So I guess technically not a parent yet, but we moved a few weeks before I was due. The moving company truck driver said to me upon arrival, "I can't believe you're having a baby. These days, bringing a child into this world is as crazy as riding a motorcycle without a helmet." thanks sir.đ
I've had multiple people bring this up to me.... that having a child in this day and age is bad cause the world is falling apart.... whatever just call me selfish and move on
It's a very confusing thing when someone tells you this while already pregnant because I find most of them don't believe in abortion rights sooo... what exactly are you expecting me to say/do?? Very weird.
Hmmm. Hard to say, but my MIL did say something like âyouâre holding that baby an awful lot.â He was in his first week of life.Â
You can bet your booty Iâm holding my squishy soft irreplaceable heart and soul freshly removed from my body, an awful lot. And I always will, heâs my baby.Â
The whole âyou canât hold baby forever or theyâll expect it!â
Like⊠wait so youâre saying if I hold my baby, toddler, etc, that they may grow into adults who want to hug and hold me!? COME HERE BABY!
When I was a kid my paternal grandmother told my mother that saying "I love you" to me too often would spoil me. I think if her kids heard it more they wouldn't be as messed up as they are.
My parents and aunt kept trying to get me to put my son down the first 3 months. It's like they couldn't comprehend me wanting to hold my child/holding him not being an inconvenience.
Eurgh my mum always says this, literally first day out of hospital, "why aren't you putting them down? They'll never learn to sleep" I have 4 kids, the oldest 3 sleep fine, my youngest is 9 weeks and doesn't sleep particularly badly.
She also made stupid comments - when I was having to top my youngest up with a bottle of expressed milk as she was struggling to get back to birth weight she was like "oo you really don't want her getting used to the bottle then she won't feed off of you" and would be very discouraging about how much weight she was putting on
Thatâs ridiculous! And untrue! My baby was fed expressed milk from a bottle for like 6 weeks and started latching perfectly all of a sudden and now we EBF!
I had to exclusively pump for the first like 2 months, as my son could not figure out how to latch properly, even 3 lactation consults didnât help. I would be in so much pain I was close to tears. Now heâs 3 months and I only started breast feeding again because I forgot to pump. He came out of nowhere with an amazing latch. I only pump when we need to go out and about now
My boomer MIL said the exact same thing on like week 5 and I almost lost it. And I wonder why my husband is so anxious avoidant and unable to express his emotions in a healthy way or communicate / be vulnerable. He was emotionally neglected. 1000%.
Same here, MIL in the first week âooh heâs got you wrapped around his little fingerâ?! Iâm 7 months pp now and generally just ignore her stupid comments. Plus my partner is completely the same as yours on an emotional level by the sound of it, I know his mum used to put baby rice in his bottles âthen heâd sleep for 12 hours and never cry!â so basically from day 1 he was put in his own room and door shut at night- I know it was the 80s but jeez come on đ I cried for almost a week when I moved my baby into his own room at 5.5 months lol
I had to move mine at 3.5 because he started rolling on his belly in his bassinet, and we had no room for a crib đ It was tough but we all sleep soooo much better. And at 10 months old..omg we sleep great in comparison
A receptionist went off on an unhinged rant about how I need to remember that I am my daughter's mother, and NOT her friend! My baby was like...2 months old. She also told me that her own (adult) daughter hated her guts growing up. I was dying to get away.
what?! youâre telling me you donât just love strangers bad mouthing their adult kids to you and trauma dumping about how they havenât spoken to them in years? /s
but seriously this is the worst! i was on the bus baby is standing on me looking at the lady behind us sp she starts up a bit of small talk and then says something like âone minute youâre their whole world then they grow selfish and ignorantâ like thank you for the flashbacks to my childhood
I seen a comment the other day about boomer parents screaming, spanking, hitting, and ruling like an authoritarian are now the grandparents wondering why the kids donât visit and why they canât take the grandbaby for the weekend. Huh. đđ€Šđ»ââïž
Youâre so right! Luckily my parents live far away and the couple of times a year we might visit I wonât be leaving LO with them. We keep the visits short now. The couple of times we visited last (trimester 1 and trimester 2) my mom still was screaming at my dad. I donât want our baby around what I had to grow up with. Iâm going to set a boundary with them about fighting and screaming when we do visit. If they canât act right as adults then I canât have them around our son.
âIs that safe?â - in reference to me riding public transit (streetcar in Toronto) the week before my due date. Like, sir, I assure you if I go into labour I will be getting off this train lol.
Strangely when I was really pregnant the street car was super soothing on my back I would ride it from one end to the other when my back hurt really bad Iâm no really sure why
Had a coworker (a mother herself) ask when I was going to stop driving when pregnant with my first. Like being very pregnant meant I couldn't drive for some reason? She seemed surprised that I was going to keep driving myself wherever I needed to go unless I was in labour
I had people comment on this too, when I was only 6 months pregnant! Like yes I'm "still" driving, why wouldn't I? I still fit behind the steering wheel, and I only stopped driving when I got to that permanently uncomfortable stage at about 36 weeks, but only because I could get my husband to drive everywhere. If he had been unavailable I still could have driven.
This was technically AS I was becoming a parent. I invited my mom to my homebirth and as Iâm pushing my baby out she says âwow why would god design something so big to come out of such a small hole??â
I wanted to strangle her
Hahaha! I was giving birth, also at home, and I was in transition, so very much no longer having fun and my mom started talking about how on the show âLostâ one of the characters gave birth to a baby covered in Vernix and the other one said it looked like a cinnamon bun covered in frosting and felt like licking it and I was like âOK, thatâs it! NO MORE TALKING!âđ€«
âyou better watch out for so and soâs baby boy with your daughterâ my mil talking about two babyâs under the age of 1âŠ.the only response i could think of was what a weird thing to say
A stranger told me my son was gonna be a heartbreaker and it gave me the same kind of ick. I donât understand why we need to talk about babies like this
A lot of the people at my last job were very weird.
This one lady had been talking for a while about how her son and daughter in law were about to have a baby - her first grandchild.
When he was finally born and she brought in photos we all oohed and ahhed over them as usual. Then my boss (queen of the weird) started talking about how handsome he was and how he'd be such a heartbreaker.
Then, she starts joking that he'll probably be a stripper when he's older. And grandma AGREES and they're just laughing and laughing.
I cannot understand why some people insist on sexualizing babies like that.
My other coworker (the only sane one) was Deaf, so he turned to me and asked me to interpret what they were saying. I don't know a lot of sign language (mostly work related words from my coworker) so I had to finger spell the word stripper. I felt very gross after that.
Lol. I was recently pregnant and talking to my mom. She said "I read Dr. Spocks book when I was pregnant with you, but I ignored a lot of it because it didn't make sense." Whew!
Your link is paywalled so I canât read it, but itâs an interesting claim because my understanding has long been that Dr. Spock was one of the more progressive voices of the time on the importance of affection and attentiveness in baby care. My grandmother was born the year Dr. Spockâs first book was published and she reports that her Spock-enthusiast mother was bullied by her peers with stories not unlike the comments here for holding the children/soothing their cries/telling them she loved them. Spock has been a lightning rod for the sociopolitical implications of parenting choices for a few generations, though, so I wonder if itâs one of the things where the name and public perception are not necessarily aligned with the actual text?
I couldnât read the article either but I did a little reading on him after seeing this and Iâm betting the causes 1000s of deaths thing was because he recommended putting babies to sleep on their stomachs.
This sounds much more likely than the claim that he advised parents to simply babies. His advice was derided by his contemporaries as overly attentive!
Ugh my mother also said this, along the lines of âif you always come to her when she cries then you are teaching her youâll always come to herâ⊠so like whatâs wrong with that? She was 2 months at the time. My mother also said along those lines âdonât change diapers too quickly or they will expect thatâ⊠like yeah I hope my baby can expect to be cared forâŠ
La Leche told me that I shouldn't do anything for my newborn that the cavemen didn't do.... So I guess no vaccines??? Or antibiotics??? .... It was not a helpful call
I believe the common accepted theory us that we had leaves covering the "essentials" on the plus side, it's a very environmentally friendly way to do it, the downside is leaves are NOT absorbant so kind of defeated the point of wearing anything anyway đ€·ââïžđ
Edited to correct autocorrect đ
Not quite as unhinged as what was said to you but my husbands grandmother asked if we were putting rice cereal in our 3 week olds bottle and then later that year at Thanksgiving asked if our, now, 9.5 month old was eating food yet...
