Go Ask Aunt Becky
Dear Aunt Becky,
Any good books out there re. pregnancy over 40? Most of what I see deals with fertility and/or doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty (breastfeeding vs. copious sag tit, etc…). Seriously, would appreciate any advice. We can dial it down to “over 35,” if that helps.
Regards,
Terry
Pranksters? I have no personal experience, Terry, so I’m going to let my Pranksters take this one.
I wish you the best of luck, mah friend. Tit sag is a BITCH.
Dear Aunt Becky,
Sooo… my older brother has been loud and proud for 15 years and I’ve always been more than supportive of him, having a blast at gay bars, going to dinner with the new flavor of the week, honestly, I don’t care (and never have cared) that he’s gay.
The thing is.. my brother is an asshole. That’s the part I don’t like. I’ve offered up my place for him to host parties and come home to find everything broken and condoms everywhere. Oh and a passport under my bed from a boy I’ve never met who had just turned 18 years old. Not fucking cool. So, no more parties. My brother has no respect for other people. He’s 32 and lives at my parents place.
Blah blah blah.. it just came to my attention that my brother’s new boyfriend of a few months used to do a lot of gay porn. I was sent the link.. it’s the new boyfriend.. and well, I mean to each their own, but I’m just not really cool with embracing a man whose images I can’t get out of my head.
No one in the family knows except for me and the family is in love with him. It looks like he’ll be around for a long time. And honestly, I don’t even know if my brother knows about his boyfriend’s past.
I have a ton of question for you.. but the main one is, how the hell do I handle this???
Thanks Aunt Becky!
Dear Prankster,
If it seems like this dude is going to be around forever, I’d go ahead and try and remember all those pictures we took in Cancun, that one drunken night, then decided to repost on The Facebook. Not that porn is the same as those stupid photos of my boobs from Cancun, but you get the idear.
I know your brother is an asshole, but perhaps you can take aside his partner and make sure he’s clean. You know, free from The Crotch Rot? Because honestly, that’s the only thing I can really take issue with or worry about. I mean, if he’s still making porn, there’s prolly another discussion to be had.
Other than that, try not to picture that dude getting plowed while you pass the potatoes on Thanksgiving and remember that we all have unsavory bits in our past.
Good luck, Prankster.
Dear Aunt Becky,
Why the fuck do people wear white shirts and jeans for family portraits? Is there some special meaning or is it just a god-awful trend (using the word trend liberally)? I’m not one for professional portraits (neglectful mom) so the whole idea of any kind matching outfit or let’s-all-look-over-our-shoulders-whilst-at-the-beach is abhorrent to me.
But why THIS particular outfit? I’ve seen it before, and I’m all MORMON! but now I think it’s a THING. What is it? (Besides something insignificant that bothers me too much for no reason. AKA people dipping everything they eat into ranch dressing).
Thank you,
Kristin
Dear Prankster Kristin,
I think that the whole matching white shirt and jeans thing is probably caused by people who are actually being held for ransom by the mafia. Like they’re taking these pictures to send a warning to friends and family, which is why they send YOU a copy (also: me). They’re saying, don’t FUCK with the mob or the MOB will fuck you BACK (by making you wear white shirts and jeans so you “match” your family, just like you’ll wear “matching” cement shoes into the river).
I cannot think of any other good reason for the uncomfortably posed, matching clothes pictures. Really, who goes and sits around a fake fireplace together, giving each other those sappy fucking grins?
PEOPLE BEING HELD AT GUNPOINT, THAT’S WHO.
Pranksters, any better idears?
—————–
As always, Pranksters, please submit your questions to Go Ask Aunt Becky and you, too, may receive a totally pointless response from me.
My only thought on the jeans and white shirts thing: it may be the only outfit everyone has without having to go shopping for a new outfit. Also, it’s stupid, though I am trying to talk my husband into a Horrible Christmas Sweater picture for the holiday cards and the lulz
damn, i missed that picture. twas a good day.
I have a college friend. His mom was 41 when she had him.
He SWEARS to me he didn’t get breast milk when he was an infant. He mentioned it was more like cottage cheese.
With the gay story, I laughed a little bit. My sister in law just came out as Bi, and the girl she’s dating is known as the town bicycle. I’ve seen the gf in bars, I know what most of her lady bits looks like. It’s jarring, and I have trouble taking her seriously.
All you can really do is let the relationship run its course. Their relationship doesn’t revolve around me, and the same can be said to the Prankster asking the question.
Good advice, as usual.
