Many Happy Returns (to Target)

Let it be known that I hate baby showers.

I also hate gender reveal parties.

While we’re in this super negative head space, I also hate bridal showers. 

(That’s neither here nor there, though.)

There is something incredibly awkward about opening gifts in front of a bazillion people, especially when you’re huge pregnant and uncomfortable, feeling unlike yourself, worried about every photo being taken…

Oh god please don’t post that on the internet, I’m as big as a house. I’m also hot and sweaty, and also I’m drinking a mimosa, so lord knows I’ll get dragged through the mud for drinking while I’m pregnant. 

Side note: if you want to have a fucking mimosa at your baby shower, DO IT. Anyone who is potentially judging you for that, you literally shouldn’t even be friends with anymore. Uninvite them immediately.

When it was time to plan my baby shower, I had one request: no opening presents. I didn’t want to sit in front of 50+ women and unwrap 50+ gifts for 50+ hours. It’s weird and antiquated, and I’d just as soon play another silly game. More than one person gave me shit about that decision. The more I looked into it though, the more commonplace I found it was becoming with moms in 2018. And so, I demanded it. I asked that people not wrap their gifts; instead, add a card and bring it unwrapped to the shower, and add it to the table at the front of the house - this way everyone can see the cute baby stuff, without my having to awkwardly open any of it.

As a reminder, mom shame is everywhere. You can’t escape it, you guys. I didn’t do my baby shower right, if you can believe that (I didn’t even host my own shower, but I still managed to be wrong). In addition to not opening gifts, I had a mimosa and played Pictionary instead of Smell the Melted Chocolate in a Diaper. I also had a food truck, because my cousin hosted and her neighbor owns a food truck...HOW COULD ANYONE BITCH ABOUT A BABY SHOWER WITH A FOOD TRUCK?!?!!! 

As new parents do, I created a baby registry based on what my then-boyfriend and I wanted for our son. 

I also did that wrong, apparently. 

I wanted to wear my baby, so I registered for an expensive baby carrier. 

I also didn’t want to lug around a 20 pound infant car seat, so I registered for a convertible seat that was good for a baby weighing 5-65 pounds. It was expensive, but it was the only seat we’d need.

I took a lot of backlash for these two items. I literally had no idea you could be shamed over a fucking gift registry, but you sure can!

When I got home from my shower and started to unpack gifts and put things away, I found that one person in particular had given me a ton of gifts, but none from my registry. Only later did someone else tell me that this person had said my registry was “ridiculous,” so she bought what she believed I needed.

To be clear, all this did was create extra work for me, as I returned ALL. OF. IT. I took a cart full of stuff I didn’t ask for, back to Target the day after my shower, and exchanged it for the rest of the items I had registered for...since that’s what I actually wanted. I don’t feel bad about it; especially after learning she did it on purpose. Like, why?? 

Tearing apart a new mom’s baby registry means one of three things. One, you’re an insensitive ass hole. Two, you’re an absolute moron. Three, you think you just know better than she does, how to be a mom, how to raise a human, how to be prepared for a baby. Likely it’s a combination of at least two of these three things, but for sure it’s shamey and mean. A mom-to-be puts effort into a registry beyond just clicking ‘add item to list’ - she has done her new-mom research. Which car seat is safest? Which carrier is best for a postpartum back recovery? Which monitor can I travel with easily? Which crib sheets match the nursery I’m creating on Pinterest, and how do I plan to balance nursing, pumping, and bottle feeding? What is the best binky, which stroller will take us on the greatest adventures? A mom’s registry is well thought-out; it’s a packet of things she’s thought a lot about and read a lot of information on, and likely she’s had a lot of conversations with other mom friends to make her decisions. Your choosing to “know better” and making a purchase contradictory to her registry, is a clear message that you know better than her, and that her instincts are wrong.

