Mom Shaming

[Bumble Bee]

I was mom shamed for the first time today. My son did not sleep from 3 am until 1 pm today. Now, I work in a daycare/preschool combo and we are trained constantly on safe sleep practices for infants, so I know it pretty well. However, with my child I feel ok with being a little bit relaxed about it as long as I'm awake, alert, and right next to him. For instance, when he is napping in his basket, I will wrap a blanket around his legs so I don't wake him up trying to get him into his sleep sack. This never happens unless I'm in the same room as him and can see him at all times.

Anyway, we were talking about how he needed to sleep and I said that he would likely nap in his baby bjorn while I was grocery shopping, and that if he fell asleep in his car seat on the way home I would carry the car seat in and let him nap in there instead of waking him up.

I can count on one hand the number of times I have let him sleep in the car seat when we are not in the car. Each of those times I was right there keeping an eye on him, but they jumped on me so much over it! They were warning me about the suffocation and strangulation risks and telling me about how they would never do such a thing and I shouldn't either.

I'm not stupid. I wouldn't do anything that I thought would be unsafe for him. If he is sleeping unsupervised, it is in his crib with a sleep sack on. I felt that their responses were completely uncalled for, especially considering that we weren't talking about someone else's child and they know me well enough to know I would never purposely endanger my child.

Anyway, have any of you ever been mom shamed for anything?

 

[“Paisios”]

Every child is an individual and every parenting style reflects this. If your child is healthy, growing and happy, then who am I to tell you how they should sleep? Sometimes it is from a genuine concern and love, in which case praying for discernment and a recognition of other motives is helpful, but really, it is your child and there are multiple acceptable ways of child care. (Having raised two children and helping raise two God-children, I hope my advice may mean something...)

 

[JAM2b]

Yep, and it is so hard to deal with. Working in childcare makes it worse. Women can be so vicious.

 

[Paidiske]

It's a fact of life with parenting, I'm afraid. I've lost count of the times and issues over which it's happened to me.

It's very difficult, especially in those early days when you're still finding your feet and not confident in your own choices yet, but over time you'll learn the art of politely ignoring whatever isn't helpful.

 

[Tropical Wilds]

All the time. The first time was when my son was maybe a month old, not even. He had horrible acid reflux and if you gave him 4 ounces, he’d keep .5 and throw up the rest. Literally, you’d feed him and then he’d just empty out like a tipped pitcher. It got so bad he was marked failure-to-thrive and was almost admitted to the hospital. He was so small and thin he was scary to look at... But the point is the kid was always hungry, always had indigestion and severe gas, and therefore ALWAYS crying. And not crying crying, but that AWFUL wailing, deep from his diaphragm crying. Nonstop. All the time.

There were only two things that made him happy... A fleece blanket or his special vibrating chair. Obviously when we went out we couldn’t bring the chair, so we had to bring his fleece blanket. Sounds great until you realize it’s late July/early August and not exactly fleece blanket temperatures.

Well, I had family in town and was going a bit stir crazy, as new moms do, and his constant crying had me frazzled, so I decided to join the family on a day trip to a tourist trap. It was like 90 degrees and he was fussy so I stripped him to his diaper and put the blanket on him... Since we were going to be in A/C all day and I was holding him so his whole back was ventilated, I figured his chances of heatstroke were pretty low. I get him out of the car and go across the parking lot on my first non-Walmart trip as a parent and this woman makes b-line over to me and immediately starts dressing me down. “You know, if it’s hot for you, it’s hot for that baby.” I said “Lady, if I take this blanket off he will wake up and scream bloody murder and he won’t stop for hours.” To which she replied “Then he’s probably hungry because Kids at that age only cry if you’re not feeding them on schedule and you’re clearly not feeding him on any sort of schedule.”

Honestly, I’m not a violent person and I have never hit another person. I don’t know if it was the postpartum hormones or the heat or just being a new parent, but everything just went white as I fought the uncontrollable urge to punch this woman in the face. To this day I don’t remember what happened after she said that to when I got inside... I know my brother-in-law ran over and said something as my father steered me inside. That’s it.

Then I got Mom shamed when he was like 4-5 months old and we figured out the “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was the third thing that kept him from screaming, so we bought him a massive Jack Skellington doll to have with him in his car seat when we went shopping. Some lady told me having a skeleton toy would traumatize him and she actually took it out of his car seat and flicked it in the cart. He immediately started scream-crying and the lady said he was crying because he was hungry (seriously, why does everybody say that a crying baby needs to be fed? Do people think that feeding Kids is some big secret most people don’t know you have to do?).

Heck, I was Mom-shamed like 6 hours ago because my kid had a Lunchable in his lunch today that I supplemented with a banana, apple sauce, carrots, and a juice box. Apparently real moms don’t give their kids Lunchables... But you know what? I have Crohn’s Disease and I get chemo every 6 weeks to keep it under control along with iron infusions because I bleed in my intestines nonstop and TENs treatments for the IBD fibromyalgia pain management because I won’t take opiates and be a doped up zombie. When I’m a week before my chemo, I’m exhausted and my Crohn’s is unmanageable. The week before my TENs I’m pretty uncomfortable. The week of my cycle, because of my constant intestinal bleeding, leaves me faint and barfy and feeling gross.

Well, it just so happens that this week was a mystical convergence where it’s the week before my chemo, the week before my next TENs treatment, and the week of my cycle. That means I’m in nonstop pain, unable to control basic bathroom needs without help because IBD stinks, exhausted to a degree I didn’t think possible (and I ran marathons for fun), and anemic to a point where fainting is an issue. And my husband works nights which means I have to get 3 Kids ready to go to two different schools on the opposite sides of town by 7am all by myself.

You know what? My kids are getting Lunchables supplemented with fruit this week and I don’t even care. Making a lunch is too dang hard when I feel like this and I’m not paying $3 a day per kid for a hot lunch they won’t eat most of because lunch is only 20 minutes, half of which is spent waiting in the hot lunch line.

So far, the sun is rising in the morning as scheduled. If that causes some random Mom to say I’m a bad mom whatever. I know my status as a parent isn’t ruined because of Lunchables, Jack Skellington, or fleece blankets.

Eventually you’ll get to that point too. Everybody is an expert at raising everybody else’s kids, it’s raising your own that’s hard as heck. Raising your own kids is 80% “how did I get into this situation/I don’t know what to do to get out of this situation” 15% “man, I did totally the wrong thing and I hope I’m not screwing them up,” and 5% “Yup, I rocked being a parent just now... I think.”

 

[Poppyseed78]

Any time I see my mom or mother-in-law I'm mom-shamed. I've grown used to it.

 

[mina]

Yup, you aren't a real mom unless someone looks down on you for how you do anything with your kids, lol. Sadly, it comes with the territory. You have to have thick skin at times. When I was pregnant, I was teaching at a private school that was associated with an Orthodox church. I got all sorts of crazy "old country" advice and I just smiled and nodded. After my baby was born, I never went back to show off the baby because I didn't want to hear how I should let my baby scream and not be too attentive so they will "learn" or how pumping isn't really breastfeeding. Seriously, people will say all kinds of crazy things to a new mother about a helpless infant just to sound "right" or more experienced.