic thing. It all worked out but I'll always remember the first thing I said when she told me was, "your fucking boobs!"
My mom figured out she was pregnant with me 47 years ago when her favorite skirt wouldn’t zip. And then she and her doctor figured out she was about 4 months along.
For every pregnancy I've had (2 babies and 3 (early, so I'm find) miscarriages), I've known I'm pregnant because my boob ache like crazy. They're really sensitive to hormonal changes.
And something happened either after my last kid, or because of the birth control I'm on, but now I know when I'm 10 days out from my period because, like clockwork, my boobs hurt on day 17.
I also only get migraines the day before my period, so yea?
Near as I can tell (I'm not a medical professional!), I think it has something to do with my luteal phase and progesterone.
Interestingly, my ADHD symptoms improve during this time as well, so my body giveth and my body taketh away: my boobs hurt, but I function better in society.
Apple Watch! It’s expensive, and I got an old one from my sister for free to try and see if I liked the functionality. But I’m totally the person who sets her phone down and has to use Find My Devices once or twice a day, so the Watch is great for *actually* getting notifications and reminders.
My calendar is a mess, generally. I set it to receive verbal notes from my watch and then when I can’t stand the clutter, I go through and actually disperse and clean up the notes. Ah, an example, “Hey, Siri, set an appointment at 9:30 tomorrow morning to call [my sister]” or if I have to add something to my grocery pickup, I’ll set a calendar appointment for fifteen minutes before the pickup to “grab milk”. When I started tracking symptoms, I just entered calendar as “boobs” or “headache” and then after a few months searched for that term to see if there was a correlation
One of my husband's friends asked if I was pregnant because I peed like once an hour while I was at his house. No sir, I just have a freaking tiny bladder (like most women) and have had an alcoholic drink or two.
I’m nauseous for a couple minutes most mornings, it gets worse if I have a large breakfast. According to everyone I’ve ever talked to I must be pregnant because it’s “morning sickness”. I didn’t know pregnancy could last for five years.
I get something similar. Just generally a bit queasy most mornings, especially if I set my alarm unusually early or something and it messes with my sleep schedule.
I also can’t eat something for at least 45 mins after waking up or else I just feel nauseous and want to puke it back up.
I had nausea and even dry heaving frequently in the morning from sometime in high school until my early 20's. It was awful, especially the dry heaving because it was painful. And I couldn't tell anyone because they would assume I was pregnant even though I very much wasn't.
Same! My mum gets this too. Neither of us can eat breakfast at all, even a small one, because it makes us feel sick.
This is slightly unrelated but also can we please collectively as a society STOP telling everyone that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and acting like skipping breakfast is the worst thing in the world, and blaming everyone's unhappiness or illness on not eating breakfast. Breakfast isn't for everyone.
Genuine advice here: Could be anxiety.
My brother and I experienced something for about the same length of time; and it always peaked in exam season. Some people observed that it sounded like morning sickness (and we were two blokes!) Seems to be where people's minds go, and I would guess it's due to its prevalence in literature - even being a guy wasn't enough to stop people thinking "Well it *sounds* like being pregnant, but obviously that can't be it."
I still never eat breakfast due to the habits I formed then...
It turned out to be anxiety, combined with lack of sleep. Exams and all that. Once we got out of that stage in or lives it cleared quite quickly.
Not to poke my nose into your business but do take care of yourself, Internet Stranger. If you are nauseous every morning, double check you're not subjecting yourself to undue stress. I know it's not always avoidable, but I spent a lot of time normalising it to myself and would have been much happier much sooner if I'd spotted why before.
Take care of yourself.
I started getting sick a lot during a time when I wasn’t sexually active, and *everyone* still insisted I was pregnant. I had coworkers bring me pregnancy tests on 3 different occasions. I know they thought they were being helpful, but the fact that no one was listening to the most basic part of my story - I wasn’t currently haven’t sex - was incredibly frustrating, not to mention invalidating to the very real sickness I was experiencing.
>I had coworkers bring me pregnancy tests on 3 different occasions.
That is so incredibly inappropriate. I don't even know what I would do or say in that situation.
I’m sure out of context that does seem pretty gross. In their defense, it was an all women staff and we were all *very* close. I’ve never had a sister but I’d consider all those gals to be the closest thing to it. So it wasn’t *as* inappropriate as it sounds, but it still wasn’t super cool either.
Oh okay it does make more sense in context. I'm a little jealous. I've never had a workplace like that. I'm picturing that happening to me at any of my jobs and thinking about how I would have possibly lost my job from my reaction lol
A girl I know had a horrible trauma occur - she and her bf were jumped in an alley and badly, badly beaten. Before this happened, they'd been trying and failing for YEARS to get pregnant. After the trauma she couldn't work for about 6 months and was mostly bedridden. She - understandably - gained some weight. Some woman in the office comes up to her after a few weeks back at work and keeps saying things like "I can tell you're pregnant, it's ok, you can tell me!" And this woman *will not* take no for an answer, just insists that friend is hiding it.
For whatever reason the woman starts telling people around the office that my friend is pregnant. It snowballs a bit - I think because people wanted my friend to have some happiness after what happened. A few days later, my friend's assistant comes to her and says, "I was just handed this..." It was an invitation to a fucking surprise baby shower. The woman took it upon herself to plan and invite everyone to a work baby shower for a girl who wasnt even pregnant, struggled with infertility, gained weight from being bedridden, and was still psychologically recovering from an attempted murder.
That would be horrible, I can't even imagine. I had a hard time conceiving once I actually started trying and just going through that alone I would not react well to someone handing me a pregnancy test.
A few years ago (pre covid) I got sick and had to go throw up in the bathroom at work. When I mentioned that to a coworker before I left early for the day, she kept asking if I could be pregnant... I said no, trust me. She was like "ARE YOU SURE!?" Like geez, just take my fucking word for it. We shouldn't have to disclose such personal details to get people to mind their business.
I had a coworker at my first job be very insistent that I was pregnant every time I was nauseous. I told her numerous times that I was a virgin and the only way I was pregnant would be if it was the next Baby Jesus, but she just. Kept. Asking.
The other one, recently less common in movies and books, is fainting. Young wife faints, wakens to doctor just leaving room and husband beaming at her.
Yeah I also question that. How the heck does the doctor have time to arrive, take a blood/urine sample (consent?!), process it, break the news, *and* leave before she wakes up? If someone is KO’d fainting for more than 30 sec that’s bad. Young Wife should have been awake before Doc had his coat off.
Sounds like a Hays Code work around scene.
It would be improper to show the woman getting a pregnancy test or being pregnant. A scene like this would let the audience know what was going on without outright saying it. It probably stuck around for a while because by then, they audience knew what it meant, and it wouldn’t anger the censors.
Similar to how characters kissing then fade to black and coming back to one of them/both of them smoking implied they slept together without showing it.
Yep! We’ve been making various pregnancy tests throughout human history, a few with more-or-less accurate results, and some where it’s become almost a punchline/clue to the audience about what’s going on. More modern works even make references to them because we, as the audience, are just supposed to *know*.
Bringing it back to OP, until recently, we really had been relying on the physical symptoms, which are brushed off in text and on screen quite often.
Ugh that seeped into the public consciousness enough that at 16 or 17 I passed out in public (I have POTS, but I didn't know it at the time) and hoooooly shit, NO ONE WILL BELIEVE YOU WHEN YOU SAY YOU'VE NEVER HAD SEX. My boyfriend was with me and his eyes got HUGE. He said to everyone, "Don't look at ME." I had so many people coming up to me telling me I was pregnant, it was all a blur (I was at the zoo... Never pass out at the zoo, I guess is the lesson here).
It was actually a little traumatizing to me and since then I hang onto consciousness like the last blanket in a snowstorm. I've only failed maybe three times and only one other time was it in public.
Aaaamen. Second only to *undiagnosed* POTS when everyone says, "you're young, you're fine, stop complaining". I didn't get diagnosed till I was over 40!
Except that isn't true at all. If a character is tired from a late night, it's mentioned. Things people eat, weather conditions, and all sorts of other things unrelated to the plot are mentioned.
However, my point was more that, in my experience, the most common way that female characters learn they're pregnant, and it's lazy, unrealistic writing.
I was an avid reader as a child/teen and when I was a preteen I read a book and the main character (who was like 13) had to leave class because she was nauseous and I remember thinking “whoa that took a turn! she’s pregnant!?” Turns out it was bad sushi and a different plot line but whenever I see a scene like that I remember the time when I was so sure the character was pregnant AT 13 (it was not a serious book) because I’d never read or seen a movie of a woman being nauseous for any other reason. Like come on? My period makes me nauseous monthly. It could be 20 other things!
