Oh fer’ god’s sakes…do what the others have suggested and DITCH THE GROUP. There is nothing more intimidating and angst-provoking than a bunch of mums who think they’ve got all the answers…especially when their archaic ways conflict with yours. Trust your gut (well, maybe not YOUR gut at the moment…he he, but you get the meaning.)
You’re doing absolutely AOK from what I’ve heard and read and seenLeechy. Maybe it’s time for a reassuring G’dope-Counter-New-Mothers’Group-Fest to lay your anxieties to rest? What say Vicdopers?
Shit…I hope my hyphenating has been read the way I meant it to. I’m not proposing an Anti-New-Mothers-Fest …just an antidote to the recent social poisoning that you have had to endure.
YK it would be completely possible to support Leechbabe without calling a vulnerable group of new mothers who, just like Leechbabe, are trying to figure out the parenting thing names like bitches and wankers. New mothers can be some of the most judgemental people around but it’s often because they’re unsure about their own choices or missing work more than they expected or this whole baby thing isn’t what it was cracked up to be.
Oh, and the thing about blokes not being able to bung the nappies on properly? May I relate an anecdote?
My ex thought he was the bees knees when it came to general domestics and dealing with kids (which, I most happily admit, he was most of the time).
Except the day he was changing baby #2’s nappy, and after the folding and the positioning, and running the pin through his hair (which aided the ‘glide’) went to stick the nappy-pin through the towelling.
Well, kid # 2 started screaming fit to kill. Dad couldn’t figure out what was wrong, so started to take the nappy off…then realised he had pinned not only the nappy but had stuck the pin through Jem’s lower belly as well. Ewwwwww. Not much blood, but still…owwwwwwies.
Anyway, after consoling the bellowing babe, and refolding the nappy etc, he tried again.
And miscalculated it again!
Jem went in to disposables after that.
The moral to this story is that, whatever you do, whatever ‘mistakes’ you might make, kids have a funny ability to survive it all and to grow into decent human beings. There are no absolute rights and wrongs when it comes to bringing up kids (although I don’t recommend the nappy-pin spearing as a general activity!!) so you and Leechboy just do what comes comfortably to you and Annie-Leech will turn out to be a bonzer person.
And if by chance she doesn’t, you can blame it on the influence of the inlaws!!
You are very right Primaflora. Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to ditch the group because if I go along, then maybe others who join with similar situations to mine wont be scared away. Just have to make sure my self esteem is toughened up before I go again.
That’s a good point, Leechbabe, but don’t put up with it too long. You can call them on it, and there are lots of nicer moms out there, too. Even SAHMs.
Can I tell an annoying nursing story? With my first daughter, I nursed her for 10 months and then weaned her when I got gallstones and had to have surgery and drugs. I figured 10 months was pretty good. The home nurse who visited me for our new daughter didn’t think so, though. I don’t know what business of hers it was, but she quizzed me on how long I’d nursed the first one, and then had the gall to tell me in a snarky voice, “Well, we do recommend a year, you know…you can pump milk.” Hello lady! Did you not hear the part where I told you she quit growing because of my non-fat diet? The part about the drugs? How’bout the part where she did absolutely fine on formula, and is miraculously still alive today? Holy moley, it’s not like formula is poison or something. Some people just take it way too far.
Oh, and mr. genie was better than I was with the cloth diapers at first, even though he’d never changed a baby before.
No matter what you do in childrearing, someone will be there to suggest that you’re doing it wrong. I breastfed my first till she was 18 months and the second till she was two years, and I got it from both sides (“You’re still nursing her?” “You didn’t let her initiate weaning?”). I stayed home with mine (I’m still staying home, as it turns out) and I got, “You aren’t going back to work? You really shouldn’t focus all your energy on your children, you know” and “A quality daycare is a good socializing experience” from my working friends.
My kids are 10 and 13 now, and I still get unsolicited advice and comments from the peanut gallery. I just stopped paying any attention to them by the time the first one was in kindergarten, and I was much happier for it.
