Imagine being pregnant with triplets (!!!) and having strangers cruelly mock your appearance and tell you that your stomach 'looks like a mansion'.
Well, this is what unfortunately happened to Brittany Schneider when she posted a video of her growing bump on TikTok last month - and the last thing she expected was for people to comment on the size of her stomach.
The 34-year-old nurse from Lexington, Kentucky in the US was about to give birth to triplets via a scheduled C-section on 28 April.
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“I posted a video the morning of my C-section. It was something really special that I wanted to document,” Schneider told TODAY.
She also noted that it was the last time her eldest son Crew, 3, would be an only child.
The viral clip, captioned: "Time to meet our triplets," has been viewed more than 17 million times and shows Schneider with her shirt raised, showing off her large baby bump.
The now mum-of-four said: “People were shocked by how big my belly was. I got comments like, ‘Your bump looks like a mansion,' 'How many babies are in there?’ and ‘No way is that real'."
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Schneider said she wasn't expecting such a massive reaction.
“For me, I saw my stomach every day, and I got used to the way it looked,” she explained. “Now looking back at the video I’m like, ‘Yep. I was huge’.”
But she took it in her stride and didn't let the rude remarks affect her, saying she had a harder time with her body image when she was pregnant with her first child.
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“From the start, I knew I was going to get very big with this pregnancy, and I wanted to embrace the experience. I didn’t want to be too hard on myself,” she said.
On 28 April, Brittany and her husband, Theodore 'Tee' Schneider, 48, welcomed their identical twin daughters, Andee and Georgia, and son Theodore, nicknamed Teddy.
Teddy weighed 5 pounds 7 ounces, Andee weighed 4 pounds 3 ounces, and Georgia weighed 4 pounds 1 ounce.
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The triplets were born five and a half weeks early and have since spent time feeding and growing in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
On May 17, Teddy was the first of the newborns to return home with Schneider, telling TikTok his two sisters will be following his lead soon.
“They’re doing so good,” Schneider says. “I’m so grateful.”
She's also grateful to no longer be pregnant too, and has lost 37 pounds since giving birth.
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“I was getting up every 45 minutes in the night to pee,” she says. “And I don’t miss people asking me when I’m due!”
Bec Oakes