UO Thursday

AdaByron

Please... think about what you're about to say. 

Or don't, whatev.

But FFS don't end your post with "flame away" if you can't actually handle the flames.

greenbean-2

Ooh I have one this week. 

I think Sophie the Giraffe is creepy-looking. Something about those eyes...  

Of course, this practically guarantees that someone will buy one for us and it will be LO's favorite thing. 

LuLiLaEv

It drives me nuts when people complain about how tired they are because of daylight saving time.

It's an hour, people. 

munchkinsmama

@GreenBean I have made it through 3 kids with no Sophie, it can be done!

My UO I don't get sexy maternity photos. As in are they for you, will you be showing them to your child at some point. And for the life of me I can't understand posting a photo of your pregnant bump on FB in a full length see through lace nighty with just a thong. I guess it's just not my thing and I find it odd/disturbing.

I don't mind the long sheet in the wind type, just the actual like Frederick's of Hollywood magazine spread with a baby bump type. There is tastefully done and just grab some attention trashy.

Mrs.EmmaLouise

I think it's bad luck to buy baby stuff so early. My girlfriends at work keep asking me what I want/need for the baby and I keep deflecting. I haven't decided at what point it's no longer bad luck. V-day? Third-trimester? 30w? 35w? Full term? Birth? 6months old? 18 years old?

star_beagle

To tack onto @munchkinsmama's UO - I think all maternity photo shoots are a waste of time and money. I get that some people want artsy photos of their pregnant belly to commemorate the event...but, really? AW much? I feel the same way about engagement photos. Such a waste of time and money.

LuLiLaEv

@GreenBean I agree Sophie is creepy looking. I don't know what it is about that toy that babies go crazy over. DD still loves it at 16months.

@munchkinsmama I agree with the "sexy" maternity photos, but @lfk2013, did you get wedding photos taken? Do you take yearly family pics?
I don't really see how getting maternity or engagement photos are any more AW? We've done yearly photos, starting with when we got engaged, it's fun to look back and see how much our little family has changed and gone through.

kat0607

I have one that goes along with @munchkinsmama also: I'm not a fan of boudoir style bridal photo shoots. Maybe it's just not my personality, but I would never want to give DH a whole photo album of me wearing lingerie. We both can be really goofy and weird, which I love about our personalities and relationship, and I just could never take myself seriously enough to do a photoshoot in lingerie.

PurplePumpernickel

LuLiLaEv said:

It drives me nuts when people complain about how tired they are because of daylight saving time.

It's an hour, people. 

I get irrationally annoyed when people mis-use the term Daylight Savings Time. DST begins in March. Standard time begins in early November. So when you're complaining about Daylight Savings Time taking away the light at the end of the day on Nov. 8, you're wrong.

kat0607

PurplePumpernickel said:

LuLiLaEv said:

It drives me nuts when people complain about how tired they are because of daylight saving time.

It's an hour, people. 

I get irrationally annoyed when people mis-use the term Daylight Savings Time. DST begins in March. Standard time begins in early November. So when you're complaining about Daylight Savings Time taking away the light at the end of the day on Nov. 8, you're wrong.

I guess I'm stupid because somehow I never knew this. I just thought both time-changes were "daylight savings time" HAHA now I know.

kghusker1003

I totally believe in ghosts/spirits.  I think they are real, and places are haunted.  

greenbean-2

@lfk2013 We didn't do engagement photos but a couple years ago we got a groupon for a photo shoot to just get some fun, professional photos of us looking "normal" and not like a bride and groom. My parents actually convinced us to do this because they love looking back at old photos of themselves and marveling at how young they once were (we used to get the Sears family photos every few years).  

ETA: I'm sure some people do this sort of thing for the attention but we just shared the photos with our families and hung a copy in our bedroom. 

squirttheturtle

Mrs.EmmaLouise said:

I think it's bad luck to buy baby stuff so early. My girlfriends at work keep asking me what I want/need for the baby and I keep deflecting. I haven't decided at what point it's no longer bad luck. V-day? Third-trimester? 30w? 35w? Full term? Birth? 6months old? 18 years old?