If you decide to continue with this group and help show those other moms by example that a new mother can indeed be self-assured and confident of her abilities, maybe they’ll realize that their choices don’t necessarily have to be right for everyone else in order to be right for them.
Um…not wanting to disparage you in any way here, but dealing with kids, ala feeding them, playing with them, bathing them etc does NOT necessarily mean BONDING with them. Bonding is a completely different phenomenon.
Thus, your ‘What Kind of Father’ comment is probably right out of line. Many (may I be so bold as to say MOST?) fathers do not actually ‘bond’ with their child until much later in the childs life. Whether this is a biological trait or one that has been dictated by the omnipresence of the mother-figure I’m not sure. But to claim superiority because you were changing their nappies earlier seems a bit presumptious to me.
My son was only 3 months old when he started prefering me to his mother.
I’m not claiming superiority at all. I just don’t understand how any father wouldn’t want to bond with their child earlier than that.
Feeding, clothing, bathing and playing ARE the ways you bond with a child. Attention of all sort is what causes the bonding. I don’t know how you can claim it is a completely different phenomenon.
I second the “Don’t attend any more of those meetings”.
It will only make you realize that everything you do is wrong, wrong, wrong and that your husband is ‘odd’ for caring for his own child.
The urge to join the pack, especially after a child, is particularly strong. You are at a vunerable stage in life and want to compare. Trust me, a person who is 12,000 miles away from you whom you have never met, you are doing fine. Unless you cave in to whatever it is they do with their kids ( breastfeeding, all natural baby foods, cloth diapers, baby flash cards) you will find yourself on the outside looking in and feeling very bad about yourself and question your decision making. If you thought sleep deprivation, mood swings and feeling fat were bad enough, getting unpleasant vibes from the alpha females in these packs is enough to drive you willy nilly.
Look, remember the clique’s of high school. This is that, only much worse. You will find your own pack on your own, probably at some play ground or grocery shopping.
Trust your decisions based on knowlege, common sense and logic. But remember to play and be spontaneous and caring, yet firm and decisive. Confliction is all a part of parenthood.
A confident mom raises a confident child.
And remember, you are only a bad mom if you allow your child to believe in Urban Legends.
I’d have to say my hubby bonded with the munchkin pretty early on too. She worships him like a god and I am second class mumma! I’ve been told the boy will glom on to me like this when he arrives but I’m not so sure.
When munchkin girl was born I had an unexpected C section. They handed her to hubby after she was cleaned and tagged and checked out. Then the two of us spent a week in the hospital learning the ropes and I went home with a surprise case of pneumonia. Hubby took care of both of us and he learned a lot about her in the process. When he went back to work a few weeks later she would get kinda moody about the time he was supposed to be home. Boy the smiles and eventually giggles and everything else she would give him when he finally came home! I’d say they were pretty well bonded! In the very beginning meeting their needs seems the only way to bond…
If I may toss in a working mom experience. I had to go back to work when my baby was 3 weeks old - lots of reasons I won’t go into here. We were fortunate to find a wonderful daycare where they absolutely doted on her because she was so young. Her teachers there were the best - one even babysat for us on occasion.
In addition, we made sure we took couple time frequently, and along with the daycare teacher, we found several exceptional sitters thru the years. I think it was pretty clear from the start that while our daughter was an important part of our life, she wasn’t the center of it. And now that’s going to pay off. She’ll be going to college next year, a capable, independent young woman, and my husband and I will continue our lives together, missing her, but not with a gigantic void that would have existed had we based our lives on her exclusively.
I think you’re doing great with your little sweetheart, and further, I think you need to educate the rest of the mommies that there is life apart from babies.
Yes! What FairyChatMom said is really important. I’ve seen many of my friends raise their children to be the center of their universe. One friend even said of her marriage, “we’re not a couple anymore, we’re a family.” :eek: Every relationship in your life is important and while the kids require more nurturing and guidance in the early years, ultimately we’re all raising them so they’ll move out and live their own lives independently and happily. It’s really good to see that you and leechboy understand the importance of couple time, too.
