What NOT to Watch!

There are obviously films that you shouldn’t watch or suggest your friends/loved one’s watch after experiencing perinatal loss.  Obviously films like What Dreams May Come, Bambi, and Beaches come to mind.  There are also several films & TV shows that surprisingly I’d suggest avoiding even though on the surface, they might seem like the perfect mindless fun.  What you thought would just be a barrel of laughs may actually have you or your loved one reduced to a bucket of blubbering tears before you know it. Check out my list below:

Boss Baby

Ok so I know you’re thinking, “why would you watch a movie w/ baby in the title?!”  Well… I don’t really have a good explanation for that BUT I will say that Alec Baldwin as a sassy baby was expected to be hilarious.  To be honest, the movie had way more adult moments than I expected and I did laugh a couple of times but I guess what I didn’t expect was the whole Baby Co. scene for the first 20 minutes of the movie. There are thousands of babies getting all ready to go to a family.  All the coos and cuteness completely caught me off guard because all I was expecting was a baby-finster type of situation. I couldn’t help but think about my babies and whether they were in some form of heaven or some other realm with other baby souls.  I was a freaking mess…

The Mummy (the new one with Tom Cruise)

Random right?! I know but hear me out. This was the first film I saw in theaters after losing my girls.  I thought getting out of the house and going to the movies would help because seeing movies is like one of my top 5 things to do in life.  So there are several parts of the film in the beginning and towards the end where the girl who plays the Mummy is not fully mobile.  Her body is folded in a way that reminded me a lot of my girls.  When babies come out, their legs are folded close to their bodies. Small babies like my girls are also very thin because their fat layers haven’t formed yet.  Seeing that on a big screen catapulted me back to L&D as my girls were handed to me.

Powder

So this movie always makes me cry anyway but it really has nothing to do with infant loss so I didn’t think it would hit me like it did. Because I know what happens to me, I didn’t watch the whole thing but caught it towards the end. He was talking about what happens after people die and he said something like, “she didn’t go some place… she just went… out…” Meaning a persons energy goes out of the vessel of the body and is all around us. The actor burst into tears, I burst into tears, Powder was looking all peaceful and sweet, he didn’t have a family, they were trying to help him, it was all just too damn much! Don’t watch Powder for a while.

Little Women LA (and even Atlanta)

I actually really, really like this show and appreciate the representation of little people on TV.  It’s a reminder to us all that we’re all really just people living our lives to the best of our ability.  Having said that, all these bitches are pregnant or just had babies! One of them just had twins not too long ago.  Like, wtf?!  Watching these women have so many complications and worries because of being little and how that affects birth and medication was super triggering.  I didn’t have the same type of challenges but seeing these women have babies despite the odds made me incredibly jealous and sad. Especially the one with the twins.  We experienced pPROM which allegedly happens a lot with twins because of spacing and such.  I’m an average height person but I still experienced this and someone a lot smaller than me didn’t. That was a bitter pill to swallow and definitely made me question my body.

Baller Wives

This is a new show and I honestly don’t know how much more of it I’m going to watch because…nonsense. I thought I’d get some good laughs from it, get to see some actual couples since most of these women are still married to their partners, and maybe just have another silly show to add to my mindless television watchlist.  Then BOOM! First few episodes, two of the women are pregnant. One gave birth and the other is currently (at the time of filming) in a high risk pregnancy.  Babies & bellies has me all in my feels.

Being Mary Jane

Ok this picture of David is unnecessary but… you’re welcome.  Anyway, people who know me know I actually have a challenging relationship with Gabrielle Union. I kind of hate her. I’m not entirely sure why the dislike feels so strong but I know it has to do with the personality that gets embedded into the characters she plays.  I usually don’t like her characters and I truly believe that she basically plays herself with a different name in everything she does.  Maybe there’s some projective identification happening there but whatever it is, she’s not my fav. ANYWAY… I do like her show though. Took me a while to watch because: hate but once I did, I really appreciated what I believe she was trying to do. So Mary Jane Paul has been back & forth with trying to conceive for a few seasons now. In a recent episode she had to make a decision about whether to discard embryos she made with an ex. The sadness she felt at the possibility that she may not be able to have children was palpable. Bravo Gabby on that portrayal.  Being so close and yet so far from something you really want can be really devastating.

Big Little Lies

First off, great show! I don’t like how my girl Zoe Kravitz was just left out of the main photo though even though she has a major role in the show. I feel some kind of way about that but I digress… Thankfully there aren’t any pregnant folx in this show that I remember seeing and the drama of it all helps to keep it entertaining. What comes up unexpectedly here is all the mothering. This show is fundamentally about women parenting their children together in a community and how all their lives intersect.  These characters LOVE their children so fiercely and do such a good job conveying that with their words & actions that you almost feel like it’s real.  Even though my babies aren’t here with me now, I love them so fiercely it scares me sometimes. I can only imagine what it will be like when we finally get to bring home live babies and raise them.

Do you have any unexpected shows or movies that triggered you?  Put them in the comments below. I’d love to hear about them!