I have a friend whose family doesn't have showers until the baby is at least a month old.  The think it's bad luck to throw showers because so much can happen before the baby is born.  She and her husband ended up buying all the essentials that they needed for baby's first month and then got a lot of cash and gift cards after his birth/for her shower.  

I guess I fall in the camp of being over prepared.  We have only purchased essentials and since we are team green, nothing is gender specific and (heaven forbid) if something happened, we would be able to use it again, but I do get what you are saying.

re: maternity photos.  I understand having pictures of you and DH (and other kids, if you have them) taken before baby to commemorate the time, but the 'sexy' maternity photos, um, no.  Even thou I love my body and am comfortable in my own skin, there is something about boudoir photos that make me uncomfortable.  Give me the field of wild flowers and flowy dress any day.  

nktrodden826

Oh god, I'm totally that person that has professional photos taken for every occasion. DH probably hates me- but I will say I hate going to someone's house and seeing tons and tons and tons of pictures of them posted everywhere different shapes frames that are just different photos of the two of them. Talk about AW- my husband hates having too many photos of us because he says it makes us look self centered. We have our wedding photos and my sons baptism photo hanging in our house, the rest are paintings or canvas art. But I guess if I'm wasting all this money I should start hanging them everywhere! 

ginger1228

Re: pregnancy pics. My cousin thinks she's a photographer (she borrows her dad's nice camera sometimes) and she wants to take maternity pics of me. I've told her absolutely not. I'm just not that person. I'm okay if it was like a family gathering and people wanted to do pics, but I don't want a whole photo shoot of me and my belly. I think she expects payment and I'm not paying for picture of me that I'll never do anything with. I'm surely not going to hang them on my walls. I'm fine having pics of me pregnant, but I don't need "professional" ones. 
It's not that I'm self conscious of my body or anything. I just don't want or need a photo shoot. 

PurplePumpernickel

I'm even avoiding taking pics of myself for HDBD, so good on y'all wanting to commemorate how you look pregnant!

mamaspraggie

I'll be getting professional maternity photos, but not the cliche nude belly ones. I purchased a beautiful renaissance looking dress to wear. My personal reason for wanting pro photos is because I just haven't felt beautiful this pregnancy. My husband has been all over me more than ever but personally I feel like a fat squishy blob, which has been hard since I struggle with eating disorders and body image issues. I want gorgeous photos so I can look back at them and hopefully realize how beautiful my pregnancy was and forget about all the negative ways I felt and see that any of the weight I gained still looked beautiful on me. I think I can speak for quite a few women who can't fully grasp how lovely pregnancy can be, and I think pro photos showcase it. 

But like I said that's my reason, but if someone wants to get them just because they like them, I don't see why not. 

Anyway, I guess my UO is I don't like when women smoke weed when pregnant. Or at least excessively and think it's still ok. My SIL who is also pregnant (I told about this situation in the WTF Wednesday thread), smokes everyday multiple times a day because she "needs to get an appetite". She's in the first trimester, and I've tried telling her it's ok to lose a bit of weight and not have a big appetite in the first trimester but she won't believe me and thinks it's healthier to smoke than skip a meal. 

I say it's an unpopular opinion because I tried researching about it, and a bunch of threads from different sites and even this one were full of women saying it's ok to smoke. THey didn't say how much, just that it's ok. So of course my SIL read through these and thinks it's fine. 

But I also found studies that suggest it may lead to long term brain damage, but they aren't completely "solid" so no one references them. 

I just dont understand why women would take the risk of smoking anything without knowing 100% what the side effects could be. Better safe than sorry is what I think. 

PurplePumpernickel

@mamaspraggie I saw on another thread you haven't posted in a while - you must have missed our secondhand weed smoke drama. If you need a laugh/eyeroll, search for it on this board.

kat0607

@mamaspraggie that's definitely not an unpopular opinion here. Also, unless every single person on the board is a certified physician, discussion boards are hardly a resource if you're looking for actual scientific facts and studies. The two aren't even comparable in terms of valuable information.