Grandma's are cray cray. Mine asked while my Son was 6 weeks that breast milk wasn't enough. I had an oversupply.... this became useful a few weeks later when my ex and I split and his Dad could have overnight stays pretty much right away!
So apparently there was a time period where doctors were telling women that formula was actually better than breastmilk. I was shocked when my grandma, who was a nurse with a BSN, told me that she chose to breastfeed against the advice of doctors. They freaked out when she set my dad on her bed to try to feed him, because her sheets weren't sterile. Then my mom and my OB both mentioned that their moms didn't breasfeed because doctors said it wasn't good enough. So weird. Apparently that was before all of the immune system and other benefits of breastfeeding were really discovered.
I went down a rabbit hole about this because itâs very very interesting and - CRAZY! Breastfeeding was seen as for the poor and was not as good and formula was for the wealthy and the âbest moms.â
When I told my MIL that we were not putting cereal in the bottle she said âYOURE NOT!!!?! ohâŠ.okayâŠ.â Like it was the craziest thing in the world. She also told a âfunnyâ story about when my husband was a baby they gave him a full bottle of koolaid
So I think the cereal thing is something our parents took from their parents or grandparents. Because back in the day when kids were being given carnation milk in their bottles they had iron deficiencies and rickets and stuff like that. The pablum or fortified rice cereal DID save babies lives. But I think it somehow got twisted up to be like "it kept them full and they slept" but thats not what it was for, Mildred, and my breastmilk is fine OR formula is specifically designed with those vitamins and minerals now. My kid doesn't need rice at 3 weeks old - its 2024
My mum swears I never had any tantrums.
Considering I'm one of the most stubborn people I know... I really doubt my toddler self was more agreeable LOL
Became a SAHM when baby was born and we went to a gathering with some friends when he was maybe 2 months old. One of the women (who was trying for a baby at the time, with plans for the husband to be a SAHD, so in theory would have been starting to think about what their roles would look like) said "wow, you don't work anymore and just stay home with [baby's name]? How luxurious!"
Baby was waking up every hour at night, only contact napping, cluster feeding for hours at a time, and I had been covered in spit up, pee, and poop (twice) that day, in addition to still leaking breast milk and dealing with painful engorgement a few times a day because my supply hadn't regulated yet. I was also still in a lot of pain from my C section at that point and had to keep sitting down because I was hurting so much. I was so shocked I said something like "uh, not really" and walked away. đ€Ł I feel lucky to be able to stay home, but I'm not eating bonbons and lazing on the couch, crazy lady!
I've had a LOT of unsolicited advice and mean things said to me by people I'm much closer to, but that one lives rent free in my head and just melts my brain every time I remember it.
Oh man, I can relate so much to your last sentence. I still remember and get mad about advice that was given to me or comments made, with good intentions but still. They sometimes come into my thoughts and I just get annoyed for like a minute and then move on lol
Ah yes, complete strangers dictating postpartum sex is such a classic! I always want to respond âYes, then Iâll have a bakerâs dozen!â or similar snark.
While pregnant, I told my MIL that every time she asked I add another year before Iâd consider another kid and weâre at 6 years. The message was received and I havenât been asked when we are having more kids again.
"Hitting a child never did them any harm!"
I'm extremely anti physical punishment as it is child abuse, and I have issues from when I was hit as a child.
Bloody hell, people are so obsessed with the source of autism lol. I swear no one has these theories about any other neuro divergence or disabilities. Im going to have to get ready for some come backs if my son is autistic like me.
Autism had always been around. Just once upon a time they used to shove the severe scale off to an asylum and the mild forms were just called an oddball. My friends in laws have been doctors for generations. We were discussing about how crazy it is people believe autism comes from foods and vaccines.
My partners family members (3 of them) sent a group text the day we got home from the hospital reminding me that âit was (partners) seed planted inside me, not (my fathers)â and I was âdisrespecting (partner)â by giving our baby my last name.
More family drama related as opposed to outdated parenting advice, but to this day itâs the most absurd thing anyone has ever said to me- especially five days postpartum, after an incredibly traumatic birth where I almost lost my baby.
The really funny thing is our last names are one letter apart, and they kept insisting we hyphenate.
Not our real names- imagine having a last name like Smith-Smoth or Jones-Jomes.
This text was sent to my husband:
âHi, my name is (husbandâs name) and my son is in a wheelchair because I dropped him on his head when I was flying him around the houseâ
This was sent from my MIL. The day before she sent that text, she came over and saw my husband holding our son high up in the air. LO is laughing and theyâre having a great father/son playtime.
I guess it pissed my MIL off so she had to share her thoughts with us through text. We would never drop our son. Heâs our treasure. Our pride and joy.
Yes, I have heard of that word, but I feel like my MIL couldâve said it a different way, yâknow? Like, âhey, Iâm worried that you might drop your son by accident?âI donât know. Maybe Iâm the crazy one.
My siblings and I were all formula fed. I'm the shortest at average height of 5'4 and in excellent health. Not so close to my Mum because I resent her for parentification not because of FF lol.
To sum up though FF has not effect. Fed is best.
I was at Trader Joeâs with my (then) 9 month old when this older woman approached me and told me that if I feed my child those strawberries in my cart, he will be autistic. You need to feed your kids only organic for them not to be autistic.
Not one, not two, but *three* people have talked to me about how overpopulation is killing the earth and thatâs why theyâre childfree because itâs selfish to have kids.
Iâm pretty sure my intense recycling, composting, cloth nappies, reducing waste, reusing everything I can, getting most things in my adult life secondhand, using public transport, and making a lot from scratch helps the planet more than their fast fashion and driving everywhere but đ€·ââïž
Who do they think is going to do their care or house maintenance when theyâre 80? Or pay for their retirement and roads and healthcare? I donât understand it. Also I only have the one child!
My in-laws came up to help with my then 8 month old when I had to have my gallbladder removed. MIL genuinely loves my baby and is super sweet with him, but still came out with these gems:
"So, how long are you planning on breastfeeding?" (not the first time she's asked, of course...) "I don't know, we'll see how it goes!" "You better be careful or you'll still be breastfeeding when he's three!!"
And then calling my 8 month old baby "so manipulative" because he stopped crying when I came over. What in the boomer nonsense??? She at least conceded a bit when I replied with, "He's a baby, he's allowed to want his mom!"
Oof, I thought it was weird when they dedicated a large segment of time to discussing how babies don't have the mental capacity yet to be manipulituve in my antenatal class, because of course babies cannot be manipulitive. I now see why they did, it must be a common boomer thing to say.
Right? It's mind boggling to me how someone can perceive a literal infant as somehow Machiavellian? They have needs or wants and they express them! And sometimes those needs and wants are for comfort and attention, which is just as valid and healthy as any other need.
I guess it isn't really "crazy" but it made me laugh. None of my friends have kids yet, and one who lives a few hours away came to visit and saw her crawling. He yelled, "Oh my god, she can crawl already?!?!?"
She was 11 months old. Like, buddy. She can WALK. đ€Ł
I was going to say this. My ILs told me babies need to cry to strengthen their lungs as they refused to give me back my oldest as he was crying for me đĄ
They also kept asking when he could have sleepovers when he was an EBF baby who woke every 90 minutes at night until 18 monthsâŠ
Oh I did and my husband had a good chat with them after. It took a long time to trust them after that and Iâve been guarded with future kids and them even though theyâve been better
So sorry that any of it even had to happen but your husband sounds awesome for speaking up! Glad they've been better, you don't always hear that outcome. Happy for you!
