Don’t be so sure your offspring won’t annoy you. They will. They will grab your heart, too. You are excused if you want to be insufferable about your kid. It gives you good training for being the obnoxious grandparent.
Now…let me tell you about my grandbabies, I have loads of pix.
Don’t worry about it. Worry about being a good parent. Worry about taking care of your relationship with the baby’s other parent. Worry about taking care of the mental and physical health of the baby’s other parent. Worry about taking care of yourself and your own physical and mental health. Worry about money. All of those things are HARD the first year after you have a baby. Some of them will be very, very hard. All of them have long-term consequences if you fuck them up. Put your energy there.
Other people will make you feel like somehow by having a baby you’re imposing on them, that reproducing is somehow the act of an entitled brat, that having a child is self-indulgent and that talking about having a child is pathetic. This is a great time in life to learn to think “fuck 'em” when you start worrying about whether you are annoying other people. Don’t be a dick, obviously, but don’t sweat the small stuff. First year is hard–and wonderful. Take care of you and yours and try to save your energy to focus on the joy.
No way out, no way at all. That critter will grab you by the heart, and there will be nothing so awesome and meaningful in this world as that baby.
Hell, I was like that after we adopted the Firebug: I felt like I should wear a button that said, “don’t ask me about the Firebug unless you’ve got some spare time,” because I’d talk your ear off about him.
I’m a bit more restrained now, but give me an opening…
Right, because non-parents are the problem. Puh-leese, their are jackasses in both sets. People who act like any reference to the baby is a problem and people who turn every conversation to their offspring. People who freak out every time a baby makes a gurgle and people who make no effort to take their screaming child from a crowded social occasion. People who resent every day off a parent takes and parents who think they should always get priority over non-parents on every holiday and every vacation occasion.
Amend that to “Some people . . .” I certainly didn’t mean everyone does. But when you have a new baby, you need to put the baby, yourself, and your co-parent first. And that’s okay.
I have my first grandbaby (she’s 2 months old already!!) and I struggle not to talk of her constantly and post every pic on FB like my daughter does. The world deserves to know!!!
I think as long as you can stay aware of the reactions of your audience, you can learn to control yourself. Even if your baby is the second best in the world after my grandbaby!!!
If you’re really concerned about being insufferable, just don’t go about telling other parents how to do it. That was the thing that bothered me the most when I was a new parent. Not the oldsters telling me how they did it, not people who didn’t care about my brand new bundle of joy…it was the people around my same age with kids around the same age who made it clear they were doing right and I was doing it wrong. “It” being anything from diapers to clothing to feeding.
While I don’t doubt this is all true, a ‘fuck ‘em’ attitude epitomises what I would like to avoid. People appear to sometimes see their offspring as a reason to double-down on their self-absorption. I suppose it’'s a matter of trying not to be, as you say, a dick about it. I do have the (dubious) advantage of being rather old for a first kid (41) so with any luck I won’t need to use reproduction to bolster my self-esteem as I might have done in my twenties.
You may find that what you interpreted as “doubled-down self-absorption” in the past was a great deal more nuanced than that. I agree that it’s obnoxious to give advice to other parents, and honestly, the only way to win the Mommy Wars is not to play.
Look, I get it. I normally live in horror of annoying people. I’ll eat food I hate rather that tell the server they fucked up. I bend over backwards to reassure the receptionist I don’t mind waiting another 20 minutes for my doctor’s appointment. I live in constant fear that my situational awareness will slip and I will fail to hold a door for someone or forget to ask how their day is going with sincere interest. That said, if you have to chose between doing right by your kid and not offending/annoying other people, do right by your kid. It’s not self-absorption, it’s your main responsibility.
Is it obnoxious to talk about your kid too much? Only if you refuse to let others talk about things that matter to them. But I’m always a lot more put off by parents who don’t want to talk about their kids, who seem to have an attitude that taking pride in a kid is “spoiling them” and that they need to remind themselves all the time that their kid is not special. Look, when you start sleeping 4-6 hours a night, those days get LONG, and “work” goes from where you spend most of your waking hours to feeling like a passing blip in your “real” day. So you’re going to talk about what you are doing in your “real” life, and that’s not wrong. Being ashamed of your “real” life, feeling like you can’t talk about it because it’s obnoxious to acknowledge that your kid is the center of your life, that’s wrong.
For years, every time I went to the grocery store I was having a dialogue with a baby/toddler/pre-schooler. I felt like an idiot. It probably seemed obnoxious and self-absorbed. But I have no doubt that the constant thread of conversation was good for my son. Socializing kids means taking them out in public–not to an R-rated movie or a fancy restaurant, but to the grocery store and the library and Mcdonalds and museums. And that means sometimes being annoying. Limit it as you can, but don’t let your worry about that limit how much exposure your kid gets to the world. Err on the side of his best interest.
The real self-absorbed is when someone puts “not annoying strangers and co-workers” ahead of “providing my kid with the best possible infancy and childhood”. The first is all about personal pride; the second is not. This is where the “fuck 'em” comes in: letting your kid open a door may slow the lady behind you by a few seconds, but it’s a world of joy to him. The guys at work may think you’re somehow doing them wrong when you’d rather go home than happy hour, but keeping them happy is less important than your child getting time with you.
We opted not to know, just for a surprise I suppose. Is it really that uncommon? I’m in the UK, and no-one has expressed much bafflement at the unknown gender. I suppose it’s old-fashioned - my generation (born late Seventies) were presumably the last where the gender wasn’t easily deduced in advance.
annoyance is not what you will feel. Other much larger things yes, annoyance no.
you will (or at least should) gravitate toward other new parents who are the few people who I guarantee won’t find you insufferable nor will you find them insufferable.
It is a unique experience that cannot be even imagined by someone who hasn’t been through it. It will be very different than what you think now. YOU will be different. That’s just how it is.