LM1007

kghusker1003 said:

I totally believe in ghosts/spirits.  I think they are real, and places are haunted.  

This. This. Very much so. Ironically this was gonna be my UO. I definitely believe it as well. 

KissMeImScottish

Regarding having photos around the house, I have to disagree that it's attention-whorish. Maybe a little dated in some cases (I often associate the photo gallery decor style with my grandparents), but my home is a private space where I live and am raising my family. Having photos scattered around the home that tell that story makes the home personal to me. Posting them all over social media, that definitely merits more careful discussion (in our case, we are military and have friends and family literally scattered all over the world, so photos on social media platforms allow grandparents and aunts and uncles and other relatives to stay abreast of our life, something they have expressed interest and delight in). But my home is not a gallery or a showroom. It is my personal space, a safe place for my family, and, especially as a military family that rarely has the ability to stay in one place for long enough to "personalize" a home, photos help to make the house feel like it's ours.

HOWEVER, I am 100% behind the weirdness of the boudoir shot and sexy maternity photos thing. I could maybe see taking boudoir shots for my husband if he were about to deploy (again, different lifestyle, separations of over half a year, you stay intimate however you can), but they certainly would not be taken with the intent of showing them to the world or our children.

nktrodden826

kghusker1003 said:

I totally believe in ghosts/spirits.  I think they are real, and places are haunted.  

Um, absolutely. My old town house was haunted. Legit, haunted. I love watching stuff on tv about it but living in it was awful. We purchased the town house in April and had it for sale again in Sept. 

mamaspraggie

@kat0607 well I'm glad that's not unpopular here! I'm a couple months behind so I feel like I've missed everything lol. But trust me, I know these boards aren't a resource, but try telling that to a stubborn 18 year old. Ugh. 

@ktewart I totally get the photos around the house because of the military. It really does make it feel more at home. On another note though, I'd skip the sexy photo shoot for deployment if they're going to be printed only because of what happened on my husbands last deployment. Maybe on a phone, but that's it. Last deployment a wife sent her husband a printed sexy photo, which wasn't allowed, and it got in the wrong hands aka the command. Needless to say she had her photo posted on a bulletin board the duration of the deployment and everyone knew exactly who she was at the homecoming lol. I think I'll pass on the sexy photos haha

LM1007

hk

squirttheturtle

My UO is that while Pinterest is great for getting ideas, there are some things that you should just keep to yourself.  My SIL has a PUBLIC board of her 'dream baby shower'.  I'm side eyeing her so hard right now.  

I guess that I just live in the world where baby/bridal showers are an honor and not something that is expected and if someone is throwing one FOR you, you graciously accept whatever they offer.   

KissMeImScottish

@mamaspraggie, oh, trust me, I tend to be much more conservative than that. But - and I don't know what branch your husband serves with - things run a little differently on subs. We can't mail things to the boat, so the only actual mail-in-hand that they would be getting is if I send an envelope with a trusted friend who is going to a port call (and even then, I wouldn't usually send photos with that - it's usually a car or letter that commemorates a specific holiday or special event they missed). What we usually do with hard copy stuff is send a series of envelopes with our husbands when they leave that they open over the course of deployment. The racks are sacred, since there's so little privacy and personal space on a sub - you do not, under any circumstances, go into another sailor's rack (you WILL get accused of stealing and there's no faster way to mast), and especially not in the Chief's quarters (where my husband sleeps). And with only 130 guys onboard, it's already a pretty tight community. You literally know each and every man (and on some boats now, women) in the command personally. It's a different world. -shrug-

All of that aside, because it's a different world, we are required to do a lot more planning before they leave, thanks to the lack of communication. Halfway boxes are pretty much all they have to look forward to, aside from what we plan ahead for to send them in their sea bag that will fit in the rack pan. So usually maybe a bundle of letters. We go 60+ days without communication, since emails can only be sent when the boat is at periscope depth and isn't dark because of whatever their mission is at the time, so letters and pictures inside those letters are literally everything.