How sad is it that some moms have nothing better to do than “prove” they’re good mothers at the expense of others. I’ve seen this phenomenon on an online parenting community I used to belong to and I think women like that are pathetic. Just keep on doing what makes you happy and ditch this group.
I am a former bottle feeding/ still working mom and my child is pretty darn fabulous. And one of the things that makes him so fabulous is the wonderful relationship he has with his father, a far more natural care giver than me.
Of course babies bond with their fathers at an early age. Aaron actually seeks Airman out when he’s bored because he knows his father will play with him. When Airman is out of town on deployment or training, Aaron misses him. There is very much an emotional relationship there, so to say fathers don’t bond with their kids is a misstatement.
IANA Mommy, but I think there might be something to this. Clearly the Perfect Mommy Clique are feeling insecure about their own choices so they insinuate put downs so they feel better about those choices. Maybe you shouldn’t be in such a rush to dump this group. I’m thinking of one of two things:
Either attend one more meeting and speak to the group about how they’ve made you feel. And how you’re so confident in your own choices that you’ve decided that you don’t need that kind of support in a support group any more. Perhaps it might do some of 'em some good if they understood why you’ve decided to dump the group. Maybe there’s other mommies in the group who are feeling the same way you are, but they keep quiet and simply parrot what the others are saying so they’ll feel accepted.
The other option is to never attend again, but send them an open letter with the same message. Everytime I post advice like this, I stop and wonder, “And what is to be gained from this advice?” If you truly believe that explaining why the Mommy group sucks will do no good, nobody cares, nobody will listen, then just stop going and disregard my post. I believe that someone might benefit from understanding the consquences of their behavior. YMMV – not everyone has a conscience.
One thing that I noticed when my sister had her baby, and then my two (close) cousins had theirs.
Often (at least in these three cases) mommy doesn’t want anybody to be “good with baby” like they are. They don’t want baby out of their sight, and they don’t want others to touch it or make it coo, because it’s their baby, and nobody can love it like they can. This includes daddy, in a lot of cases.
It was really weird to see. At least my sister grew out of it…
Leechbabe, I’m a breastfeeding SAHM, and I say ditch this parenting group.
You’re doing great. I totally understand where you’re coming from about needing to work outside home to stay sane–it’s a balancing act for everyone. The desire to stay with baby all the time, the desire to have time to yourself, the need to actually converse with adults and think about things other than poopy diapers and the joy of being with baby, it all has to be balanced out somehow, and everyone, and every family, is going to make different choices. If your choices keep your family happy and healthy and sane, they’re good choices, end of discussion.
These moms set off my alarms–despite the fact that I’d probably get no disapproving looks from them (at first, anyway…), they don’t sound like people I’d want to hang around with. In fact, it’s people like this that are the main reason I don’t do the parenting group thing myself, even though it might be a nice opportunity to get out of the house and have some adult conversation.
The not expecting fathers to bond thing I found disturbing. It seems to me that it’s one thing if a dad doesn’t bond until 2 years, but a completely different thing to expect that he won’t and actually frown on encouraging it. That’s just…I don’t know, it bothers me somehow.
I really don’t think the motivation of the group is the point. How does their being not confident in their own choices, if that’s in fact what’s driving them, justify their making other people feel badly about their choices? It may explain it, but it does not excuse it. And as I said before, it won’t stop, it will only get worse. I’m sure there are other groups that will be more supportive of individual choice, not raising baby by the book. Books are guides only. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to raising children. Each child, each mother, each family is individual and needs to adapt to what works for them as individuals with varying needs. Cookie cutter mothers may or may not ever realize that, but whatever choices they make for whatever reasons they make them should not govern the choices of others. If the idea of going to a support group is to get support, it doesn’t sound like this is happening for leechbabe, which I think is more the point than anything else.
…just an antidote to the recent social poisoning that you have had to endure.