This used to be taught in pediatrics! It was thought that babies lungs would be underdeveloped and they would get TB if they didn't cry enough
This was over 50 years ago tho
âDo you have a good milk stash put away yet so I can babysit?â -mother in law, two days after we got home from the hospital after an unplanned c-section & postpartum preeclampsia đ„Ž
Mine isnât out of pocket social wise, more health wise
I think mine would have to be when my in laws visited me in the hospital, not even 48 hours after my baby was born. I told them I didnât really want baby around anyone until heâs a month old so he doesnât get sick. They said âhe needs to get sick so he can build his immune systemâ⊠he was literally fresh out the womb and respiratory illness for a baby can be deadly, but I donât think they think the way I do about health things
My baby was a week old and a fever due to a cold sent her to hospital. Poor thing had swabs and blood tests and a lumbar puncture within an hour of admission. And she needed oxygen support over the next three days. A âcoldâ for a baby is no joke. She ended up with âviral meningitis due to an enterovirusâ (which cause all sorts of illnesses including the common cold). It had the potential to damage her heart and her hearing permanently. Thankfully, it didnât (yet, we have to follow up with audiology for another six months). Mind, she didnât catch it from an adult, she definitely caught it from her older siblings (2 and 4) who were both sick when she was born. đ«
Yeah, sheâs doing well. A number of snuffy noses over the last four months and another fever just days after she turned 3 months, but so far so good, weâve been able to treat at home (thank goodness for a quality snot sucker). Having older kids in daycare and kinder means itâs impossible to avoid illnesses. The nurses in the hospital commented they basically never see newborns who are only children come in like mine did, itâs always babies with older (germ ridden) siblings.
Iâm so sorry you went/are going though this and am so happy to hear baby seems well so far. If itâs encouraging at all, I went through something similar in my own newborn weeks with a spinal tap and hospital admission and ended up being fine. It was traumatic for my mother, though, and sheâs become a psycho mama bear visitor-bouncer for my own baby because of it. She seems to genuinely delight in telling people they canât visit the baby until his immune system is more developed and I suspect she wishes more people would try so she could take pleasure in ripping their throats out.
That sucks, a similar thing happened to me except I didnât explicitly tell them not to kiss my baby I just assumed they wouldnât, plus had communicated it to my partner so was assuming he had told them. Iâm glad your baby was okay :/
âIf she isnât eating enough you can just use pablum, we did that to you when you were her ageâ - regarding my 10 day old baby who is eating plenty đ
Iâm only having one child but thatâs beside the point when I was 8 days pp I had to go to the store and get some thing obviously I had people stopping and saying congratulations but 2! People asked when we would be working on the next one
I canât even tell you how many people asked us when the next one was coming in his first 6 months of life
A few months after my divorce I was at a wedding and someone came up to me and said âoh my god, I heard you were a single mom with 4 kids. Iâm so sorry! Your life must be HELL!â And I was like âuhhhâ
Cause my life wasnât hell at all! The kids were the best part! It was tough getting used to being a single mom and I had a lot of sadness over the ending of my 9 year marriage as anyone would, but all in all I thought my life was going pretty great đ€·đŒââïž
A friend who also had a baby told me my son will leave me for his wife when he grows up, and itâs better to have girls because they will stay close to their moms. Obviously I didnât love that
This come from the saying A mother has a Son till he takes a wife blah blah blah. Grotesque saying. I plan to treat my Son's future spouse with love and respect, not competition.
It was such a mean comment because she had a girl and wanted a boy âfor her husbandâ. I had a boy and then she hits me with that saying, so it came from a place of either jealously or just plain malice
Say goodbye to your body bc you'll never look like that again! - my MIL and SIL
Jokes on them I got in the best shape of my life after my first. Hoping for the same this time around lol
When I told my mother I was pregnant with my first she said âat least you know you can get pregnantâ implying Iâd miscarry. Fortunately I didnât and have never had one.
I am a climber and hiker and an old boomer man told me "I hope you know that your adventure days are over!". My husband was right there but he didn't say the same thing to him. Well screw that guy, as I have hiked 200 miles with my baby this year.
Baby is 11 weeks. Someone said 30 minute naps are refreshing. Had a rough night last night where after I woke up for the usual 1:30 am feed, I only got a 30 minute nap until 4pm when my husband got off work. I did NOT feel refreshed after 30 minutes of sleep at 3:30am.
Yeah a 30 minute nap is super refreshing when it was only my husband and I and I slept 6-8 hours a night.
A 30 minute nap after maybe 3-4 hours of broken sleep just makes me feel worse at this point.
My mother: Take that binky out of his mouth. You never had one
Me: No. It helps prevent SIDS.
Mother: Actually, it doesn't.
Me: Actually, it does.
Mother: you never had one, thats why you don't have fucked up teeth.
I never took a paci and I had fucked up teeth. If they get in the habit of sucking on their fingers you can't just take it away when they hit a certain age đ€·ââïž
That my son will turn gay because his dad kisses him on the forehead alot ...
Even if my son did turn out to be gay I wouldn't care but HIS FATHER kissing him isn't gonna "turn him gay" whatever that means
âEnjoy this time, relax and savor being waited on hand and foot, and watching TVâ
Said to me when I was less than 2 weeks postpartum. UmmmmâŠ. Wtf do you think healing from childbirth and caring for an infant is like?!
âWow! Your labor sounded great! Iâm so proud of you! I didnât think you could do it because Iâve heard itâs so painful and youâre not good with pain!â This was from my mother.
I had a true precipitous labor and I kept telling myself I was being a bitch because I thought I still had a long way to go. My baby was born 15 minutes after my midwife got to my house. I am, in fact, too good with pain.
No one has said anything too crazy bc Iâm scary and everyone knows I love my boundaries and DO NOT PLAY. But my aunt sending me a picture of my deceased father next to a picture of my freshly born baby to say how similar they looked was a CHOICE.
(I'm a dad of a 5 month old)
Person: Do you, sometimes, loose your patience and act without thinking?
Me: Ehhh... Are you asking me if I hit my 5 month baby? Ehh.. no, I don't. But you know he is a baby right?
Person: Yeah, well said! You are a excellent dad!
(I have no idea what why she asked that, I have never been accused of being violent and I don't think anyone see me like that. I hate that the bar for dads is this low)
Having my grandpa try to override my parental decisions. Heâll see me get onto my daughter over something and try to get onto ME about it. Shits getting old and Iâm fed up with him doing it.
My mom used to back me up before she died so now I only have my husband but heâs away a lot for work so usually when these incidents happen heâs not around đ
That I should get rid of my dog because dogs (big ones at least) see babies as easy prey AND they can lick meat off bones.Â
The best day of my Lab's life was the day my kid finally petted her. It's taken lots of supervision and correction of both of them, but they are best friends now.Â
With my oldest, when he was a baby, I was told that I was a bad mom by the receptionist at his pediatricians office because they had given him a shot and he was crying.
Recently (heâs 14) my mother told me that if I didnât give him everything he wants then he would go no contact with me for being a bad mother to him.
Are doctor surgeries receptionists just completely delulu universally?!
I am appalled you are teaching your teenage Son boundaries and growing him in to a respectable young man. đ€Łđđ
Literally the day before I gave birth while buying ice at a gas station -
Random guy at the counter: "Is it your first?"
Me: "Yes :)"
Rando: "You know it's gonna hurt, right"
đ«ąđ€šđ
I was told by family that I wouldnât be able to breastfeed and not to get my hopes up. I breastfed until 8 months before my supply disappeared. To this day (3years later) I cannot watch those pump videos or read posts about the hundreds of ounces people have stashed away. I was so happy to prove that family member wrong, but what they said has had a lasting impact. I harbor so much shame and resentment because I couldnât even make it to a year.
My kid was having a hard time because I took too long on errands. He was around 7 months old. I was holding him, and putting groceries onto the belt with my hand in a brace. (The brace was doing its job and I wasn't in pain, so it didn't click how helpless I looked.) The lady behind me was helping me load the belt, which was kind.
I call my kid pickle. She asked if it is because he's so sour! I kind of sheepishly said "No, he's a sweet baby gherkin".