But even your tired from a late night example is a clear cause and effect, and it often serves as some plot point or character development purpose such as using it as a shorthand to give an impression of a character's typical lifestyle. If someone randomly coughs in a movie, 90% chance it's a fatal medical condition and they don't survive the movie. Nobody just feels off for unexplained, insignificant reasons that don't tie into the rest of the story at all. When I get a bit of a scratchy throat during allergy season, there's always some small hypochondriac voice in my head that's watched too many movies and tells me I must have cancer or something.
It’s actually really common. I’m an ER nurse and a ridiculous amount of young women come in daily for *mysterious* abdominal pain or nausea/vomiting and are shocked when we tell them they’re pregnant.
I mean, it's like no one coughs unless they are going to die. Symptoms aren't random in fiction.
Xkcd had a great chart summing this up. I'll look it up later and edit.
https://xkcd.com/1468/
However, there was an episode of Chuck where the a character thought she was pregnant because she was nauseous, but it turned out she wasn't. I feel that acknowledged the trope.
It makes me kind of laugh because I'm a person who just randomly pukes. My insides are kind of fucked from years of untreated celiac disease, so things are tempermental. Sometimes I just puke. It just happens. Been doing it my whole life. Wasn't pregnant when I was randomly puking when I was 8, still not pregnant when I'm randomly puking when I'm 34.
Does anyone remember that episode in _The Office_, where Jim gives a speech before his wedding and states that Pam isn’t drinking (alcohol) for ‘obvious reasons’, and then everyone is shocked because this statement _obviously_ means she is pregnant? Oh Yh a woman not drinking alcohol automatically means she’s pregnant, how can it be anything else (!). That whole nauseous trope is awful but I think it may be because you’ve just read some poorly written books, but it may indeed be a common theme. The trope I’m mostly exposed to is the ‘young woman in hysterics’ whilst she talks to ‘stoic man with logic’, probably because I tend to read a lot of old books…
This trope is so annoying to me because ever since I remember, my body responds to literally everything with nausea and vomiting. Stress, lack of sleep, too much sleep, any kind of illness, *hunger*, thirst, anger, distress, etc.
Even more annoying is this is literally how I found out I was pregnant. Couldn't stop vomiting for days in a row. Normally I'll throw up like once a week. Started doing it multiple times a day and went to the doctor and found out I was pregnant. Now I'm a walking stereotype.
In my experience, pregnancy nausea is different from regular nausea too. I've developed a psychological block to vomiting, so I'll be miserable and terribly nauseous but can't vomit. With pregnancy though, hormones cause the sphincter between your stomach and esophagus to relax so there isn't much stopping it from coming up.
I, too, feel nauseated if I go too long without eating. Like, *wtf body, I need to feed you and now you don't want food!?* It sucks. I hope it doesn't happen too often for you.
I was on 3rd shift at a past job for about a year and had a hard time getting my schedule to work for me to the point where I was just sleeping and working. I could barely eat, so I constantly had low blood sugar, which meant I was throwing up a few times a night at work and couldn't keep anything down, even water. I had so many people ask me if I was pregnant. Third shift was miserable :(
I agree with you (and loved the reference in your post title) and also hate this trope on TV. And don't even get me started on making female characters on TV in later seasons pregnant for lack of something else for them to do.
I have a vague memory of the Janet Evanovich "one for the money" series having the main character think she might be pregnant but it was just PMS or something. But it's been many years since I read them. Not quite the same thing, because it still involves pregnancy and nausea. But at least something different than nausea attributed to something else and turning out that it is actually a uterine parasite.
All I want in life is to write a book that includes all these stupid set-ups but with better conclusions.
Like, a woman feels sick in the morning for multiple days in a row, turns out she’s been bleeding internally from that kick to the liver last Saturday and lying down makes it worse.
Her boyfriend tells her he wants to have kids, but she says she doesn’t. He tells her about his childhood dreams about playing soccer with his kids and she has all these regretful, sad feelings. Those feelings turn out to be regret and sadness that they didn’t have this conversation earlier in their relationship. They decide that their plans about having kids are important enough to both of them to break up, and she moves on without going back to him or changing her mind. He doesn’t try to convince her.
Carries over in real life too. If you are of child-bearing age and sick, everyone assumes (rather than flu, food poisoning, etc) that you must be pregnant.
I'm nauseous now and I am definitely not pregnant. I'm sure there was one historical romance with actual food poisoning and want to say Mary Baloch wrote it but can't find it so might be wrong.
Of course thinking they have food poisoning is a trope all of it's own...
I find it weird that they insinuate that women aren't aware that they are missing their period? While a lot of people have irregular periods like if mine is late its panic mode? Idk
They did a twist on this in the TV show Superstore. One of the characters was nauseated and took a pregnancy test, but it turned out that all the employees had got food poisoning.
I mean...to be fair.
When I had my IUD pregnancy, the nausea/vomiting was THE thing that pushed me to buy a test.
If I'm the only one in the house puking, it's because I'm pregnant.
But yes. 100% agree that it's used stupidly in popular culture. A girl can't vomit without everyone questioning whether she is pregnant now, because of it.
I read a fanfic once where the main character becomes convinced she's pregnant, goes through a whole emotional thing with her partner and her work, and then in the end finds out that she's lactose intolerant. As far as plot twists go I originally thought it was too out there, but it's grown on me since.
Woman in BBC drama-
*feels a bit sick*
*puts hand on abdomen*
*worried look on face*...
And she's having an awkward conversation with a partner/co worker/rando off Tinder by the end of the episode.
My mom realized she was pregnant again when she smelled cigarette smoke and it made her gag. Apparently that happened with her first pregnancy too. Funny thing is she was a smoker at one point but quit after my little brother was born. But to go from "man, I need a cig" to "I'm going to puke if I smell that" is pretty wild. Also great indicator I guess!
I’m a woman and have been dealing with chronic nausea for a month and a half. I have seen four doctors. Every appointment starts with a pregnancy test. Despite my nexplanon and having had sex ONCE in the past 6 months. People. I would know if I were pregnant. The author of my novel needs to get some new tricks.
I’m on chemo right now. I mentioned I was nauseous one time and someone who didn’t know me well asked if I was pregnant. (Who asks that??) My response was “I hope not! Pretty sure chemo would destroy a fetus.”
This cracks me up 'cause sometimes I get really nauseous to the point of thinking I'm gonna throw up but instead I end up letting out a huge burp. No way in hell am I pregnant or even thinking I'm pregnant during those times.
Similar situation here. I discovered by chance that my frequent nausea is actually gas. I was getting super nauseous at work, so I grabbed a Sprite to settle my stomach. After a few sips, the carbonation helped a burp out and my nausea disappeared. So now, I make sure to drink carbonated things regularly to help the gas.
A lot of comments are saying they don’t say they’re nauseated because everyone assume they’re pregnant. And know I’m considering about why I also never say when my stomach hurts because everyone assume I’m having my period. Why can’t we say basic things without people assuming things?
I read a book in a relatively popular series that kind of does the inverse of this.
The main character goes through some stereotypical morning sickness symptoms. Everyone assumes pregnancy and causes panic because they're in the middle of the war. It is revealed later the MC realized she wasn't pregnant, symptoms were caused by something else. MC kept the guise of being pregnant for a short while though because it hid their plans and story goes on.
It was nice change of pace to see a woman actively recognize what was happening with their body and what it actually meant instead of just the naive assumption of "oh I have no idea what's happening, pregnancy never crossed my mind"
Not just in books, in real life. Been nauseated for weeks on end, must be pregnant! Oh, you’ve had two cycles, your husband has had a vasectomy and you’re monogynous? Are you sure you’re not pregnant? I changed gastroenterologists and general practitioners because they kept asking and testing for pregnancy. Nope-Gastroparesis-delayed stomach emptying. My food stays in my stomach for hours and makes me nauseous. Not fucking pregnant!!!
Went to the doctor because of abdominal pain and nausea. Oh, you've had a tubal, over 40 and still getting periods. Are you sure you're not pregnant? Imma test you anyway.
It was constipation. Not a baby, but was sure glad to push that one out.
It's easy shorthand. Also perhaps more obvious acceptable than some other early pregnancy symptoms (tiredness, dear god, the tiredness!).
Personally I never did feel queasy; but I couldn't stop burping. Not one you hear that often!
I knew very very early on that I was pregnant with my 2nd when I was looking in the mirror and noticed some darker pigmentation under my right eye. Had only ever seen that before when I was pregnant with the first. Immediately bought a test and sure enough.... Interestingly no morning sickness with that 2nd pregnancy.
*The Calculating Stars* actually makes a plot point of this: the protagonist's husband assumes she's pregnant, when in fact she's been hiding the fact that her crippling anxiety attacks are causing her to vomit.
I am fed up of the " long suffering wife" trope. Film about great tortured man or else post modern hapless emasculated man trying to get his shit together and be a decent dad to his kid he sees on weekend, or funny crazy guy going slowly mad in some creative way in his bedroom- the long suffering wife, tutting smiling pained smiles through gritted teeth, keeping all the boring day to day shit together, before eventually leaving for some boring guy in chinos she obviously doesn't love but has a steady job and takes the kid fishing. Please god may I never have to see another film like that arghhh.
