Read more on submitting your story...

For instance, when I was 8 months pregnant I walked into a store only to be greeted by an elderly woman who jokingly said (very loudly), "Honey, what did you eat today?" A shy co-worker (a man who had never spoken to me before) chimed in warmly: "Oh yes, you're starting to get that pregnancy double-chin."

Comments like this aside, I also have been offered countless hours of unsolicited advice by strangers on planes, and been subjected to the pregnancy tales and birthing stories of women I have just met at parties.

Now that I am a mother, my parenting receives the same type of attention. For example, when my child was a few months old I was warned that, if I held him too much, his muscles would not 'harden up' and he wouldn't learn to walk (he was walking before his first birthday).

Got any of your own interesting/funny/sad/maddening stories to tell? I'm looking for anecdotes and stories of the kind of uninhibited behavior displayed by others towards pregnant women and mothers. If you have a story of your own (or of someone you know) that you'd like to share, I invite you to submit it by clicking on this link.

You can also read a selection of other submissions by clicking here, or going to the April 2006 archives.

There is no minimum or maximum limit to your submission, nor to the number of submissions. I'm looking for all types of stories (the good, the bad, and the weird). My aim is to gather an interesting collection that will provide (a) material for an academic inquiry into the social peculiarities of being pregnant and/or being a mother, and, hopefully, (b) a quirky publication that may be of interest to pregnant women, parents, and the general public. Please include your first name, and how many months you were pregnant or how old was your child at the time the anecdote occurred. If you prefer, the submission may be anonymous, just be sure to state so with your submission.

PLEASE NOTE: Participation is fully voluntary, publication is not guaranteed, and no payment is offered. Contributors grant Maternal Digressions a perpetual, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, distribute, and otherwise exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to that information at its sole discretion. Contributors also grant Maternal Digressions the right to store the material in its servers and to incorporate the material into other works in any media now known or later developed including, without limitation, published books. Submissions become the property of Maternal Digressions and cannot be returned. Maternal Digressions reserves the right to select, edit and arrange submissions, and to remove information from the Maternal Digressions website at any time at its sole discretion. If you do not wish to grant Maternal Digressions these rights, please do not submit information to this website.