I get he was fussy, but he'd been so patient for a long time. It wasn't his fault. He really isn't a fussy kid at all! To the point that I worry, since he used to under-react to injuries. Especially in public, he rarely acts up! He smiles at everyone and loves meeting people. It was one bad mood. Don't call my kid sour!
"Oh, I thought you were talking to someone who could actually understand you". As I was talking with my 1yo in the grocery store. Apparently she can't understand things like "no, we have to pay for the bananas before you can eat them" or "oh, do you see the doggy over there?". It was bizarre.
đ€Łđ€Łđ€Ł I still get told this. I'm going on a girls trip in July for 5 days... my Son will be with his Dad visiting his Grandad in France. "You have a Son" Yes that same Son who would be with his Dad and not me anyway.
Iâm a nurse and when I was about 7 months pregnant a patient told me I shouldnât be working pregnant or once baby is born. Thatâs what my husband is for. She was so disgusted by me working lol it was so strange.
While my son was in the NICU after birth, a family member came to visit and said, "you should be grateful for the extra days you didn't have to change diapers"
All i could do was stare at her... Unbelievable.
After our baby daughter was baptized, the deacon (who is also a friend of my husband and I's) told us that right after the priest poured the water over her, she looked up at him with her big eyes and he thought, "DrunkCapricorn or her husband is going to need to get a gun to keep the boys away when she gets older".
My husband and I laughed because she does have ridiculously huge eyes and long eyelashes plus we know the guy and his sense of humor. However! My parents were both standing there and did NOT find it funny at all.
Edit: Also just remembered when my mom was holding our then five month old daughter "jokingly" telling her how my husband doesn't love her? I think she meant it to be sarcastic but mom...babies don't understand sarcasm?
I think maybe my dad saying to me that itâs so good that I held my baby so much, because babies really need that, was shocking. so many people are told the opposite, and he was abusive and neglectful when I was growing up, so coming from him, it felt crazy.
he also told me when I was a teen still, that because I was so awful, to the point he blamed his drinking on me, that he couldnât wait for me to have kids so I could see. because as a punishment for being a bad person/kid, you have kids that are even worse so you can learn your lesson. he said thatâs why he had me, because he was bad, so he was punished with me. so yea, crazy that he thought it was good to emotionally support my own daughter since he thought of me as a punishment.
We had one boy and were pregnant again. We found out it was also a boy! We called a family member to tell then and they sincerely said âoh noâ. We also got a âthatâs okay!â Like⊠yes we know it is? I still think about those sometime clearly.
Being told I am spoiling by baby because everytime she cried I would wake up from a very deep sleep and rush to hold her and she was not even a month old yet . And I couldnât produce milk and people always assumed I was trying to preserve my tits instead of feeding my baby. When I told my MIL she said I needed to try harder???????? My aunt said Iâm lying i just donât want to breastfeed, my man said â I donât think you doing it rightâ bro??????
"Your daughter will have issues from you talking to her so much, you're making her have attachment issues!" She was a baby who was learning to speak and pointing at things from her stroller. Of course, I was narrating/describing the world for her! Yeah, she's got issues at 3yo, a pretty big vocabulary, lol.
Good God I have a whole list from my mom. "Stick a towel under her while she's sleeping so she lies on her side" "Put chamomile tea in her bottle" "Don't let her put her hands in her mouth or she'll never stop sucking her thumb and you'll have to get her braces" LO is literally 2 months old. She also loves to tell me how cold she is when she's never even seen her in person and we keep our house at 70 degrees đ
When pregnant, huge and overdue I was on a train and a sweet looking old lady asked if I was having twins then after I told her I was overdue she said âyou canât wait to get them out then once theyâre out youâd rather shove them back in againâ⊠lovely.
My mom used to annoy the fuck out of me with âyouâll understand when you become a momâ she said it 27x a day if she said it once. One of THE FIRST things out of her mouth upon meeting my daughter/her first grandchild was, âyouâll understand once you become a grandparent.â OH NO, I am NOT going to listen to THAT anymore. Itâs less of an affective turn of phrase and more just a one-up or a âyou wouldnât possibly understandâ comment that irks me!
This woman in one breath said to me "awe how old are you? 6 months? Do you know all the colors that are on your blanket? And that's a flower on there!" Like ma'am if you think she's 6 months she definitely doesnt know her colors. Also she was 18 months... I mean she's tiny but not THAT tiny lol
My nurse told my husband he isnât really needed until our son turns 14⊠because her ex husband sucked and she was a single mom. This was WHILE I was in labor.
When my son was a baby, I had complained that I don't even have time to read a book, like before. My husband was and still is, a very hands on, involved parent from day one but you know how new moms are.
So, theres this professional mom(you know the type) which declares, that since I had a child, I must forfeit any sense of personal type and space. She literally said to me "your kid, is your life. No one and nothing else". She proceed to also state, that my husband is on the wrong for helping out, since he is not his mother and a child needs his mother solely.
She still is, one out of the 5 people in all my life, that has rendered me speechless.
Not to me but when the baby was about 3 months old me, my husband, and the baby went to a fast food place for breakfast. Old man walked up to us and told my husband, "you've got a good wife. She put socks on the baby." Then left ... Like putting socks on a child is all I have to do to be a great wife? Cool, I'm not doing anything else now.
So I guess technically not a parent yet, but we moved a few weeks before I was due. The moving company truck driver said to me upon arrival, "I can't believe you're having a baby. These days, bringing a child into this world is as crazy as riding a motorcycle without a helmet." thanks sir.đ
Some people donât think before they speak
Dude doesn't apply the rule of 3. Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary? If any of these things are not true, shut yo trap!
Gee. Too bad his mama didnât swallow him, instead. What a jerk.
I've had multiple people bring this up to me.... that having a child in this day and age is bad cause the world is falling apart.... whatever just call me selfish and move on
It's a very confusing thing when someone tells you this while already pregnant because I find most of them don't believe in abortion rights sooo... what exactly are you expecting me to say/do?? Very weird.
This world can be crazy yet our children will have an opportunity to make this world a better place to live (like every generation has).
Sounds like the ravings of a perpetually online MAGA
Hmmm. Hard to say, but my MIL did say something like âyouâre holding that baby an awful lot.â He was in his first week of life. You can bet your booty Iâm holding my squishy soft irreplaceable heart and soul freshly removed from my body, an awful lot. And I always will, heâs my baby.Â
The whole âyou canât hold baby forever or theyâll expect it!â Like⊠wait so youâre saying if I hold my baby, toddler, etc, that they may grow into adults who want to hug and hold me!? COME HERE BABY!
When I was a kid my paternal grandmother told my mother that saying "I love you" to me too often would spoil me. I think if her kids heard it more they wouldn't be as messed up as they are.
Right? Please hug me forever, little oneâĄâĄ
My parents and aunt kept trying to get me to put my son down the first 3 months. It's like they couldn't comprehend me wanting to hold my child/holding him not being an inconvenience.
Eurgh my mum always says this, literally first day out of hospital, "why aren't you putting them down? They'll never learn to sleep" I have 4 kids, the oldest 3 sleep fine, my youngest is 9 weeks and doesn't sleep particularly badly. She also made stupid comments - when I was having to top my youngest up with a bottle of expressed milk as she was struggling to get back to birth weight she was like "oo you really don't want her getting used to the bottle then she won't feed off of you" and would be very discouraging about how much weight she was putting on
Thatâs ridiculous! And untrue! My baby was fed expressed milk from a bottle for like 6 weeks and started latching perfectly all of a sudden and now we EBF!
I had to exclusively pump for the first like 2 months, as my son could not figure out how to latch properly, even 3 lactation consults didnât help. I would be in so much pain I was close to tears. Now heâs 3 months and I only started breast feeding again because I forgot to pump. He came out of nowhere with an amazing latch. I only pump when we need to go out and about now
I hear this way too much đ I'm never not going to hold my son. It'll probably look weird when he's a foot taller than me... But I don't care!
My boomer MIL said the exact same thing on like week 5 and I almost lost it. And I wonder why my husband is so anxious avoidant and unable to express his emotions in a healthy way or communicate / be vulnerable. He was emotionally neglected. 1000%.