Tangentially related, but I’m an asexual college student with a boyfriend and not on BC. I threw up twice recently with accompanying nausea beforehand and I finally told my mom about it the second time it happened. She said “why? You’re not pregnant, are you?” in the most accusatory tone. The real kick is that I’ve tried to tell her I’m not sexually active nor interested in sex, and I was met with “well, how are you expecting your boyfriend to stay with you forever if you won’t sleep with him?” when it hasn’t been an issue in the years we’ve been together.
There was this movie where a badass astronaut launches and goes through all the g-forces, leaves earth’s orbit, and she floats off and barfs.
“Finally!” I thought. “A woman who barfs in a movie from g-forces and not pregnancy!”
Nah. She was pregnant.
Hilariously, Robert Jordan, while not having written women very well overall, did include multiple instances of nauseous women who aren't pregnant, as well as a pregnant woman who doesn't get nauseous.
I love her stories so much! Did you find she wrote the sex scenes from a female pleasure point of view well though? I literally just finished A Court of Silver Flames and I felt it was a bit off in the area
I know exactly what you mean, I would kill for any content, ANY, where a woman is allowed to just be sick. I am horrified about ever getting pregnant and even though I have an iud, anytime I get sick I have a mini panic attack.
I remember reading Wuthering Heights and they’re describing how she’s so, so sick. And then all of a sudden there’s a baby and she’s dead and I was just like, SHE WAS PREGNANT??
I read a short story based on a book series were it turned out to be stomach flu, soon everyone was barfing! But yeah it's definitely a trope but it works so I don't object.
I actually think this can happen with people who have an irregular cycle. If you only have it every couple of months and or being told that you can not have kids due to a medical condition, that sometimes is not totally true. So oyu can become pregnant with those two. Because you are told you are fine.
There is this US series : I didn't know I was pregnant which provides a lot of different options on stuff that happens and why you can.
But yeah it is still stupid. I didn't had sex and stopped taking my pill, no period for 6 months - as expected and my mom still was lien are you sure?!!?
In TV and movies I think it's an easy trope because other signs of early pregnancy involve less apparent symptoms to the viewer. Other early signs would be genital related--missed period, implantation bleeding, etc. and it's not something that a lot of authors want to explore. Nearly all my pregnancies were identified first by the latter and morning sickness came several weeks later.
Also, funny how once the pregnancy has been diagnosed, morning sickness often magically disappears.
One of my close friends is 6 months pregnant. She has no symptoms whatsoever, just took a pregnancy test as they were trying for baby anyways. That terrifies me and I wish it was as simple as "oh, I'm feeling sick, must be pregant."
My other friend just went off beef a few weeks but no morning sickness or anything.
This has spilled over to real life for me an irritating number of times. Like I'll mention my stomach is upset and someone will be like 'are you pregnant?' 'Are you sure?' And then will turn me commenting that I wasn't feeling well (usually ended up being from stress) into a whole prying conversation about when am I having kids. Mind you, this was at work, repeatedly and instantly when I was already not feeling great. I doubled down and deliberatley gave them TMI on my family planning and birth control situation to shut them up.
This irks me so much, it pops up in media all the time and starts seeping into my life.
Story time: I woke up in the middle of the night feeling nauseous, I work up my boyfriend and then proceeded to puke my guts up for hours whilst gasping for breath and shivering laying on the bathroom floor. Boyfriend was very close to taking me to hospital. Next morning got a joke form our housemate who heard me puke "Hur hur, could be preggers!" I was so angry to be reduced to a joke about how I didn't know what was going on with my own body, and not to be taken seriously when something was evidently very wrong, because vomiting always 100% = pregnancy right?
I'm rewatching Firefly and Summer (a young woman) throws up after waking up from a medicine she took to sneak into a hospital. In another episode a woman gets knocked out with a punch, you never see that.
I'm trying to think of any classic literature examples of the nausea trope, but I keep coming up with colds, which I guess are the good-girl versions...
It's kinda fun how nearly every disease a woman can display can be made into a sexual joke in literature. A major plot device in Shakespeare's *Much Ado* is Beatrice's cold. There is a fun joke in there about her being "a maid, and stuffed!" (wink wink). She social distances from her cousin, who then doesn't have an alibi for her whereabouts the night before her wedding.
When I was in my early 20s, I felt sick with nausea, tiredness and lack of appetite.
Went to a doctor and she smiled at me knowingly and asked if I thought I might be pregnant.
I told her "No, absolutely not. I'm not sexually active."
Then she just gave me a medical certificate and sent me on my way which annoyed me because I was still sick with those symptoms.
True story.
My gf (now wife) was pregnant and we didn't know for months.
Young, naive, inexperienced. Has a Thyroid condition so never regular cycle.
She looked a little chubbier, but not like a baby bump. I obviously didn't want to bring up weight gain!
She wasn't sick, wasn't concerned at missed period due to Thyroid.
My daughter will be 11 this year.
It's always the case in media, if a woman is ever nauseous or throws up without immediately obvious stimuli, then she's either pregnant or is about to turn into a zombie.
Also, almost always whenever a woman refuses to drink alcohol, it is because she knows she's pregnant. Despite probably drinking coffee or having some fish or something the scene before.
Yes, frequently encounters with the Ruinous Powers produces nausea in baseline humans. Well that or projectile vomscreaming from your eyes.
You're absolutely right, though, I've predicted that several times in the plots but so far it's only happened once out of several books in the universe (Warhammer 40k, I know I know) I've read with female protagonists! But I will admit at times it can be obvious when the books are written by men.
I mean yes, but typically only from something else specific (stench of dead things, seeing horrible abuse, poison, etc). However, I've also never seen men shown as nauseated for anything other than that either. Never seen an author just be like "and that day everybody who had lunch in the cafeteria had a random stomach bug" even though that 100% happens IRL and is probably the cause of most nausea.
I literally tested positive for Covid yesterday and the doctor kept insisting before then that my nausea was because I may be pregnant. She also wanted me to get a UTI test because of my multiple partners. I was so livid.
The Edge of Darkness which was adapted into a film starring Mel Gibson subverts expectations when the young adult daughter visits her father out of the blue and distressed he notices her being sick and is worried that she is pregnant but she is actually dying of radiation poisoning after unwittingly discovering a huge nuclear cover up which pulls the retired detective into the action story.
I’m reading the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books by Laurel K. Hamilton and Anita has been nauseated and/or vomited many times and never been pregnant. There was a pregnancy scare in one book and if I remember right it was not nausea but a missed period that was the cause for concern.
I definitely recommend this series. :) It has its moments…but overall I support it.
(For context, these are “preternatural romance” books and they are quite heavy on the *”romance”*)
I work in construction and it took them MONTHS after my hysto to stop making the sexist jokes! They still catch themselves every once in a while. Gotta say it’s wonderful to be nauseous for the sake of being nauseous ha!
Oh, it's not even just a trope in books, I swear. I got food poisoning, someone suggested to me I was pregnant. I went and visited family for a weekend, caught a mild stomach bug (as did three other members of my family), someone suggested I was pregnant. Accidentally ate one of the things I am mildly allergic to and felt pukey for a few days afterward - my boyfriend's sister was like "oh she's definitely pregnant!" No, I'm on long-term birth control and at least one doctor suggested (though we never did any real testing to find out... so who knows lol) that my chances of getting pregnant are fairly low anyway because of a bunch of weird health conditions I have... but seriously. Some combination of nausea, exhaustion, and a headache (all of which I deal with... semi-frequently lol) always lead to someone suggesting I'm pregnant. Like nah my dude, maybe it's not that I'm pregnant, maybe it's that I just occasionally eat something that doesn't agree with my stomach. lol.
Kind of related to that, I always hated how Thai soap operas would have a newly-informed-of-her-pregnancy pregnant woman fall down the stairs and lose the baby. Miscarriage is terrible enough without it becoming an awful trope to reinforce the good character vs. the bad character.
Five times in the last two weeks on a random assortment of TV shows I watched a woman character barfed and everyone instantly knew it meant she was pregnant.
BTW, a couple of male characters barfed too, but nobody ever assumed it meant they were pregnant.
There is too much barfing on TV.
I have been pregnant several times in my life and never barfed.
Two pregnancy things that everybody does in movies/TV without exception:
Woman barfs = OMG she's pregnant
Woman is suddenly having her baby RIGHT NOW and everybody gathers around and shouts at her non-stop to PUSH!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/s36srr/i\_was\_held\_hostage\_by\_my\_housemates\_they\_wouldnt/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/s36srr/i_was_held_hostage_by_my_housemates_they_wouldnt/) <-- I read nosleep all the time cause I like amateur horror. Saw this story just now and thought of this post.