Your Merry Prankster,
Lost in Idaho
Your advice to the person whose brother is an asshole is great! I agree, a history of porn should not be a deal-breaker or even something to judge a person for.
Also, I love Kristin! I hate those posed, color-coordinated photos and despise people who dip everything in ranch dressing! Hilarious!
We are twins! Ranch dressing is my inanimate arch nemesis.
I had my second child a couple months shy of my 40th birthday, 14 years after my first child. I didn’t have any books that addressed this type of thing but I do have some personal comparissons. 1) be prepared for every. Single. Doctor. to comment on your age at every. Single. Appointment. He phrase advanced maternal age seriously began to piss me off after a few months. 2) be prepared for more tests. I’m glad I did my tests. The results wouldn’t have changed my decisions but knowledge is power. 3) breast feeding. Didn’t bf the first but did the second and the only difference I noted in post baby was the fact the girls were bigger for longer. 4) I was tired and swollen more with baby 2. But that can happen when you’re younger too. Drop me a line if there is anything more I can help with. I will say I have considerably more patience as I’m older. Congrats and happy pregnancy!
As the photo thing goes…if you have people who lack coordinating clothing, it is better to have a dress code. Otherwise you have four people and eight different plaid designs. Also, white is the easiest to match. Every size and gender can find a white shirt and blue jeans. (do you know how many shades of red there are, for example – a buttload) Because it is so neutral it will be difficult to embarrass yourself in ten years with that image (haircut aside).
That was my guess too. Everyone has jeans and usually a white shirt.
As for brother, gay or not, time me thinks sister needs to set some boundries on what jerk brother can do to HER. No more parties at her place for one, showing her some respect for another. She might want to relay her concern over brother’s lover (and if he has nasty diseases, in a nice way of course) to her brother and if he listens, he listens. If I were her I would just worry about the relationship she has with her brother and how she needs a little more RESPECT from him.
And Ewww. Seeing anyone have sex and then socializing would be awkward! Why on earth was this woman sent the link?!
I would like to say that it is pregnancy itself that really messes with the boobs, not just breastfeeding. Don’t want saggy tatas? Don’t grow old.
I was going to point that out as well. The changes in your breasts that can make them saggy afterwards occur during pregnancy whether you breastfeed or not. Breastfeeding will keep them looking better for as long as your doing it though ;).
Re the pictures of people wearing white shirts and jeans.
I used to work in
hella photo studio. The idea(or so I was told) is that there will not be a bunch of clashing colors that will distract from the faces of the family. It is also works well as the group gets larger and larger. We had a group of 15 come in, and it worked pretty well since they were all wearing the white shirts and jeans. There were reports that it helped prevent bickering and fights with the kids over what they were wearing. T-shirts are an inexpensive way to make it all tidy and matching. Many of them are barefoot because that keeps the nasty, dirty, holey shoes/socks out of the pictures also.I am a big fan of the white shirts and jeans ever since my wife told me that it makes me look hot. I don’t care if everyone else is wearing it. I don’t care if it becomes the new uniform for greeters at the Wal-Mart. I don’t care if Justin Bieber wears it in his next video. It is my signature outfit now, and I cannot be stopped. Looking for denim jammies so I can wear it to bed. Very sorry about this of course, but you only go round once in life so you gotta make it count.
After 35 it doesn’t matter if you breastfeed or not, you are going to sag if you get pregnant. You probably will eventually anyway, but pregnancy alone will bring this on. Breastfeeding just plumps them up for longer. No books seem to cover it. Also, I was 29 and 31 when I had my kids, and I breastfed, and my boobs totally sag and it gets worse with time. So don’t let it be a factor in your decision.
Gay brother who is a douche – it’s fine to not care for your brother because he’s a douche and not care about his sexual orientation. He’d be just as much a douche if his parties were with girls, and his boyfriend would still be a bit of the town bicycle even if he was a she. I would try not to imagine him naked, or in the pornos. I would let that bit of history be between him and your brother.
White shirt and jeans – I personally have no problem with this. It’s better than the family picture my oldest sister tried to pose us for in all black and white – and she wore off-white and grey. On the rare occasion when we try to do a family portrait now I go for relaxed/casual, but not all matchy. I am not wearing the frilly pink poof dress my daughter would choose.
I’m not all Mormon, but I am roughly half Mormon. I detest white shirts with jeans — especially for pictures — and I have a real problem with the excessive dunking of virtually anything that’s edible into ranch dressing. (Actually, i hate ranch dressing.) We may he twins that were separated at birth. actually I’m alrady a twin, so you may have been one-third of a set of triplets who were divided.