PurplePumpernickel

I think it is a tad invasive to drug test expectant mothers.

ETA Especially if we're doing so if we don't believe they are clean. There is a huge drug problem in this country right now (US, I believe the opioid epidemic has also hit Canada). If women fear drug testing by OBs if they are pregnant, they probably won't seek prenatal care at all.

LM1007

@PurplePumpernickel You're right, I didn't think of it like that. 

Edit: idk what happened to my original reply.

KissMeImScottish

@PurplePumpernickel, this is a hard one for me. I don't disagree with you at all about the women fearing repercussions and thus not seeking care being something to avoid. However, I also don't think not knowing about drug use is healthy either, for both mom and baby. I think my issue lies instead somewhere in the way we handle those cases with threats of removing the baby or scare tactics.

ETA: I don't profess to have an easy answer on hand. Just that I don't think playing dumb or turning a blind eye is the answer.

mamaspraggie

@ktewart my husband is in the Army so we don't have to deal with the no mail part of the Navy and subs. But it sounds like they at least respect privacy on the ships. There's little respect for that in the Army and people think it's ok to just take what they want. We don't have communication whenever they leave to train for months or are on missions overseas, so taking hard copy photos is pretty much a must, but no one dares to give them risqué things because we all know that when they're in the field sleeping in a foxhole, their buddy right next to them isn't going to just look the other way. 

My husband wishes he joined the Navy after getting the treatment he's had in the Army. his dad was a sailor for 20 years and thought it would be basically the same for every branch. Definitely isn't though. The only thing that's the same for everyone is how tough it can be for families. 

satsumasandlemons

nktrodden826 said:

kghusker1003 said:

I totally believe in ghosts/spirits.  I think they are real, and places are haunted.  

Um, absolutely. My old town house was haunted. Legit, haunted. I love watching stuff on tv about it but living in it was awful. We purchased the town house in April and had it for sale again in Sept. 

we went through the home buying process a little over a year ago and one of the things i looked for was turnover and how fast homes went back on the market because I'd immediately think ghosts. 

KissMeImScottish

@mamaspraggie, amen on the hard on families part. This isn't easy under any circumstances, and it's worse when they're on sea duty (I don't know the Army's equivalent rotation). All the respect in the world to you. My husband was in Afghanistan in 2009 and I cannot express enough the respect I have for Army wives that wait through multiple deployments to war zones. At least my husband's job on the boat is to NOT be found - I can pretend for my sanity that he's bored out of his mind most of the time, if only to keep my anxiety in check. You have to be one damn strong woman to make it as an Army wife. My husband just left for an underway the other day after a very long transfer leave and it's messing with my pregnancy-hormone-addled brain and emotions more than it probably should (we've been doing this for the better part of a decade - you'd think I'd be used to this by now!)

Privacy is non-existent in most areas of the boat, and since they literally live inside the steel sardine can for six months with no respite (I think my husband said his record underwater without coming up to PD at all is 123 days - food loadout is usually only 100 days, so rations get right if you push that number), the small amount of personal space they have is sacrosanct. I don't know how that translates onto the surface ships, but like I said, subs are their own world. And with the current climate of intigrating women onto subs, I can't imagine a command doing what you described with a photo - it would be a really, really good way for a captain to get himself fired and for others to be charged with sexual assault (the LPO of my husband's division on his last boat - the guy my husband replaced - was literally walked off the boat in handcuffs and arrested on pier at homecoming because it was discovered he was sleeping with the wife of another guy on the boat. They take that sort of thing very, very seriously in the sub community, and it's absolutely within the captain's power to get the offender sent to mast, put on restriction, thrown out of the navy, etc.) Especially in our case - like I said, my husband sleeps in the Chief's quarters. There are only 18 men in there, they don't touch each other's racks, and the racks have curtains for privacy and light blocking, since they work in three shifts and someone is always going to bed as someone else is getting up. So, for sailors to get sleep, they have to be able to close off their space (granted, that space is 6 feet long by 20 inches high...for the record, my husband is 6'2...so I'm not sure it qualifies as "personal space", but you take what you can get, haha).