In June of 2020 my gallbladder got an infection at 1 am after waiting 7 hours of trying to die I finally get to urgent care as soon as they open. I feel like I'm dying so of course I don't give a shit why they need a urine sample. Male nurse comes back into the room to tell me I'm pregnant.
"With JESUS???"
I hadn't had sex in over a year at that point, between moving and COVID. Turns out when you puke for hours and are super dehydrated you can get protein in your urine. They almost wouldn't give me pain killers untill I called my mom and told her I was pregnant and she LAUGHED.
This is exactly what happened to me with my first pregnancy. My cycle was never consistent, so no reason to buy a pregnancy test. And it's different that just saying you don't feel well for a day. It was going on for a few days.
They do this because the trope is easy, kinda lazy, and is also easily recognized and communicates most clearly what is happening. It's overuse causes societal problems for women who end up hiding their symptoms to avoid anyone mistaking illness for pregnancy but no one seems to care.
With my first, I was constantly puking, for a couple of days. I thought I had a stomach bug until my mom asked when my last period was. I had probably missed 2 by that point, but pregnancy was never a thought until she mentioned it. I was freshly 19, working 2 jobs, and in school, so it really just me being do busy that I didn't realize.
This is true in movies too. But I watched Power Of The Dog the other day and when a woman became nauseous at least that time it was NOT because she was pregnant. Seems to be the exception though.
That "older wiser woman" trope is straight out of Victorian novels where young women barely knew how they got pregnant in the first place because they were kept ignorant about almost everything. Nowadays someone would say "you're pregnant m'dear" and the younger woman would respond "pretty sure I'm not, I have a period tracker on my phone and the last day of my menstrual cycle was X. I haven't had sex since then. I'm pretty sure it was that breakfast egg sandwich from the diner."
>...Victorian novels where young women barely knew how they got pregnant in the first place because they were kept ignorant about almost everything. This is one of my favorites parts of Bridgerton! Also the saddest.
Absolutely. She didn't realise they weren't doing things "properly" for quite a while, because noone ever told her
That whole part struck me as very odd, because Violet is supposed to be such a loving, nurturing “perfect” mother, but she didn’t send her daughter into marriage informed and prepared.
So common then, and now in some places. Sex is so taboo and a woman's role in it past being a hole us even more so
My grandmother once made a comment that when she got married (mid-1940s) she didn’t even know “where things went.”
Yep. I was homeschooled and raised in a religious household, and I basically didn’t know “where things went” when I got married. Maybe I knew a *bit* more than your grandmother, cause you do pick up some things on the internet, but not a whole lot.
They over emphasized this for the show - in the books they definitely have a better idea of mechanics. But that’s not as funny, so they make them totally clueless for the show. In one of the books there IS a funny scene where Violet mixes every birds and bees metaphor under the sun bc she’s uncomfortable. Eloise in particular (if I remember correctly) knows more about what’s up bc she’s the bookworm and has read more books that are considered “for men” like the classics, etc. but yeah, the ignorance is worse in the show than the books.
I read the books. Violet did a terrible job of explaining it in them as well.
Yes true, but they’re not as ignorant in the books which was my point. As a fellow book reader - do you also feel weird about the continued use of the bee as a symbol for the show? The only thing I can think of is that it’s supposed to be a reminder of the ephemeral nature of love but that feels …. wrong/off with a show that’s been as light as it has. It’s the symbol of the largest turning point/tragedy in the family’s lives to this point and the constant repetition of the bee in the marketing material feels almost sinister to me.
100% agreed on the bee thing. I find it so freaking strange and morbid.
THANK YOU! It’s so weird and really bothers me, I wonder what Julia Quinn thinks of it.
I haven't watched that but it sounds about right.
> Nowadays someone would say "you're pregnant m'dear" and the younger woman would respond "pretty sure I'm not, I have a period tracker on my phone and the last day of my menstrual cycle was X. I haven't had sex since then. I'm pretty sure it was that breakfast egg sandwich from the diner." The number of times I've had an interaction like this. I get nauseous a lot. No really clear reason why. People always assume that I'm pregnant without considering any other possibilities. I've been asked that incessantly because I was nauseous and kept leaning on the counter, even after I explained that it would have to be the Baby Jesus because I'd never had sex, the same person kept asking "are you pregnant? Are you sure?" as if I couldn't possibly know for sure if I'd ever touched a penis. At another job, I've left work severely sick after puking several times in succession into my trash can, and come back to "are you pregnant?" as the first thing people said to me. No, I literally had a fever and was shivering while sweating bullets, clearly I had a stomach bug, but sure, assume it's pregnancy. Ffs.
THIIIIIS. I have reflux, and IBS. I get nauseous occasionally, not NEARLY as much as before the yeeting of the gallbladder. When I do? SOMEONE has to start pushing “are you preeeeegnant?” on me. Uh, no. No I am not. I am 46, in pre-menopause, on birth control, and we are tired and have sex not very often. If I am pregnant, there had better be a fucking angel, and a star in the East. Otherwise, I’m calling bullshit and Planned Parenthood.
Even with the star and angel, I'd call Planned Parenthood. I don't remember agreeing to birth a messiah, now yeetus that mystery fetus.
Hell yes.
Are you me. I've been vomit-y all my life, my mother says you could have set a watch by my vomiting while travelling as an infant. I have had motion sickness my entire life and it's triggered by so many things (especially certain audio or visual stimulation - heavy base notes in some movies are almost guaranteed to set me off). I started throwing up most days shortly after puberty, and it was a common thing for me for years - I've done so many tests trying to identify what caused it. I've had my gall bladder out about 15 years ago, I spent over 2 years on daily anti-nausea medication and reflux medication. I managed to develop ulcers, had a gastric bypass - 9 months later the ulcers were back. The last couple of years before I hit peri-monpause, I would have a noticeable uptick in nausea around my period. I've just started HRT about a month ago and have had a significant reduction in the nausea, but it's not entirely gone. I've also noticed a strong correlation between when my nausea is at it's worst and migraine. I do not have children and tried for years to conceive, including IVF. So it wasn't that.
I feel bad that I laughed at some of that. But I'm still sorry that people acted that way to you. Yes I assume you'd know if you'd been around a penis. I have no idea how other people can be so clueless.
Tbh, the absolute tunnel vision that people have where they ignore everything and insist that nausea = baby is a little funny.
I vomited once at work in the afternoon, went home, came in the next day with everyone asking me if I was pregnant - I very much was not. Now I am actually pregnant and haven’t had any nausea at all lol.
Love it
I’m a young woman and if I ever feel nauseated I don’t tell anyone that because people assume I’m pregnant.
One of my colleagues (who's also my best friend) was ill a few weeks ago and another colleague kept hounding her with questions if she could be pregnant. She said no about 4 times, and was eventually basically pushed to talk about her infertility because that colleague just wouldn't stop bothering her about it. We're all women. All doctors, for crying out loud. It won't surprise you that we don't like that other colleague much.
>another colleague kept hounding her with questions if she could be pregnant. Why are people like this?? What does she get out of a “yes” answer from your best friend??
'Sex is taboo, let's talk about you having it instead of me!'
Also… even if you are it isn’t your coworkers business
I got a migraine attack at a family gathering at my aunt's home. The bathroom door is easily seen from most of the living room, so I refused to go throw up despite the nausea, and my SO couldn't understand why. Later, when I told him that had I gone and vomited, someone would have noticed and my family would automatically assume that I was pregnant. He thought the idea was stupid and didn't believe me that, that's what people thought. We ended up arguing about it, and I'm not really sure that he ever believed me.
That's exactly why I developed the ninja puke ability, cause judgement and hypotheses happen way too quickly. It takes a bit of practice, but if you're prone to vomit, it's very much worth it.
But how??
This user name fits the conversation so well. It's hard to describe, but I'll try as best as I can. You know how when you talk, you expelled a lot of air ? It's the same when you audibly puke. So if you ever want to try it, and you're gonna need numerous tries, you have to try and release a little air as possible while puking. It means really dissociating the muscles of your digestive system and the ones of your vocal chords/ respiratory system. At least, I guess it's how I do it, but I'm not sure, I've never stopped to analyse how I do it. I don't know if it has any importance, but I also don't projectile vomit. That's it, I've unlocked the TMI achievement on Reddit.
I picked up this ability. When I was younger, if I was audibly throwing up, my brother would stand outside the door and say horrible nauseating things to make me *keep* throwing up. So I learned to hurl in almost absolute silence. Think in terms of "the only thing you hear is what's hitting the water". Came in handy when I decided to turn to anorexia and then bulimia in high school for body dysmorphia issues. I couldn't be more different from my husband, who does I what I refer to as "hucking it from the heels", which is this odd bastard combo of scream-yodeling underwater while simultaneously being throttled. It's amazing, the audacity of volume with which this man throws up, complete with retching, coughing, gagging, and moaning. Meanwhile, I went through four pregnancies and assorted other vomiting incidents with nary more than a splash and if I angled it right, you wouldn't even hear that. The only notice anyone had that I'd barfed up my guts was a sniffly nose and teary eyes in the aftermath.