Everyone has favorite baby items. And experienced moms are a great resource for new moms as to items that are amazing, items that are useless, items they love and hate. It’s all in the way experienced moms present information: just be nice! 

And when a new mom doesn’t immediately drop her own thoughts to follow your exact path, don’t decide she’s a fucking idiot - trust her to trust herself, and then buy her a present she actually asked for. You can always tell her “I told you so” in a year, when she still hasn’t even opened the baby spa tub she wanted because the baby likes the kitchen sink just fine.

(Mom) Shame on You!

Recently, I found myself in a Facebook argument over an incident of public mom shaming. The argument started when I vocalized my frustration over yet another outside observer, blasting a mom on social media for not disciplining her “bratty” kid The Right Way. 

Everyone is such an armchair expert these days. Everyone knows how to do parenting right; how to make a child behave, how to limit screen time, how to discipline in public, how to make a kid eat vegetables. Everyone knows better than you do.

The people who know the actual best, for the record, are perhaps not the Baby Boomers, who raised a generation of people now trying to do it entirely different and in our collective opinion better than the Baby Boomers. Just saying. 

Anyway. So I got myself into this argument, and I felt so wildly defensive of this other mom - a perfect stranger to me - that it got me thinking. Why am I so mad? Why am I so protective of this mom I don’t even know? Why can I literally not remove myself from this argument? 

I was mad because it could just as easily have been ME that this Boomer was dragging through the mud; it could have been ME he reprimanded in public, shaming me in front of an entire audience. It could have been me, as easily as it was her; because everyone knows how to mom better than moms do.

Except for you don’t. 

You especially don’t if you’re a man, because being a mom is not in your wheelhouse. So please, just sit down and shut up.

Mom shaming is certainly not a new phenomenon; mothers in law have been shaming the mothers of their grandbabies for generations, shitting on them behind their backs for every misstep. Moms have told their daughters “that’s not the right way to do that” for years, I’m sure. But social media has allowed for an entire new audience - you can now be mom shamed by complete strangers, for posting the wrong photo. You can have a friend of a friend criticize you for choosing formula or using disposable diapers. Strangers can rip you to shreds for not perfectly aligning the car seat chest clip, or for taking too long to pull away from the school drop off. You can (and will) be dubbed the worst mom in the universe, at any time, by anyone, for anything.

Congrats, New Mom, and good fucking luck!

Mom shame doesn’t even wait to kick off until you have given birth, by the way; it starts long before that. Again, thanks to social media, mommy blogs, and online mom groups, you can be shamed all throughout your pregnancy for eating the wrong thing, not giving into your cravings, drinking caffeine, working out too much, working out too little, dressing too casually, wearing heels, going on maternity leave before baby’s arrival, working too close to your due date...

You name it, someone will give you a fucking hard time about it.

And it isn’t just your frenemies or overreaching aunties either; you’ll likely run into at least one nurse, OBGYN, lactation consultant, or pediatrician in your 40 week pregnancy, who thinks you are the World’s Shittiest Mom-to-Be...and they’ll be sure to convey that memo to you as professionally as they can muster! You’ll be pressured  into breastfeeding, questioned about your birth plan, yelled at when your baby doesn’t latch or if you don’t wake up the second he cries; you’ll be cringed at for packing a binky in your hospital bag, you MONSTER. 

As my son approaches two years old - still somehow in one piece despite having never been spanked and refusing to drink enough water while watching YouTube and napping with the cat - I find myself eager to speak my piece on the perils of mom-ing in the age of social media and public mom shaming. Being a mom is really hard; really rewarding and amazing and special, but really fucking hard. And as I count down the final ten days with my one year old before celebrating his leap into year three, I wanted to share some of this journey with the world.

So with this I give you, Grownup Tantrums: New Mom Edition. For the next ten days, I’ll walk you through a new mom milestone (a new one each day) - how I celebrated it, how I was judged for it, and how I came out of it still knowing I’m a damn good mom. 

#endmomshaming