With that in mind, our husbands are gone so often, we do call the boat their Big Black Mistress, since they often sees "her" more than they see us, haha.

kghusker1003

ktewart said:

@PurplePumpernickel, this is a hard one for me. I don't disagree with you at all about the women fearing repercussions and thus not seeking care being something to avoid. However, I also don't think not knowing about drug use is healthy either, for both mom and baby. I think my issue lies instead somewhere in the way we handle those cases with threats of removing the baby or scare tactics.

ETA: I don't profess to have an easy answer on hand. Just that I don't think playing dumb or turning a blind eye is the answer.

I agree. Many providers, use those scare tactics, saying that they are going to take away the baby because you (the expectant mother) tested positive for xyz, instead of saying "ok, you tested positive, let's talk about why, or how we can help you be clean/sober"

I don't have an easy answer either. 

PurplePumpernickel

You're right, there is no easy answer. I hope that medical professionals are being trained to put on a poker face and keep judgement to themselves when they're dealing with women who get pregnant and are addicted to drugs. Clearly it is terrible for the baby. Whenever I see a news story about an OD with kids involved, it breaks my heart.

I also judged the hell out of the Target (?) employee who filmed the OD'ing parent as the child stood by and watched. Put the damn camera phone down and comfort the distressed kid.

longhairdntcare

Re: photos - my sister is a photographer. Self taught, but she's stupid talented. So I am super spoiled in regard to professional pics. She did our engagement photos and will be doing maternity, birth and newborn photos for us. I can't wait. I have looked at some of her birth photos and it's just such an incredible thing to capture. I also had her take boudoir photos for me for our 1st anniversary. It was super out of my comfort zone, but ended up being pretty fun. 

Re: weed - can we not, again.

My UO (not sure if it's truly unpopular but I have noticed quite a few people here doing it and it drives me insane): I can't stand when people use a % more than 100 to describe something how they're feeling. Example: "I am 150% ready to be a mom". No. You can only be 100%.

neludelu

Rae1 said:

Re: photos - my sister is a photographer. Self taught, but she's stupid talented. So I am super spoiled in regard to professional pics. She did our engagement photos and will be doing maternity, birth and newborn photos for us. I can't wait. I have looked at some of her birth photos and it's just such an incredible thing to capture. I also had her take boudoir photos for me for our 1st anniversary. It was super out of my comfort zone, but ended up being pretty fun. 

Re: weed - can we not, again.

My UO (not sure if it's truly unpopular but I have noticed quite a few people here doing it and it drives me insane): I can't stand when people use a % more than 100 to describe something how they're feeling. Example: "I am 150% ready to be a mom". No. You can only be 100%.

On a similar note: I HATE when people say keep it 100. Please don't. 

kghusker1003

I don't understand words like fleek or clapped out.  Or using the red 100 emoji (bump keeps editing it out!) maybe I'm old. 

Also, I don't think Snapchat is all that, but again, I'm old.

nktrodden826

Totally agree.. can we add hella (as in "I'm hella excited to see him") and uber (as in "He was uber helpful yesterday") to this list. 

KissMeImScottish

Isn't "hella" the west coast equivalent of "wicked"? (I'm a east coaster, so bear with me if I'm wrong). But if so, I think of this as more of a regional thing, rather than a fad or generational slang (try telling a Bostonian they shouldn't say wicked! Haha)

yellow1daisy

Omg the new slang is soooo annoying. "Bae" and "Netflix and chill" also come to mind. 

LuLiLaEv

I'm not even that old and I don't even know what any of that means @neludelu @kghusker1003 @nktrodden826 Ugh, uber. Hate when people say that. 
 
While we're on this topic, I can't stand when people say "Do you want to come with?"

No.

"Do you want to come with me?"

Finish your sentence!!

ETA: @yellow1daisy Agree!!
Also, "Crae"