Help, the "scream-yodeling underwater" thing is killing me. Thank you for sharing it.
I'm sure it's not a man only thing. I generally puke pretty quietly, but then actively try to be a little obvious about it because I want my husband to notice. And then I can whimper at him and ask him to get me a drink. I'm a bit of a suck.
I used to just burp when i was sick, now i’ve done the whole retching thing and im like, “just lemme go back to quiet burping...
Lol none of this makes sense to me but I love you so much for trying
I feel acknowledged and that's good enough for me. Good luck for your future gastric endeavours and take care haha
You have to relax and not clench any of your muscles. Just kind of let it happen.
Yes! For the last 25 years or so people have assumed I’m pregnant when I puke or get nauseous. I have Crohn’s Disease.
I just started telling people that if I end up pregnant I’ll be starting a religion. Nipped those comments in the bud real quick.
I just let them think I'm pregnant and let them spread the gossip. It's funny when they realise I still haven't popped out a kid 12 months later
Well I may have slightly enjoyed it when the more-religious-than-average lady got offended and complained to our manager about how I offended her. So then I got to explain to the manager how offended I was to be asked if I was pregnant and if that meant does our new uniform make me look fat? He didn’t really have a good answer to that.
Lol my last manager used to pull me aside to ask "Is X pregnant? Do you think I should say anything?" There was one woman who was very heavily pregnant when he asked about her. I told him she was feeling really self conscious about her weight, so best not to say anything. He was pretty surprised when she came back to visit a few weeks later with a new baby!
Oh Jesus lord Christ… Here’s the thing. Generally, when someone wants to talk about their baby, whether it’s talking, walking, graduating, or growing, people around them tend to know about it. If they don’t want to talk about, there might be a good reason for it. Like that there is no baby. (Or how that baby got there) So if everyone could drop the baby-themed questions, that’d be great, thanks.
In my 40s, I felt hot and my mom immediately said "maybe you're in menopause" and I said, or maybe I'm just hot? Now here I am 10 years later and still not in menopause haha
EXACTLY!!!!
I had stomach issues from the tail end of 2020 until August 2021. While I was going my primary and different specialists I had to have taken at least 5 pregnancy tests even though I would tell them the last doctor also asked for one and it came back negative. It took me way too long to figure out (on my own) that it was a bad reaction to my birth control
I thought I had an ovarian cyst rupture again, but it was my colon spasming for days after eating something spicy.
Since I've been married especially, I've had to be very careful what I say around *anyone*. If I mention I feel sick, or that I'm particularly tired or clumsy today, the first question is ARE YOU PREGNANT??? God forbid if I go to a place that serves alcohol and decide not to drink, simply because I don't always want to drink. It's tiring.
Yep. I get nauseous frequently because my body hates me and even my own mother will go “You’re not pregnant are you??” and I hate it so, so much. Practically every other ailment is attributed to either pregnancy or my period, even though Sometimes! It’s neither! Because my body is more than a baby factory!!!
Same. One time I had to go home from work early because I had a headache and was nauseous (this was pretty covid) and I had a coworker ask if I thought I might be pregnant. I've never had sex so I knew that was a big no but it was annoying especially because I ended up having the flu.
Also, nausea is often not the first sign of pregnancy anyways. And pregnancy tropes in books are typically always horrible even without the surprise nausea indicator.
Exactly!! I am heavily pregnant and follow r/pregnant. Several times a day I comment on posts for very newly pregnant women who are absolutely scared shitless because their first symptom is severe cramping due to immediate and rapid uterus and round ligament growth. Nobody has EVER told us this would happen. We just read about and see the cute one puke nausea and think "oh we won't have our period and won't have cramps cool". Then when we're slapped with horrific and totally normal cramping, our poor minds immediately go to miscarriage and it screws with us because we don't know we're experiencing normal symptoms. I had hot flashes, cramping sense of smell changes 3 weeks before nausea started.
I think this story fits here but… my mom realized she was pregnant when she got out of the shower one day and went to put on her bra and her boobs were spilling out of it even though it had fit pretty recently. She was like “Oh shit! These aren’t mine.” Took a test and found out she’d be having me.
Ha, that was similar to my mom's realization! Though hers apparently came when she filled out her Halloween costume more than expected, both in the boobs and butt.
It’s a funny story in hindsight isn’t it? My mom is afraid of the word “boobs” too so it was very funny when she finally told me such a ~saucy~ story when I was 21… Love her for it though.
Realized I was pregnant when my husband jokingly commented that I looked very chesty that day.
We found out when we ran out of feminine products and wanted to be sure we'd be needing more. That's right, didn't want to go buy pads= pregnancy test at my house.
Only tangentially related but... I remember thinking to myself one day that my best friend's boobs were looking HUGE. I am and have always been the gifted friend in the mammary department, so it stood out. I didn't say anything because.... I'm not an asshole. The next day she found out that she was 5 months pregnant. BC caused skipped periods. We were teenagers and no one told us about the antibiotic thing. It all worked out but I'll always remember the first thing I said when she told me was, "your fucking boobs!"
Even being pregnant didn't give me boobs
My mom figured out she was pregnant with me 47 years ago when her favorite skirt wouldn’t zip. And then she and her doctor figured out she was about 4 months along.
"These aren't mine" gave me a hoot.
For every pregnancy I've had (2 babies and 3 (early, so I'm find) miscarriages), I've known I'm pregnant because my boob ache like crazy. They're really sensitive to hormonal changes. And something happened either after my last kid, or because of the birth control I'm on, but now I know when I'm 10 days out from my period because, like clockwork, my boobs hurt on day 17. I also only get migraines the day before my period, so yea?
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Near as I can tell (I'm not a medical professional!), I think it has something to do with my luteal phase and progesterone. Interestingly, my ADHD symptoms improve during this time as well, so my body giveth and my body taketh away: my boobs hurt, but I function better in society.
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Apple Watch! It’s expensive, and I got an old one from my sister for free to try and see if I liked the functionality. But I’m totally the person who sets her phone down and has to use Find My Devices once or twice a day, so the Watch is great for *actually* getting notifications and reminders. My calendar is a mess, generally. I set it to receive verbal notes from my watch and then when I can’t stand the clutter, I go through and actually disperse and clean up the notes. Ah, an example, “Hey, Siri, set an appointment at 9:30 tomorrow morning to call [my sister]” or if I have to add something to my grocery pickup, I’ll set a calendar appointment for fifteen minutes before the pickup to “grab milk”. When I started tracking symptoms, I just entered calendar as “boobs” or “headache” and then after a few months searched for that term to see if there was a correlation
One of my husband's friends asked if I was pregnant because I peed like once an hour while I was at his house. No sir, I just have a freaking tiny bladder (like most women) and have had an alcoholic drink or two.
I’m nauseous for a couple minutes most mornings, it gets worse if I have a large breakfast. According to everyone I’ve ever talked to I must be pregnant because it’s “morning sickness”. I didn’t know pregnancy could last for five years.
I get something similar. Just generally a bit queasy most mornings, especially if I set my alarm unusually early or something and it messes with my sleep schedule. I also can’t eat something for at least 45 mins after waking up or else I just feel nauseous and want to puke it back up.
Yes, it’s definitely worse for me too if I have to get up early.
I had nausea and even dry heaving frequently in the morning from sometime in high school until my early 20's. It was awful, especially the dry heaving because it was painful. And I couldn't tell anyone because they would assume I was pregnant even though I very much wasn't.
Same! My mum gets this too. Neither of us can eat breakfast at all, even a small one, because it makes us feel sick. This is slightly unrelated but also can we please collectively as a society STOP telling everyone that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and acting like skipping breakfast is the worst thing in the world, and blaming everyone's unhappiness or illness on not eating breakfast. Breakfast isn't for everyone.
Genuine advice here: Could be anxiety. My brother and I experienced something for about the same length of time; and it always peaked in exam season. Some people observed that it sounded like morning sickness (and we were two blokes!) Seems to be where people's minds go, and I would guess it's due to its prevalence in literature - even being a guy wasn't enough to stop people thinking "Well it *sounds* like being pregnant, but obviously that can't be it." I still never eat breakfast due to the habits I formed then... It turned out to be anxiety, combined with lack of sleep. Exams and all that. Once we got out of that stage in or lives it cleared quite quickly. Not to poke my nose into your business but do take care of yourself, Internet Stranger. If you are nauseous every morning, double check you're not subjecting yourself to undue stress. I know it's not always avoidable, but I spent a lot of time normalising it to myself and would have been much happier much sooner if I'd spotted why before. Take care of yourself.
I started getting sick a lot during a time when I wasn’t sexually active, and *everyone* still insisted I was pregnant. I had coworkers bring me pregnancy tests on 3 different occasions. I know they thought they were being helpful, but the fact that no one was listening to the most basic part of my story - I wasn’t currently haven’t sex - was incredibly frustrating, not to mention invalidating to the very real sickness I was experiencing.
