Ranting & Venting

Pregnancy makes a temper worse; it shortens your fuse. And I have a short enough fuse anyway, so I spend a lot of my time either biting my tongue or apologizing lately. So I think this may be the post where I vent about stupid little things I'm bright enough to leave alone in real life. So here goes:

1. Don't look at my transluscent, glowing legs and shake your head, or tell me I "need" to get some sun. Don't say, imply, or suggest that the color of my skin is inferior or undesirable. I refuse to dye my skin brown or submit myself to cancer-causing tanning beds, or even just waste time lying around in the cancer-causing sun, because people think I was born the wrong color. I am not pasty, or deathly pale, or corpse-like. If I were a paint color, I would be Northern European White, and I think that's just fine.
   
2. Don't tell me that my 2 previous healthy pregnancies, one with gestational diabetes, are irrelevant to this one because "every pregnancy is different" and then tell me every woman needs a third trimester ultrasound. If every pregnancy is different then tests should be administered based on a particular pregnancy, not as a blanket policy.
3. If you have diabetes, and it is not gestational diabetes and didn't start out as gestational diabetes, don't pretend you know anything about gestational diabetes. A diabetic woman who becomes pregnant is at MUCH higher risk than a pregnant woman who develops diabetes. Quite simply, having high blood sugar while a baby is forming can cause horrible birth defects that developing gestational diabetes after the baby is (for the most part) formed does not cause. Running around telling women with GD that the sky will fall and their babies may die if they accidentally mis-measure one meal helps NO ONE.
4. If you bitch about getting dirty looks because you smoke while pregnant, you forfeit the right to blab on about the dangers of vaccinations. You just do. You can't bring back polio because you're such a health freak if you're sucking down Marlboros with your Prenate vitamins. And don't even start about the organic food. Yes, my children eat brussels sprouts that might have been touched by chemical fertilizer, but they eat them in a smoke-free home.
5. Don't tell me how horrible epidurals are. I have had 2 and they are fine. There is a relatively low risk with them, but everything has a risk to it (including birthing children in the first place), and no one I have ever met has had any problems with an epidural. They have never slowed my labor down; on the contrary they have sped it up both times. I like a bit of relief with my pain and who are you to judge me for it?
6. Don't judge me for what my ancestors did. I have one adopted parent and one descended from Amish stock. Now until my mother dies and I (maybe) find out who birthed her, I have no hope on that side, so I would like to be able to go back more than 3 generations on my dad's side. But since someone left the faith a hundred years ago, we're all shunned and no one will tell us anything! I love when people tell me to just go to ancestor.com. Like the Amish upload stuff!