Alexis
My dreams of meeting my separated-at-birth twin (nay, triplet!) are finally realized! Now. Let’s go pillage and burn down a little place called Hidden Valley, shall we?
I have torches. We can burn the place to the ground.
Totally guilty of white shirt and jeans in the family pic. But hey, it was the first family pic when my son was 3 months old and I was still in a fog of PPD. I look at the pictures and don’t even remember whole periods of time during that time. Like it was an out of body experience!
I am not down with the White Shirts Jeans Photos. But damn I want to dress my family alike and take awful Christmas photos. You know why to torture my husband that’s why. He would have to wear awful matchy Christmas sweaters with the boys, and my kids won’t even be Land Shark for mommy for Halloween, so those photos will be my pay back, like HAHA bitches you should have just dressed as Land Shark. But I digress, I think there may have been an episode of Modern Family that they took photos in White shirts and jeans and the trend seems to have exploded from there. But I could be wrong. I usually am.
One time my entire immediate family dressed as nuns for some event — even my dad and brother, although they looked more like Shiites. I still have the picture of the four of us dressed as nuns. It was the year before I was Trailer Trash Barbie, I think, so I was maybe six.
Oh! A few years ago we had family portraits taken, and the lady at the photo place said “try to all wear black or all wear white so we can get the backgrounds right.”
First of all, that is a ridiculous requirement because it leaves no room for creativity or fashion. Secondly, it opens up EVERY FAMILY to have pictures of themselves in white shirts with jeans (because they have to match, and no one wants to look like a family of matching waiters with white shirts and black pants).
This is an awful trend, and one that needs to stop by no longer going to photo places at Wal-Mart, Target, Sears and the like. If you want family portraits taken, spring for a professional. For sure.
I had my second child this past January, two weeks shy of 39. If you have specific questions and/or would like to talk via e-mail, feel free to hit me up. Otherwise, here’s my take:
The body doesn’t bounce back as quickly. One is no longer as bendy, and some things seem to want to swell, puff, tingle or twinge without rhyme or reason.
Heartburn has nothing to do with baby having hair and everything to do with your body wondering “WTF???”
Thank you to any God who is listneing for Yoga pants.
There are a lot more tests, and doctors tend to want more discussions about worrying things that involve genetic screening.
Lack of sleep is more difficult to get over than it was in college…but pulling an all-nighter with the bottle NOW is much nicer, I think.
Tits sag no matter what, If you can breast feed and would like to, do. If kneeling on your nipples when you’re fifty is off-putting, there’s always your friendly neighborhood plastic surgeon. The Tit Fairy skipped over me while visintg pregnant women, and I am still pissed…but even my tiny tatas spend more time staring down at the floor than looking up at the world around them – that’s the result of a lifetime of gravity, not gravidity.
Babies are born perfectly healthy to women of all ages.
Shade and Sweetwater,
K
K, I understand wanting to keep all the mis-matched patterns out of a family portrait, because, well, it’s distracting. But I never understood the whole “Let’s match EXACTLY” posed, fake picture type of thing. Isn’t a picture supposed to capture who the family actually is? Give everyone a general dress code and let them dress how they want so that Stepford isn’t mentioned when someone looks at your picture. Have some originality, people!
I am 37 and five months pregnant. This is our second child. The very freaking worst thing is, just like the previous poster said EVERYONE WILL TELL YOU HOW OLD YOU ARE ALL THE TIME. Your pregnancy will be more heavily monitored as you are somewhat more likely to have problems than a younger woman such as gestational diabetes( got that last time) high blood pressure(yep) and an early delivery( nope). I was totally unprepared for how many times I had to say ‘No thank you I do not want genetic screening for Down Syndrome etc. We are keeping this baby no matter what” I was actually given a Would You Terminate? flow chart. It was both amazeballs and awful. What we did was choose a hospital to deliver at that has a level 3 NICU just in case. But the difference in how I am treated between 35 and 37 is pretty obvious. If we have a third I will be 40 and they will probably just have a lawyer follow me with a disclaimer the size of Santa’s list for that one.
You do have more patience as an older Mom. As for the sadly saggy titties…oh yeah. REPRESENT! However I informed my husband that when we are done we can hike them back up and he can choose any size he wants. I would skip a book, since all pregnancies are as individual and just focus on being healthy and making sure to pay attention to your body. Good luck!