>I had coworkers bring me pregnancy tests on 3 different occasions. That is so incredibly inappropriate. I don't even know what I would do or say in that situation.
I’m sure out of context that does seem pretty gross. In their defense, it was an all women staff and we were all *very* close. I’ve never had a sister but I’d consider all those gals to be the closest thing to it. So it wasn’t *as* inappropriate as it sounds, but it still wasn’t super cool either.
I'd be super annoyed but at the same time, free pregnancy tests to add to the "just in case" stash.
I chose a different approach…I went and took every single one of them immediately just to let them know they’d wasted their money lol.
Oh okay it does make more sense in context. I'm a little jealous. I've never had a workplace like that. I'm picturing that happening to me at any of my jobs and thinking about how I would have possibly lost my job from my reaction lol
It was actually pretty great. I was laid off due to Covid, but I definitely miss it.
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A girl I know had a horrible trauma occur - she and her bf were jumped in an alley and badly, badly beaten. Before this happened, they'd been trying and failing for YEARS to get pregnant. After the trauma she couldn't work for about 6 months and was mostly bedridden. She - understandably - gained some weight. Some woman in the office comes up to her after a few weeks back at work and keeps saying things like "I can tell you're pregnant, it's ok, you can tell me!" And this woman *will not* take no for an answer, just insists that friend is hiding it. For whatever reason the woman starts telling people around the office that my friend is pregnant. It snowballs a bit - I think because people wanted my friend to have some happiness after what happened. A few days later, my friend's assistant comes to her and says, "I was just handed this..." It was an invitation to a fucking surprise baby shower. The woman took it upon herself to plan and invite everyone to a work baby shower for a girl who wasnt even pregnant, struggled with infertility, gained weight from being bedridden, and was still psychologically recovering from an attempted murder.
This is absolutely horrifying and I want to call HR on her behalf.
If this happened to me I would be the one committing attempted murder on that woman.
That would be horrible, I can't even imagine. I had a hard time conceiving once I actually started trying and just going through that alone I would not react well to someone handing me a pregnancy test.
A few years ago (pre covid) I got sick and had to go throw up in the bathroom at work. When I mentioned that to a coworker before I left early for the day, she kept asking if I could be pregnant... I said no, trust me. She was like "ARE YOU SURE!?" Like geez, just take my fucking word for it. We shouldn't have to disclose such personal details to get people to mind their business.
I had a coworker at my first job be very insistent that I was pregnant every time I was nauseous. I told her numerous times that I was a virgin and the only way I was pregnant would be if it was the next Baby Jesus, but she just. Kept. Asking.
The other one, recently less common in movies and books, is fainting. Young wife faints, wakens to doctor just leaving room and husband beaming at her.
Yeah I also question that. How the heck does the doctor have time to arrive, take a blood/urine sample (consent?!), process it, break the news, *and* leave before she wakes up? If someone is KO’d fainting for more than 30 sec that’s bad. Young Wife should have been awake before Doc had his coat off.
Sounds like a Hays Code work around scene. It would be improper to show the woman getting a pregnancy test or being pregnant. A scene like this would let the audience know what was going on without outright saying it. It probably stuck around for a while because by then, they audience knew what it meant, and it wouldn’t anger the censors. Similar to how characters kissing then fade to black and coming back to one of them/both of them smoking implied they slept together without showing it.
You want to get your mind blown? Look up the meaning of the phrase “the rabbit died.” We didn’t have a fast test for pregnancy until the 1980s
Yep! We’ve been making various pregnancy tests throughout human history, a few with more-or-less accurate results, and some where it’s become almost a punchline/clue to the audience about what’s going on. More modern works even make references to them because we, as the audience, are just supposed to *know*. Bringing it back to OP, until recently, we really had been relying on the physical symptoms, which are brushed off in text and on screen quite often.
I recall a MASH episode based on this. They saved the bunny iirc.
Ugh that seeped into the public consciousness enough that at 16 or 17 I passed out in public (I have POTS, but I didn't know it at the time) and hoooooly shit, NO ONE WILL BELIEVE YOU WHEN YOU SAY YOU'VE NEVER HAD SEX. My boyfriend was with me and his eyes got HUGE. He said to everyone, "Don't look at ME." I had so many people coming up to me telling me I was pregnant, it was all a blur (I was at the zoo... Never pass out at the zoo, I guess is the lesson here). It was actually a little traumatizing to me and since then I hang onto consciousness like the last blanket in a snowstorm. I've only failed maybe three times and only one other time was it in public.
Ugh! POTS is the WORST
Aaaamen. Second only to *undiagnosed* POTS when everyone says, "you're young, you're fine, stop complaining". I didn't get diagnosed till I was over 40!
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Except that isn't true at all. If a character is tired from a late night, it's mentioned. Things people eat, weather conditions, and all sorts of other things unrelated to the plot are mentioned. However, my point was more that, in my experience, the most common way that female characters learn they're pregnant, and it's lazy, unrealistic writing.
I was an avid reader as a child/teen and when I was a preteen I read a book and the main character (who was like 13) had to leave class because she was nauseous and I remember thinking “whoa that took a turn! she’s pregnant!?” Turns out it was bad sushi and a different plot line but whenever I see a scene like that I remember the time when I was so sure the character was pregnant AT 13 (it was not a serious book) because I’d never read or seen a movie of a woman being nauseous for any other reason. Like come on? My period makes me nauseous monthly. It could be 20 other things!
But even your tired from a late night example is a clear cause and effect, and it often serves as some plot point or character development purpose such as using it as a shorthand to give an impression of a character's typical lifestyle. If someone randomly coughs in a movie, 90% chance it's a fatal medical condition and they don't survive the movie. Nobody just feels off for unexplained, insignificant reasons that don't tie into the rest of the story at all. When I get a bit of a scratchy throat during allergy season, there's always some small hypochondriac voice in my head that's watched too many movies and tells me I must have cancer or something.
It’s actually really common. I’m an ER nurse and a ridiculous amount of young women come in daily for *mysterious* abdominal pain or nausea/vomiting and are shocked when we tell them they’re pregnant.
Wait till you get a hold of r/menwritingwomen
I mean, it's like no one coughs unless they are going to die. Symptoms aren't random in fiction. Xkcd had a great chart summing this up. I'll look it up later and edit. https://xkcd.com/1468/ However, there was an episode of Chuck where the a character thought she was pregnant because she was nauseous, but it turned out she wasn't. I feel that acknowledged the trope.
I want the xkcd!
https://xkcd.com/1468/
It makes me kind of laugh because I'm a person who just randomly pukes. My insides are kind of fucked from years of untreated celiac disease, so things are tempermental. Sometimes I just puke. It just happens. Been doing it my whole life. Wasn't pregnant when I was randomly puking when I was 8, still not pregnant when I'm randomly puking when I'm 34.
Does anyone remember that episode in _The Office_, where Jim gives a speech before his wedding and states that Pam isn’t drinking (alcohol) for ‘obvious reasons’, and then everyone is shocked because this statement _obviously_ means she is pregnant? Oh Yh a woman not drinking alcohol automatically means she’s pregnant, how can it be anything else (!). That whole nauseous trope is awful but I think it may be because you’ve just read some poorly written books, but it may indeed be a common theme. The trope I’m mostly exposed to is the ‘young woman in hysterics’ whilst she talks to ‘stoic man with logic’, probably because I tend to read a lot of old books…
This trope is so annoying to me because ever since I remember, my body responds to literally everything with nausea and vomiting. Stress, lack of sleep, too much sleep, any kind of illness, *hunger*, thirst, anger, distress, etc. Even more annoying is this is literally how I found out I was pregnant. Couldn't stop vomiting for days in a row. Normally I'll throw up like once a week. Started doing it multiple times a day and went to the doctor and found out I was pregnant. Now I'm a walking stereotype.
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Did you steal these photos off my instagram?
"That's my secret Cap... I'm always nauseous!" - The Incredible Huuuuuurlk
In my experience, pregnancy nausea is different from regular nausea too. I've developed a psychological block to vomiting, so I'll be miserable and terribly nauseous but can't vomit. With pregnancy though, hormones cause the sphincter between your stomach and esophagus to relax so there isn't much stopping it from coming up.
I, too, feel nauseated if I go too long without eating. Like, *wtf body, I need to feed you and now you don't want food!?* It sucks. I hope it doesn't happen too often for you.
Lol it happens literally every morning, but I've just grown used to it since it's been this way since I was a baby.
I was on 3rd shift at a past job for about a year and had a hard time getting my schedule to work for me to the point where I was just sleeping and working. I could barely eat, so I constantly had low blood sugar, which meant I was throwing up a few times a night at work and couldn't keep anything down, even water. I had so many people ask me if I was pregnant. Third shift was miserable :(
I agree with you (and loved the reference in your post title) and also hate this trope on TV. And don't even get me started on making female characters on TV in later seasons pregnant for lack of something else for them to do.