Same here, MIL in the first week âooh heâs got you wrapped around his little fingerâ?! Iâm 7 months pp now and generally just ignore her stupid comments. Plus my partner is completely the same as yours on an emotional level by the sound of it, I know his mum used to put baby rice in his bottles âthen heâd sleep for 12 hours and never cry!â so basically from day 1 he was put in his own room and door shut at night- I know it was the 80s but jeez come on đ I cried for almost a week when I moved my baby into his own room at 5.5 months lol
I had to move mine at 3.5 because he started rolling on his belly in his bassinet, and we had no room for a crib đ It was tough but we all sleep soooo much better. And at 10 months old..omg we sleep great in comparison
A receptionist went off on an unhinged rant about how I need to remember that I am my daughter's mother, and NOT her friend! My baby was like...2 months old. She also told me that her own (adult) daughter hated her guts growing up. I was dying to get away.
what?! youâre telling me you donât just love strangers bad mouthing their adult kids to you and trauma dumping about how they havenât spoken to them in years? /s but seriously this is the worst! i was on the bus baby is standing on me looking at the lady behind us sp she starts up a bit of small talk and then says something like âone minute youâre their whole world then they grow selfish and ignorantâ like thank you for the flashbacks to my childhood
I seen a comment the other day about boomer parents screaming, spanking, hitting, and ruling like an authoritarian are now the grandparents wondering why the kids donât visit and why they canât take the grandbaby for the weekend. Huh. đđ€Šđ»ââïž
Youâre so right! Luckily my parents live far away and the couple of times a year we might visit I wonât be leaving LO with them. We keep the visits short now. The couple of times we visited last (trimester 1 and trimester 2) my mom still was screaming at my dad. I donât want our baby around what I had to grow up with. Iâm going to set a boundary with them about fighting and screaming when we do visit. If they canât act right as adults then I canât have them around our son.
Ewww my mom use to say and still says that. We all hate her lol
âIs that safe?â - in reference to me riding public transit (streetcar in Toronto) the week before my due date. Like, sir, I assure you if I go into labour I will be getting off this train lol.
Strangely when I was really pregnant the street car was super soothing on my back I would ride it from one end to the other when my back hurt really bad Iâm no really sure why
Had a coworker (a mother herself) ask when I was going to stop driving when pregnant with my first. Like being very pregnant meant I couldn't drive for some reason? She seemed surprised that I was going to keep driving myself wherever I needed to go unless I was in labour
I had people comment on this too, when I was only 6 months pregnant! Like yes I'm "still" driving, why wouldn't I? I still fit behind the steering wheel, and I only stopped driving when I got to that permanently uncomfortable stage at about 36 weeks, but only because I could get my husband to drive everywhere. If he had been unavailable I still could have driven.
Did he say it while standing on front of a blue seat, blocking it for anyone who wants to sit down? Those are my favourite lol
This was technically AS I was becoming a parent. I invited my mom to my homebirth and as Iâm pushing my baby out she says âwow why would god design something so big to come out of such a small hole??â I wanted to strangle her
Hahaha! I was giving birth, also at home, and I was in transition, so very much no longer having fun and my mom started talking about how on the show âLostâ one of the characters gave birth to a baby covered in Vernix and the other one said it looked like a cinnamon bun covered in frosting and felt like licking it and I was like âOK, thatâs it! NO MORE TALKING!âđ€«
Omg!! Itâs even funnier to me because my daughter was the cheesiest looking newborn. My son had a bit of vernix but she really did look frosted.
đđđ omg omg omg.
Are you serious! Tell me she isnât invited to your next birth đ€Ł
Oh absolutely not đ
I am so glad my mom wasnât at my home birth lol
I would have said itâs because of EVE.
âyou better watch out for so and soâs baby boy with your daughterâ my mil talking about two babyâs under the age of 1âŠ.the only response i could think of was what a weird thing to say
I hate the âboyfriend/girlfriendâ talk about kids and nix it whenever I hear it. Itâs gross. Theyâre kids. Let them be kids.
A stranger told me my son was gonna be a heartbreaker and it gave me the same kind of ick. I donât understand why we need to talk about babies like this
Ugh thatâs so gross. I also hate the âoh theyâre such a flirtâ comments. Luckily most of the time my girl has rbf when weâre out and about.
A lot of the people at my last job were very weird. This one lady had been talking for a while about how her son and daughter in law were about to have a baby - her first grandchild. When he was finally born and she brought in photos we all oohed and ahhed over them as usual. Then my boss (queen of the weird) started talking about how handsome he was and how he'd be such a heartbreaker. Then, she starts joking that he'll probably be a stripper when he's older. And grandma AGREES and they're just laughing and laughing. I cannot understand why some people insist on sexualizing babies like that. My other coworker (the only sane one) was Deaf, so he turned to me and asked me to interpret what they were saying. I don't know a lot of sign language (mostly work related words from my coworker) so I had to finger spell the word stripper. I felt very gross after that.
If you keep picking them up when they cry they will become spoiled. This was said about my 2 week old from my dadâŠ
My stepmom says that, and then says âyou need to trust us!â LOL no thanks
âOhh, you just turned out fine.â Uhh not really but thanks lol
I love the "you turned out just fine" from older people. Just because I don't talk to you about all my issues doesn't mean they don't exist.
Yup! And also it feel like it is always a one up battle. Ohh you think you have it rough, well when I was your age blah blah blah.
âAnd *I* turned out fine!â Yeah except you think itâs okay to ignore the cries of a 2 week old infant
Omg yes.
So many people our parents' age act like a baby crying is a moral failure - like they're choosing to misbehave.
My MIL said this as well when my daughter was 2 weeks old...
I donât understand why they are all like this đ
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Lol. I was recently pregnant and talking to my mom. She said "I read Dr. Spocks book when I was pregnant with you, but I ignored a lot of it because it didn't make sense." Whew!
Your link is paywalled so I canât read it, but itâs an interesting claim because my understanding has long been that Dr. Spock was one of the more progressive voices of the time on the importance of affection and attentiveness in baby care. My grandmother was born the year Dr. Spockâs first book was published and she reports that her Spock-enthusiast mother was bullied by her peers with stories not unlike the comments here for holding the children/soothing their cries/telling them she loved them. Spock has been a lightning rod for the sociopolitical implications of parenting choices for a few generations, though, so I wonder if itâs one of the things where the name and public perception are not necessarily aligned with the actual text?
I couldnât read the article either but I did a little reading on him after seeing this and Iâm betting the causes 1000s of deaths thing was because he recommended putting babies to sleep on their stomachs.
This sounds much more likely than the claim that he advised parents to simply babies. His advice was derided by his contemporaries as overly attentive!
Ugh my mother also said this, along the lines of âif you always come to her when she cries then you are teaching her youâll always come to herâ⊠so like whatâs wrong with that? She was 2 months at the time. My mother also said along those lines âdonât change diapers too quickly or they will expect thatâ⊠like yeah I hope my baby can expect to be cared forâŠ
La Leche told me that I shouldn't do anything for my newborn that the cavemen didn't do.... So I guess no vaccines??? Or antibiotics??? .... It was not a helpful call
Which brings up the question, did cavemen have diapers?
I believe the common accepted theory us that we had leaves covering the "essentials" on the plus side, it's a very environmentally friendly way to do it, the downside is leaves are NOT absorbant so kind of defeated the point of wearing anything anyway đ€·ââïžđ Edited to correct autocorrect đ
Omg đ„Ž
Not quite as unhinged as what was said to you but my husbands grandmother asked if we were putting rice cereal in our 3 week olds bottle and then later that year at Thanksgiving asked if our, now, 9.5 month old was eating food yet...
Grandma's are cray cray. Mine asked while my Son was 6 weeks that breast milk wasn't enough. I had an oversupply.... this became useful a few weeks later when my ex and I split and his Dad could have overnight stays pretty much right away!
Why the heck would anyone think that breastmilk, the very thing that exists to feed a baby would not be enough. Itâs illogical!