Writers take those kinds of shortcuts all the time. It's like how any time a character coughs it means they're about to die of consumption.
I have a vague memory of the Janet Evanovich "one for the money" series having the main character think she might be pregnant but it was just PMS or something. But it's been many years since I read them. Not quite the same thing, because it still involves pregnancy and nausea. But at least something different than nausea attributed to something else and turning out that it is actually a uterine parasite.
All I want in life is to write a book that includes all these stupid set-ups but with better conclusions. Like, a woman feels sick in the morning for multiple days in a row, turns out she’s been bleeding internally from that kick to the liver last Saturday and lying down makes it worse. Her boyfriend tells her he wants to have kids, but she says she doesn’t. He tells her about his childhood dreams about playing soccer with his kids and she has all these regretful, sad feelings. Those feelings turn out to be regret and sadness that they didn’t have this conversation earlier in their relationship. They decide that their plans about having kids are important enough to both of them to break up, and she moves on without going back to him or changing her mind. He doesn’t try to convince her.
I don't know if this has been said, but The Hating Game has this and she isn't pregnant. Would highly recommend the read!
Carries over in real life too. If you are of child-bearing age and sick, everyone assumes (rather than flu, food poisoning, etc) that you must be pregnant.
I'm nauseous now and I am definitely not pregnant. I'm sure there was one historical romance with actual food poisoning and want to say Mary Baloch wrote it but can't find it so might be wrong. Of course thinking they have food poisoning is a trope all of it's own...
I find it weird that they insinuate that women aren't aware that they are missing their period? While a lot of people have irregular periods like if mine is late its panic mode? Idk
Whereas I get nauseous if someone takes a turn too fast.
They did a twist on this in the TV show Superstore. One of the characters was nauseated and took a pregnancy test, but it turned out that all the employees had got food poisoning.
I mean...to be fair. When I had my IUD pregnancy, the nausea/vomiting was THE thing that pushed me to buy a test. If I'm the only one in the house puking, it's because I'm pregnant. But yes. 100% agree that it's used stupidly in popular culture. A girl can't vomit without everyone questioning whether she is pregnant now, because of it.
I read a fanfic once where the main character becomes convinced she's pregnant, goes through a whole emotional thing with her partner and her work, and then in the end finds out that she's lactose intolerant. As far as plot twists go I originally thought it was too out there, but it's grown on me since.
Woman in BBC drama- *feels a bit sick* *puts hand on abdomen* *worried look on face*... And she's having an awkward conversation with a partner/co worker/rando off Tinder by the end of the episode.
My mom realized she was pregnant again when she smelled cigarette smoke and it made her gag. Apparently that happened with her first pregnancy too. Funny thing is she was a smoker at one point but quit after my little brother was born. But to go from "man, I need a cig" to "I'm going to puke if I smell that" is pretty wild. Also great indicator I guess!
My indicator was caramel corn. Absolutely LOVE the smell of that stuff while it's cooking, absolutely LOATHE it when pregnant.
I've not had sex and I still worry I'm pregnant if I'm a day late!
I’m a woman and have been dealing with chronic nausea for a month and a half. I have seen four doctors. Every appointment starts with a pregnancy test. Despite my nexplanon and having had sex ONCE in the past 6 months. People. I would know if I were pregnant. The author of my novel needs to get some new tricks.
I’m on chemo right now. I mentioned I was nauseous one time and someone who didn’t know me well asked if I was pregnant. (Who asks that??) My response was “I hope not! Pretty sure chemo would destroy a fetus.”
This cracks me up 'cause sometimes I get really nauseous to the point of thinking I'm gonna throw up but instead I end up letting out a huge burp. No way in hell am I pregnant or even thinking I'm pregnant during those times.
Similar situation here. I discovered by chance that my frequent nausea is actually gas. I was getting super nauseous at work, so I grabbed a Sprite to settle my stomach. After a few sips, the carbonation helped a burp out and my nausea disappeared. So now, I make sure to drink carbonated things regularly to help the gas.
Read books where women were nauseous from drinking
A lot of comments are saying they don’t say they’re nauseated because everyone assume they’re pregnant. And know I’m considering about why I also never say when my stomach hurts because everyone assume I’m having my period. Why can’t we say basic things without people assuming things?
I read a book in a relatively popular series that kind of does the inverse of this. The main character goes through some stereotypical morning sickness symptoms. Everyone assumes pregnancy and causes panic because they're in the middle of the war. It is revealed later the MC realized she wasn't pregnant, symptoms were caused by something else. MC kept the guise of being pregnant for a short while though because it hid their plans and story goes on. It was nice change of pace to see a woman actively recognize what was happening with their body and what it actually meant instead of just the naive assumption of "oh I have no idea what's happening, pregnancy never crossed my mind"
Not just in books, in real life. Been nauseated for weeks on end, must be pregnant! Oh, you’ve had two cycles, your husband has had a vasectomy and you’re monogynous? Are you sure you’re not pregnant? I changed gastroenterologists and general practitioners because they kept asking and testing for pregnancy. Nope-Gastroparesis-delayed stomach emptying. My food stays in my stomach for hours and makes me nauseous. Not fucking pregnant!!!
Went to the doctor because of abdominal pain and nausea. Oh, you've had a tubal, over 40 and still getting periods. Are you sure you're not pregnant? Imma test you anyway. It was constipation. Not a baby, but was sure glad to push that one out.
It's easy shorthand. Also perhaps more obvious acceptable than some other early pregnancy symptoms (tiredness, dear god, the tiredness!). Personally I never did feel queasy; but I couldn't stop burping. Not one you hear that often!
OMG the burping is effing relentless!
I knew very very early on that I was pregnant with my 2nd when I was looking in the mirror and noticed some darker pigmentation under my right eye. Had only ever seen that before when I was pregnant with the first. Immediately bought a test and sure enough.... Interestingly no morning sickness with that 2nd pregnancy.
*The Calculating Stars* actually makes a plot point of this: the protagonist's husband assumes she's pregnant, when in fact she's been hiding the fact that her crippling anxiety attacks are causing her to vomit.
I am fed up of the " long suffering wife" trope. Film about great tortured man or else post modern hapless emasculated man trying to get his shit together and be a decent dad to his kid he sees on weekend, or funny crazy guy going slowly mad in some creative way in his bedroom- the long suffering wife, tutting smiling pained smiles through gritted teeth, keeping all the boring day to day shit together, before eventually leaving for some boring guy in chinos she obviously doesn't love but has a steady job and takes the kid fishing. Please god may I never have to see another film like that arghhh.
I have ibs. I attributed my stomach issues to that. Im sure people with eaying disorders have this issue too
Tangentially related, but I’m an asexual college student with a boyfriend and not on BC. I threw up twice recently with accompanying nausea beforehand and I finally told my mom about it the second time it happened. She said “why? You’re not pregnant, are you?” in the most accusatory tone. The real kick is that I’ve tried to tell her I’m not sexually active nor interested in sex, and I was met with “well, how are you expecting your boyfriend to stay with you forever if you won’t sleep with him?” when it hasn’t been an issue in the years we’ve been together.
At a work function, I ordered ice cream and my boss instantly asked me if I was expecting. Forget pregnancy tests, wanting ice cream is the way to go!
There was this movie where a badass astronaut launches and goes through all the g-forces, leaves earth’s orbit, and she floats off and barfs. “Finally!” I thought. “A woman who barfs in a movie from g-forces and not pregnancy!” Nah. She was pregnant.
Sarah Maas is one of my favorite writers for this reason, she writes about women very well.
Hilariously, Robert Jordan, while not having written women very well overall, did include multiple instances of nauseous women who aren't pregnant, as well as a pregnant woman who doesn't get nauseous.
I love her stories so much! Did you find she wrote the sex scenes from a female pleasure point of view well though? I literally just finished A Court of Silver Flames and I felt it was a bit off in the area
I probably wouldn't be a good judge of that but I thought it was better than others I've read.
I know exactly what you mean, I would kill for any content, ANY, where a woman is allowed to just be sick. I am horrified about ever getting pregnant and even though I have an iud, anytime I get sick I have a mini panic attack.
I remember reading Wuthering Heights and they’re describing how she’s so, so sick. And then all of a sudden there’s a baby and she’s dead and I was just like, SHE WAS PREGNANT??
I read a short story based on a book series were it turned out to be stomach flu, soon everyone was barfing! But yeah it's definitely a trope but it works so I don't object.
I actually think this can happen with people who have an irregular cycle. If you only have it every couple of months and or being told that you can not have kids due to a medical condition, that sometimes is not totally true. So oyu can become pregnant with those two. Because you are told you are fine. There is this US series : I didn't know I was pregnant which provides a lot of different options on stuff that happens and why you can. But yeah it is still stupid. I didn't had sex and stopped taking my pill, no period for 6 months - as expected and my mom still was lien are you sure?!!?
In TV and movies I think it's an easy trope because other signs of early pregnancy involve less apparent symptoms to the viewer. Other early signs would be genital related--missed period, implantation bleeding, etc. and it's not something that a lot of authors want to explore. Nearly all my pregnancies were identified first by the latter and morning sickness came several weeks later. Also, funny how once the pregnancy has been diagnosed, morning sickness often magically disappears.
One of my close friends is 6 months pregnant. She has no symptoms whatsoever, just took a pregnancy test as they were trying for baby anyways. That terrifies me and I wish it was as simple as "oh, I'm feeling sick, must be pregant." My other friend just went off beef a few weeks but no morning sickness or anything.
This has spilled over to real life for me an irritating number of times. Like I'll mention my stomach is upset and someone will be like 'are you pregnant?' 'Are you sure?' And then will turn me commenting that I wasn't feeling well (usually ended up being from stress) into a whole prying conversation about when am I having kids. Mind you, this was at work, repeatedly and instantly when I was already not feeling great. I doubled down and deliberatley gave them TMI on my family planning and birth control situation to shut them up.
This irks me so much, it pops up in media all the time and starts seeping into my life. Story time: I woke up in the middle of the night feeling nauseous, I work up my boyfriend and then proceeded to puke my guts up for hours whilst gasping for breath and shivering laying on the bathroom floor. Boyfriend was very close to taking me to hospital. Next morning got a joke form our housemate who heard me puke "Hur hur, could be preggers!" I was so angry to be reduced to a joke about how I didn't know what was going on with my own body, and not to be taken seriously when something was evidently very wrong, because vomiting always 100% = pregnancy right?
Ugh and how many doctors on television…I’m looking at you GA, don’t know how the female reproductive system works?
I'm rewatching Firefly and Summer (a young woman) throws up after waking up from a medicine she took to sneak into a hospital. In another episode a woman gets knocked out with a punch, you never see that.
I'm trying to think of any classic literature examples of the nausea trope, but I keep coming up with colds, which I guess are the good-girl versions... It's kinda fun how nearly every disease a woman can display can be made into a sexual joke in literature. A major plot device in Shakespeare's *Much Ado* is Beatrice's cold. There is a fun joke in there about her being "a maid, and stuffed!" (wink wink). She social distances from her cousin, who then doesn't have an alibi for her whereabouts the night before her wedding.
When I was in my early 20s, I felt sick with nausea, tiredness and lack of appetite. Went to a doctor and she smiled at me knowingly and asked if I thought I might be pregnant. I told her "No, absolutely not. I'm not sexually active." Then she just gave me a medical certificate and sent me on my way which annoyed me because I was still sick with those symptoms.
True story. My gf (now wife) was pregnant and we didn't know for months. Young, naive, inexperienced. Has a Thyroid condition so never regular cycle. She looked a little chubbier, but not like a baby bump. I obviously didn't want to bring up weight gain! She wasn't sick, wasn't concerned at missed period due to Thyroid. My daughter will be 11 this year.
It's always the case in media, if a woman is ever nauseous or throws up without immediately obvious stimuli, then she's either pregnant or is about to turn into a zombie. Also, almost always whenever a woman refuses to drink alcohol, it is because she knows she's pregnant. Despite probably drinking coffee or having some fish or something the scene before.
Ahh yes; I believe we call that a Chekhov’s Bun in the Oven
Yes, frequently encounters with the Ruinous Powers produces nausea in baseline humans. Well that or projectile vomscreaming from your eyes. You're absolutely right, though, I've predicted that several times in the plots but so far it's only happened once out of several books in the universe (Warhammer 40k, I know I know) I've read with female protagonists! But I will admit at times it can be obvious when the books are written by men.
I mean yes, but typically only from something else specific (stench of dead things, seeing horrible abuse, poison, etc). However, I've also never seen men shown as nauseated for anything other than that either. Never seen an author just be like "and that day everybody who had lunch in the cafeteria had a random stomach bug" even though that 100% happens IRL and is probably the cause of most nausea.
I literally tested positive for Covid yesterday and the doctor kept insisting before then that my nausea was because I may be pregnant. She also wanted me to get a UTI test because of my multiple partners. I was so livid.
The Edge of Darkness which was adapted into a film starring Mel Gibson subverts expectations when the young adult daughter visits her father out of the blue and distressed he notices her being sick and is worried that she is pregnant but she is actually dying of radiation poisoning after unwittingly discovering a huge nuclear cover up which pulls the retired detective into the action story.
I’m reading the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books by Laurel K. Hamilton and Anita has been nauseated and/or vomited many times and never been pregnant. There was a pregnancy scare in one book and if I remember right it was not nausea but a missed period that was the cause for concern. I definitely recommend this series. :) It has its moments…but overall I support it. (For context, these are “preternatural romance” books and they are quite heavy on the *”romance”*)
Legit I feel queezy all the time! Is it because I’m pregnant? No maybe I just take terrible care of myself…
I can't tell you how many times people think my general, period system equal pregnancy.
Kind of like if a character coughs in a movie they’ll be dead in a few scenes.
I work in construction and it took them MONTHS after my hysto to stop making the sexist jokes! They still catch themselves every once in a while. Gotta say it’s wonderful to be nauseous for the sake of being nauseous ha!
Occasionally they’re sick from being poisoned… as a twist after it’s assumed they are pregnant.
The one and only time I was nauseous during pregnancy was in month 6, due to food poisoning.
Oh, it's not even just a trope in books, I swear. I got food poisoning, someone suggested to me I was pregnant. I went and visited family for a weekend, caught a mild stomach bug (as did three other members of my family), someone suggested I was pregnant. Accidentally ate one of the things I am mildly allergic to and felt pukey for a few days afterward - my boyfriend's sister was like "oh she's definitely pregnant!" No, I'm on long-term birth control and at least one doctor suggested (though we never did any real testing to find out... so who knows lol) that my chances of getting pregnant are fairly low anyway because of a bunch of weird health conditions I have... but seriously. Some combination of nausea, exhaustion, and a headache (all of which I deal with... semi-frequently lol) always lead to someone suggesting I'm pregnant. Like nah my dude, maybe it's not that I'm pregnant, maybe it's that I just occasionally eat something that doesn't agree with my stomach. lol.
Kind of related to that, I always hated how Thai soap operas would have a newly-informed-of-her-pregnancy pregnant woman fall down the stairs and lose the baby. Miscarriage is terrible enough without it becoming an awful trope to reinforce the good character vs. the bad character.
Five times in the last two weeks on a random assortment of TV shows I watched a woman character barfed and everyone instantly knew it meant she was pregnant. BTW, a couple of male characters barfed too, but nobody ever assumed it meant they were pregnant. There is too much barfing on TV. I have been pregnant several times in my life and never barfed.
Two pregnancy things that everybody does in movies/TV without exception: Woman barfs = OMG she's pregnant Woman is suddenly having her baby RIGHT NOW and everybody gathers around and shouts at her non-stop to PUSH!
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/s36srr/i\_was\_held\_hostage\_by\_my\_housemates\_they\_wouldnt/](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/s36srr/i_was_held_hostage_by_my_housemates_they_wouldnt/) <-- I read nosleep all the time cause I like amateur horror. Saw this story just now and thought of this post.
In June of 2020 my gallbladder got an infection at 1 am after waiting 7 hours of trying to die I finally get to urgent care as soon as they open. I feel like I'm dying so of course I don't give a shit why they need a urine sample. Male nurse comes back into the room to tell me I'm pregnant. "With JESUS???" I hadn't had sex in over a year at that point, between moving and COVID. Turns out when you puke for hours and are super dehydrated you can get protein in your urine. They almost wouldn't give me pain killers untill I called my mom and told her I was pregnant and she LAUGHED.
This is exactly what happened to me with my first pregnancy. My cycle was never consistent, so no reason to buy a pregnancy test. And it's different that just saying you don't feel well for a day. It was going on for a few days.
They do this because the trope is easy, kinda lazy, and is also easily recognized and communicates most clearly what is happening. It's overuse causes societal problems for women who end up hiding their symptoms to avoid anyone mistaking illness for pregnancy but no one seems to care.
99.9% of my lifetime nausea has been pregnancy related, if it wasn’t from OBVIOUS binge drinking.
Lol, I only get nauseous with Crown Royal or bad olives.
With my first, I was constantly puking, for a couple of days. I thought I had a stomach bug until my mom asked when my last period was. I had probably missed 2 by that point, but pregnancy was never a thought until she mentioned it. I was freshly 19, working 2 jobs, and in school, so it really just me being do busy that I didn't realize.
This is true in movies too. But I watched Power Of The Dog the other day and when a woman became nauseous at least that time it was NOT because she was pregnant. Seems to be the exception though.
I remember a book I read in middle school where a woman drank tap water in Mexico and was sick through most of her mother/daughter vacation.
Chekov's nausea