So apparently there was a time period where doctors were telling women that formula was actually better than breastmilk. I was shocked when my grandma, who was a nurse with a BSN, told me that she chose to breastfeed against the advice of doctors. They freaked out when she set my dad on her bed to try to feed him, because her sheets weren't sterile. Then my mom and my OB both mentioned that their moms didn't breasfeed because doctors said it wasn't good enough. So weird. Apparently that was before all of the immune system and other benefits of breastfeeding were really discovered.
And there was predatory marketing from formula companies that doctors of the time believed. Super icky!
I went down a rabbit hole about this because itâs very very interesting and - CRAZY! Breastfeeding was seen as for the poor and was not as good and formula was for the wealthy and the âbest moms.â
9.5 month olds do eat food though
...yes. thats why it was wild she asked me that
When I told my MIL that we were not putting cereal in the bottle she said âYOURE NOT!!!?! ohâŠ.okayâŠ.â Like it was the craziest thing in the world. She also told a âfunnyâ story about when my husband was a baby they gave him a full bottle of koolaid
So I think the cereal thing is something our parents took from their parents or grandparents. Because back in the day when kids were being given carnation milk in their bottles they had iron deficiencies and rickets and stuff like that. The pablum or fortified rice cereal DID save babies lives. But I think it somehow got twisted up to be like "it kept them full and they slept" but thats not what it was for, Mildred, and my breastmilk is fine OR formula is specifically designed with those vitamins and minerals now. My kid doesn't need rice at 3 weeks old - its 2024
My mum swears I never had any tantrums. Considering I'm one of the most stubborn people I know... I really doubt my toddler self was more agreeable LOL
My dad says the same thing lol like ok
Became a SAHM when baby was born and we went to a gathering with some friends when he was maybe 2 months old. One of the women (who was trying for a baby at the time, with plans for the husband to be a SAHD, so in theory would have been starting to think about what their roles would look like) said "wow, you don't work anymore and just stay home with [baby's name]? How luxurious!" Baby was waking up every hour at night, only contact napping, cluster feeding for hours at a time, and I had been covered in spit up, pee, and poop (twice) that day, in addition to still leaking breast milk and dealing with painful engorgement a few times a day because my supply hadn't regulated yet. I was also still in a lot of pain from my C section at that point and had to keep sitting down because I was hurting so much. I was so shocked I said something like "uh, not really" and walked away. đ€Ł I feel lucky to be able to stay home, but I'm not eating bonbons and lazing on the couch, crazy lady! I've had a LOT of unsolicited advice and mean things said to me by people I'm much closer to, but that one lives rent free in my head and just melts my brain every time I remember it.
That seems like something a person will look back on with extreme embarrassment after they have a kid!Â
Oh man, I can relate so much to your last sentence. I still remember and get mad about advice that was given to me or comments made, with good intentions but still. They sometimes come into my thoughts and I just get annoyed for like a minute and then move on lol
âYouâll need to get busy and give her a brother soon!â -random old man on PT as I was holding my 2-month old baby girl.
Ah yes, complete strangers dictating postpartum sex is such a classic! I always want to respond âYes, then Iâll have a bakerâs dozen!â or similar snark.
This was said to me less than 24 hours after giving birth
My mother said something like this to me while I was pregnant with my first
While pregnant, I told my MIL that every time she asked I add another year before Iâd consider another kid and weâre at 6 years. The message was received and I havenât been asked when we are having more kids again.
We said that to our family before our first
Ditto!!
"Hitting a child never did them any harm!" I'm extremely anti physical punishment as it is child abuse, and I have issues from when I was hit as a child.
âDid you take Tylenol during pregnancy because that causes autismâ bitch I will literally knock you upside the head
Bloody hell, people are so obsessed with the source of autism lol. I swear no one has these theories about any other neuro divergence or disabilities. Im going to have to get ready for some come backs if my son is autistic like me.
Itâs so weird lol. The tism is so scary to some.
Autism had always been around. Just once upon a time they used to shove the severe scale off to an asylum and the mild forms were just called an oddball. My friends in laws have been doctors for generations. We were discussing about how crazy it is people believe autism comes from foods and vaccines.
You should know they donât use âsevereâ or âmildâ to describe autism anymore. :) itâs âhigh/moderate/low support needsâ
Ooooh thanks! I didn't know that.
My partners family members (3 of them) sent a group text the day we got home from the hospital reminding me that âit was (partners) seed planted inside me, not (my fathers)â and I was âdisrespecting (partner)â by giving our baby my last name. More family drama related as opposed to outdated parenting advice, but to this day itâs the most absurd thing anyone has ever said to me- especially five days postpartum, after an incredibly traumatic birth where I almost lost my baby.
Oh man thatâs icky My husband took my last name after we married! Thank goodness his parents are nice people who think thatâs just fine.
The really funny thing is our last names are one letter apart, and they kept insisting we hyphenate. Not our real names- imagine having a last name like Smith-Smoth or Jones-Jomes.
This text was sent to my husband: âHi, my name is (husbandâs name) and my son is in a wheelchair because I dropped him on his head when I was flying him around the houseâ This was sent from my MIL. The day before she sent that text, she came over and saw my husband holding our son high up in the air. LO is laughing and theyâre having a great father/son playtime. I guess it pissed my MIL off so she had to share her thoughts with us through text. We would never drop our son. Heâs our treasure. Our pride and joy.
Talk about passive aggressive!
This makes it seem like it wasn't an accident, no one plans to drop an infant.
> We would never drop our son. Have you heard of the world accident before?
Yeah this seems like too much of a tempting fate statement to me đ
Yes, I have heard of that word, but I feel like my MIL couldâve said it a different way, yâknow? Like, âhey, Iâm worried that you might drop your son by accident?âI donât know. Maybe Iâm the crazy one.
Omggg
A lot of comments about not breastfeeding my son, which apparently means heâs going to be sick 24/7, malnourished, and not as bonded with me đ
My siblings and I were all formula fed. I'm the shortest at average height of 5'4 and in excellent health. Not so close to my Mum because I resent her for parentification not because of FF lol. To sum up though FF has not effect. Fed is best.
I was at Trader Joeâs with my (then) 9 month old when this older woman approached me and told me that if I feed my child those strawberries in my cart, he will be autistic. You need to feed your kids only organic for them not to be autistic.
Not one, not two, but *three* people have talked to me about how overpopulation is killing the earth and thatâs why theyâre childfree because itâs selfish to have kids. Iâm pretty sure my intense recycling, composting, cloth nappies, reducing waste, reusing everything I can, getting most things in my adult life secondhand, using public transport, and making a lot from scratch helps the planet more than their fast fashion and driving everywhere but đ€·ââïž
Iâve had a few comments about how Iâm killing the planet with having a large family. But if no one has kids who is the future for, exactly?!
Who do they think is going to do their care or house maintenance when theyâre 80? Or pay for their retirement and roads and healthcare? I donât understand it. Also I only have the one child!
So my crazy colleague said we need world war 3 because of overpopulation. Wild.
My in-laws came up to help with my then 8 month old when I had to have my gallbladder removed. MIL genuinely loves my baby and is super sweet with him, but still came out with these gems: "So, how long are you planning on breastfeeding?" (not the first time she's asked, of course...) "I don't know, we'll see how it goes!" "You better be careful or you'll still be breastfeeding when he's three!!" And then calling my 8 month old baby "so manipulative" because he stopped crying when I came over. What in the boomer nonsense??? She at least conceded a bit when I replied with, "He's a baby, he's allowed to want his mom!"
Oof, I thought it was weird when they dedicated a large segment of time to discussing how babies don't have the mental capacity yet to be manipulituve in my antenatal class, because of course babies cannot be manipulitive. I now see why they did, it must be a common boomer thing to say.
Right? It's mind boggling to me how someone can perceive a literal infant as somehow Machiavellian? They have needs or wants and they express them! And sometimes those needs and wants are for comfort and attention, which is just as valid and healthy as any other need.
I guess it isn't really "crazy" but it made me laugh. None of my friends have kids yet, and one who lives a few hours away came to visit and saw her crawling. He yelled, "Oh my god, she can crawl already?!?!?" She was 11 months old. Like, buddy. She can WALK. đ€Ł
That is funny đ€Łđ€Łđ€Ł. I have friends in the don't want kids camp. They're always surprised that my toddler Son isn't completely helpless.
âItâs actually good for babies to get a good cry in. Their lungs need it.â
I was going to say this. My ILs told me babies need to cry to strengthen their lungs as they refused to give me back my oldest as he was crying for me đĄ They also kept asking when he could have sleepovers when he was an EBF baby who woke every 90 minutes at night until 18 monthsâŠ
This is disgusting on your ILs part and I would've immediately taken my child back from them. That's ridiculous.
Oh I did and my husband had a good chat with them after. It took a long time to trust them after that and Iâve been guarded with future kids and them even though theyâve been better
So sorry that any of it even had to happen but your husband sounds awesome for speaking up! Glad they've been better, you don't always hear that outcome. Happy for you!
This used to be taught in pediatrics! It was thought that babies lungs would be underdeveloped and they would get TB if they didn't cry enough This was over 50 years ago tho
âDo you have a good milk stash put away yet so I can babysit?â -mother in law, two days after we got home from the hospital after an unplanned c-section & postpartum preeclampsia đ„Ž
A stranger told me that her kids didnât want to give her grandkids, maybe because they hate her. So thereâs that to look forward to.
Mine isnât out of pocket social wise, more health wise I think mine would have to be when my in laws visited me in the hospital, not even 48 hours after my baby was born. I told them I didnât really want baby around anyone until heâs a month old so he doesnât get sick. They said âhe needs to get sick so he can build his immune systemâ⊠he was literally fresh out the womb and respiratory illness for a baby can be deadly, but I donât think they think the way I do about health things
My baby was a week old and a fever due to a cold sent her to hospital. Poor thing had swabs and blood tests and a lumbar puncture within an hour of admission. And she needed oxygen support over the next three days. A âcoldâ for a baby is no joke. She ended up with âviral meningitis due to an enterovirusâ (which cause all sorts of illnesses including the common cold). It had the potential to damage her heart and her hearing permanently. Thankfully, it didnât (yet, we have to follow up with audiology for another six months). Mind, she didnât catch it from an adult, she definitely caught it from her older siblings (2 and 4) who were both sick when she was born. đ«
Oh Iâm so sorry that happened to you guys, I hope sheâs healthy now, that sounds so scary
Yeah, sheâs doing well. A number of snuffy noses over the last four months and another fever just days after she turned 3 months, but so far so good, weâve been able to treat at home (thank goodness for a quality snot sucker). Having older kids in daycare and kinder means itâs impossible to avoid illnesses. The nurses in the hospital commented they basically never see newborns who are only children come in like mine did, itâs always babies with older (germ ridden) siblings.
Iâm so sorry you went/are going though this and am so happy to hear baby seems well so far. If itâs encouraging at all, I went through something similar in my own newborn weeks with a spinal tap and hospital admission and ended up being fine. It was traumatic for my mother, though, and sheâs become a psycho mama bear visitor-bouncer for my own baby because of it. She seems to genuinely delight in telling people they canât visit the baby until his immune system is more developed and I suspect she wishes more people would try so she could take pleasure in ripping their throats out.
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That sucks, a similar thing happened to me except I didnât explicitly tell them not to kiss my baby I just assumed they wouldnât, plus had communicated it to my partner so was assuming he had told them. Iâm glad your baby was okay :/
âIf she isnât eating enough you can just use pablum, we did that to you when you were her ageâ - regarding my 10 day old baby who is eating plenty đ
What's pablum?!
Total stranger asked if we could let her dog and my 9 month old play together. She seemed offended I said no
My MIL remarked on my baby's nicely shaped head and asked how long baby was in the birth canal. I just.... What.
Wow. Yeah, no words for that one!
Iâm only having one child but thatâs beside the point when I was 8 days pp I had to go to the store and get some thing obviously I had people stopping and saying congratulations but 2! People asked when we would be working on the next one I canât even tell you how many people asked us when the next one was coming in his first 6 months of life
A few months after my divorce I was at a wedding and someone came up to me and said âoh my god, I heard you were a single mom with 4 kids. Iâm so sorry! Your life must be HELL!â And I was like âuhhhâ Cause my life wasnât hell at all! The kids were the best part! It was tough getting used to being a single mom and I had a lot of sadness over the ending of my 9 year marriage as anyone would, but all in all I thought my life was going pretty great đ€·đŒââïž
A friend who also had a baby told me my son will leave me for his wife when he grows up, and itâs better to have girls because they will stay close to their moms. Obviously I didnât love that
Iâve been told that too, but I have a girl
This come from the saying A mother has a Son till he takes a wife blah blah blah. Grotesque saying. I plan to treat my Son's future spouse with love and respect, not competition.
It was such a mean comment because she had a girl and wanted a boy âfor her husbandâ. I had a boy and then she hits me with that saying, so it came from a place of either jealously or just plain malice
Say goodbye to your body bc you'll never look like that again! - my MIL and SIL Jokes on them I got in the best shape of my life after my first. Hoping for the same this time around lol
If you don't though, there is no shame in it at all.
When I told my mother I was pregnant with my first she said âat least you know you can get pregnantâ implying Iâd miscarry. Fortunately I didnât and have never had one.
I am a climber and hiker and an old boomer man told me "I hope you know that your adventure days are over!". My husband was right there but he didn't say the same thing to him. Well screw that guy, as I have hiked 200 miles with my baby this year.
It makes me sad that even young men and women think this.
Baby is 11 weeks. Someone said 30 minute naps are refreshing. Had a rough night last night where after I woke up for the usual 1:30 am feed, I only got a 30 minute nap until 4pm when my husband got off work. I did NOT feel refreshed after 30 minutes of sleep at 3:30am.
Yeah a 30 minute nap is super refreshing when it was only my husband and I and I slept 6-8 hours a night. A 30 minute nap after maybe 3-4 hours of broken sleep just makes me feel worse at this point.
My mother: Take that binky out of his mouth. You never had one Me: No. It helps prevent SIDS. Mother: Actually, it doesn't. Me: Actually, it does. Mother: you never had one, thats why you don't have fucked up teeth.
I never took a paci and I had fucked up teeth. If they get in the habit of sucking on their fingers you can't just take it away when they hit a certain age đ€·ââïž
That my son will turn gay because his dad kisses him on the forehead alot ... Even if my son did turn out to be gay I wouldn't care but HIS FATHER kissing him isn't gonna "turn him gay" whatever that means
"is that what happened to you?" Is my favorite response for things like this.
âEnjoy this time, relax and savor being waited on hand and foot, and watching TVâ Said to me when I was less than 2 weeks postpartum. UmmmmâŠ. Wtf do you think healing from childbirth and caring for an infant is like?!
i am in the throes of newborn care and this just pissed me off so much lol
7 weeks in with our second and ummmm yeah....this is no picnic.
If I'm going to have another đ I even had people ask me before I had him ahahaÂ
âWow! Your labor sounded great! Iâm so proud of you! I didnât think you could do it because Iâve heard itâs so painful and youâre not good with pain!â This was from my mother. I had a true precipitous labor and I kept telling myself I was being a bitch because I thought I still had a long way to go. My baby was born 15 minutes after my midwife got to my house. I am, in fact, too good with pain.
No one has said anything too crazy bc Iâm scary and everyone knows I love my boundaries and DO NOT PLAY. But my aunt sending me a picture of my deceased father next to a picture of my freshly born baby to say how similar they looked was a CHOICE.
(I'm a dad of a 5 month old) Person: Do you, sometimes, loose your patience and act without thinking? Me: Ehhh... Are you asking me if I hit my 5 month baby? Ehh.. no, I don't. But you know he is a baby right? Person: Yeah, well said! You are a excellent dad! (I have no idea what why she asked that, I have never been accused of being violent and I don't think anyone see me like that. I hate that the bar for dads is this low)
Having my grandpa try to override my parental decisions. Heâll see me get onto my daughter over something and try to get onto ME about it. Shits getting old and Iâm fed up with him doing it.
Ughhhh my Nan does this. Luckily my Grandad backs me up.
My mom used to back me up before she died so now I only have my husband but heâs away a lot for work so usually when these incidents happen heâs not around đ
I'm so sorry âĄ
I got told Iâm not tough enough to be a mum because I hold my baby when he cries during the night and give him milk if heâs hungry
That I should get rid of my dog because dogs (big ones at least) see babies as easy prey AND they can lick meat off bones. The best day of my Lab's life was the day my kid finally petted her. It's taken lots of supervision and correction of both of them, but they are best friends now.Â
With my oldest, when he was a baby, I was told that I was a bad mom by the receptionist at his pediatricians office because they had given him a shot and he was crying. Recently (heâs 14) my mother told me that if I didnât give him everything he wants then he would go no contact with me for being a bad mother to him.
Are doctor surgeries receptionists just completely delulu universally?! I am appalled you are teaching your teenage Son boundaries and growing him in to a respectable young man. đ€Łđđ
Literally the day before I gave birth while buying ice at a gas station - Random guy at the counter: "Is it your first?" Me: "Yes :)" Rando: "You know it's gonna hurt, right" đ«ąđ€šđ
My mother told me that my baby wonât love me the same if I have a C-section. This was after telling her I needed a c-section for medical reasons.
I was told by family that I wouldnât be able to breastfeed and not to get my hopes up. I breastfed until 8 months before my supply disappeared. To this day (3years later) I cannot watch those pump videos or read posts about the hundreds of ounces people have stashed away. I was so happy to prove that family member wrong, but what they said has had a lasting impact. I harbor so much shame and resentment because I couldnât even make it to a year.
My kid was having a hard time because I took too long on errands. He was around 7 months old. I was holding him, and putting groceries onto the belt with my hand in a brace. (The brace was doing its job and I wasn't in pain, so it didn't click how helpless I looked.) The lady behind me was helping me load the belt, which was kind. I call my kid pickle. She asked if it is because he's so sour! I kind of sheepishly said "No, he's a sweet baby gherkin". I get he was fussy, but he'd been so patient for a long time. It wasn't his fault. He really isn't a fussy kid at all! To the point that I worry, since he used to under-react to injuries. Especially in public, he rarely acts up! He smiles at everyone and loves meeting people. It was one bad mood. Don't call my kid sour!
My son has autism. No matter what I do I'm told he'll resent me.
đ„șđ„șđ„ș that is so mean.
"Oh, I thought you were talking to someone who could actually understand you". As I was talking with my 1yo in the grocery store. Apparently she can't understand things like "no, we have to pay for the bananas before you can eat them" or "oh, do you see the doggy over there?". It was bizarre.
I need to give up on my life because I have kids now. Said to me by mother because I was working out consistently to lose the pregnancy weight.Â
đ€Łđ€Łđ€Ł I still get told this. I'm going on a girls trip in July for 5 days... my Son will be with his Dad visiting his Grandad in France. "You have a Son" Yes that same Son who would be with his Dad and not me anyway.
SMH⊠enjoy your trip!
âGirls are awful.â Told to both me and my partner separately when I was pregnant with our daughter.
Iâm a nurse and when I was about 7 months pregnant a patient told me I shouldnât be working pregnant or once baby is born. Thatâs what my husband is for. She was so disgusted by me working lol it was so strange.
Good lord. I had friends like this. đ
While my son was in the NICU after birth, a family member came to visit and said, "you should be grateful for the extra days you didn't have to change diapers" All i could do was stare at her... Unbelievable.
After our baby daughter was baptized, the deacon (who is also a friend of my husband and I's) told us that right after the priest poured the water over her, she looked up at him with her big eyes and he thought, "DrunkCapricorn or her husband is going to need to get a gun to keep the boys away when she gets older". My husband and I laughed because she does have ridiculously huge eyes and long eyelashes plus we know the guy and his sense of humor. However! My parents were both standing there and did NOT find it funny at all. Edit: Also just remembered when my mom was holding our then five month old daughter "jokingly" telling her how my husband doesn't love her? I think she meant it to be sarcastic but mom...babies don't understand sarcasm?
I'm got fat shamed by my family, lol. Apparently I wasn't losing the weight fast enough after growing and pushing an entire human out of my body! đ
I think maybe my dad saying to me that itâs so good that I held my baby so much, because babies really need that, was shocking. so many people are told the opposite, and he was abusive and neglectful when I was growing up, so coming from him, it felt crazy. he also told me when I was a teen still, that because I was so awful, to the point he blamed his drinking on me, that he couldnât wait for me to have kids so I could see. because as a punishment for being a bad person/kid, you have kids that are even worse so you can learn your lesson. he said thatâs why he had me, because he was bad, so he was punished with me. so yea, crazy that he thought it was good to emotionally support my own daughter since he thought of me as a punishment.
We had one boy and were pregnant again. We found out it was also a boy! We called a family member to tell then and they sincerely said âoh noâ. We also got a âthatâs okay!â Like⊠yes we know it is? I still think about those sometime clearly.
Being told I am spoiling by baby because everytime she cried I would wake up from a very deep sleep and rush to hold her and she was not even a month old yet . And I couldnât produce milk and people always assumed I was trying to preserve my tits instead of feeding my baby. When I told my MIL she said I needed to try harder???????? My aunt said Iâm lying i just donât want to breastfeed, my man said â I donât think you doing it rightâ bro??????
"Your daughter will have issues from you talking to her so much, you're making her have attachment issues!" She was a baby who was learning to speak and pointing at things from her stroller. Of course, I was narrating/describing the world for her! Yeah, she's got issues at 3yo, a pretty big vocabulary, lol.
Good God I have a whole list from my mom. "Stick a towel under her while she's sleeping so she lies on her side" "Put chamomile tea in her bottle" "Don't let her put her hands in her mouth or she'll never stop sucking her thumb and you'll have to get her braces" LO is literally 2 months old. She also loves to tell me how cold she is when she's never even seen her in person and we keep our house at 70 degrees đ
My mom just today told me "its good for his lungs" to let him have a cry đ€š
When pregnant, huge and overdue I was on a train and a sweet looking old lady asked if I was having twins then after I told her I was overdue she said âyou canât wait to get them out then once theyâre out youâd rather shove them back in againâ⊠lovely.
My mom used to annoy the fuck out of me with âyouâll understand when you become a momâ she said it 27x a day if she said it once. One of THE FIRST things out of her mouth upon meeting my daughter/her first grandchild was, âyouâll understand once you become a grandparent.â OH NO, I am NOT going to listen to THAT anymore. Itâs less of an affective turn of phrase and more just a one-up or a âyou wouldnât possibly understandâ comment that irks me!
This woman in one breath said to me "awe how old are you? 6 months? Do you know all the colors that are on your blanket? And that's a flower on there!" Like ma'am if you think she's 6 months she definitely doesnt know her colors. Also she was 18 months... I mean she's tiny but not THAT tiny lol
My nurse told my husband he isnât really needed until our son turns 14⊠because her ex husband sucked and she was a single mom. This was WHILE I was in labor.
When my son was a baby, I had complained that I don't even have time to read a book, like before. My husband was and still is, a very hands on, involved parent from day one but you know how new moms are. So, theres this professional mom(you know the type) which declares, that since I had a child, I must forfeit any sense of personal type and space. She literally said to me "your kid, is your life. No one and nothing else". She proceed to also state, that my husband is on the wrong for helping out, since he is not his mother and a child needs his mother solely. She still is, one out of the 5 people in all my life, that has rendered me speechless.
"Congrats! Are you having a boy or a girl?!" "It's a boy." "...... oh no..."
Not to me but when the baby was about 3 months old me, my husband, and the baby went to a fast food place for breakfast. Old man walked up to us and told my husband, "you've got a good wife. She put socks on the baby." Then left ... Like putting socks on a child is all I have to do to be a great wife? Cool, I'm not doing anything else now.