My Kids Mom

Has anyone noticed how much pressure popular culture and media puts on new moms? (New moms being any woman with a child under the age of 5 or 6) I suppose this is really nothing new. I’m sure that through all time in history, moms have been under pressure to do the best for their baby or toddler, whatever that might have been in their era. It seems no wonder to me that up to 20% of moms have self-reported postpartum depression, according to the CDC. Remember, that’s also not including the moms in denial or that never seek treatment or admit that they don’t quite feel right. I think this generations battle is whether you’re a “natural” parent or not. The “natural’s” seem to think that they are doing things, well, naturally, for lack of a better word, and that the rest of us are caving to the cultural pressures. However, I think the tides have turned. I think the new culture in mom-hood has become this natural movement, and there’s a lot of pressure that comes with trying to do everything just right so you don’t screw up your kid.
It starts from the moment your baby is born. The La Leche League is peering through your hospital room windows making sure you are breast feeding. Or at least it feels like it. If you are having difficulty, you do all you can do – visit your local breast feeding clinic, cry, take hot showers, cry some more, and persevere. After all, if you give up, you’re a BAD MOM. If you do decide that the stress from it all is more than you can handle, then you are scrutinized everywhere you go by other moms and people who like to put their noses where they don’t belong. “Oh, you’re not breast feeding? It’s the best thing for your baby you know” the lady in the grocery line behind you says when she peers down at the formula on the conveyor belt. You just want to smack that smug look off her face and scream “YOU DON’T KNOW ME!!”. What people like this fail to recognize is that not every woman CAN breast feed. There are many women who are on life saving medication (like, for example, for epilepsy…so that while they are holding their baby and walking down the stairs they don’t go into an epileptic seizure and fall down the stairs and kill themselves and the baby) and so their breast milk is toxic to baby. Or others still, who have inverted nipples and don’t have the stamina to overcome the challenge that this presents. Or others whose milk dried up without reason and had nothing to give. If you’ve ever been one of these moms you could attest to the times you’ve sat on the bench at the mall giving your baby a bottle and experienced the rude looks from the breast feeding snobs in your town. And now, if you DO bottle feed, there’s even more to deal with. With recent scares of BPA leaching into milk and causing infertility and all kinds of reactions in test animals, I’m quite sure that the looks given to those bottle feeding are even worse. Here’s a great website to learn about which bottles are safe, and which kinds of plastics to stay away from.
Once you get your baby home, your next hurdle is the all the earth saps who are picketing in front of the diapering isle at Wal-Mart with signs begging you not to fill up the earths landfills with disposable diapers. 80% of diapering done in the United States is done with disposables, leading to 18 BILLION diapers (said like Austin Powers) and have the potential to leach human waste into the earth’s surface and ground waters, spreading all sorts of lovely diseases and killing us all. Although, of course, there’s been no evidence of that so far. What these statistics fail to tell you, is that diapers in landfills only account to 2% of the nations municipal solid waste. But lets be real here. Disposables use 10 times more resources (measured by weight and including fuels) than cloth diapers and create 50 times more solid waste. However! Disposables only use half as much energy and two thirds as much water!! Cloth diapers are great for landfills but they use up water and add to our sewage systems. So which is better for the environment you ask? While many of the cloth diaper-ers are screaming “Cloth Cloth Cloth!” in your ear while you stand in front of the disposables trying to pick something out, don’t let them sway you. The reality is, their ecological “foot print” isn’t any smaller than yours when it comes to diapering. I say, Be Free!! Diaper the way you want to diaper! Diaper the way you have time and energy for! Don’t stress yourself out over those cloth diaper screamers! FREEEEEEDDDOOOOMM!!! (said like Braveheart.)
Soon after you’ve got the feeding down, and the diapering down, it’s going to be time for your baby to eat solid food. Oh! The choices!! Guess what comes with this? More pressure!!! There are tons of different kinds of cereals, from brand name to flavoring/type of grain, to organic and all natural! If you feed your baby anything off the shelf that has more than 1 or 2 ingredients, your baby will be fat, suffer from a horrific disease, or die. If anything bad ever happens to your baby it’s ALL YOUR FAULT, even if it takes 50 years for the condition to develop. It must be because that person’s mom did “this and this and this” while he or she was a baby. How can anyone put one foot in front of the other every morning with that kind of pressure?!? I may concede on this one, that you should make sure that there’s no high-fructose corn syrup or other unnecessary preservatives in your baby’s food. However, that being said, I don’t think it’s necessary to stress out over whether something is organic or a certain twice the price brand name. As with anything else, you’re paying for a brand, not a product. If you want to go organic, then all the more power to you! If you don’t, then all the more power to you! I just wish all the organic types would quit trying to make us non-organic types feel like we are killing our babies by not eating organic. Not everyone can afford organic you know! It is generally more expensive, sometimes as much as twice the price!
Not too long after solid food (baby cereal) it will be time for fun! Introducing fruits and vegetables, and eventually meat! Although the fun might be robbed if you are subjected to anyone who makes their own baby foods! The funny thing is, that often these are the same people who will use organic baby cereal, but don’t use organic fruit and vegetables when making the baby food!! Hah! HAH!! *points at them in the face* I have decided that this time around I’m going to try to make my own baby food. I have had a website recommended to me by a friend of some recipes of how to make it just right, and another friend who knows of some really neat containers to freeze and store it in. I am all up for this. What I am not up for, however, is that if I decide that it’s too much work for me (being that I have 2 other kids under the age of 5) that I am dubbed as lazy and that I must not care and love my baby as much because I’m not “willing” to put in the effort. I’ll fully admit I’m one of the laziest people I know. My house looks like crap 80% of the time, and I just don’t know how to rise above it. Someone save me from myself… and all that stuff. But don’t tip your snobby nose at me, because frankly? It doesn’t work. If it did, I’d invite you all to do it daily, that way I’d have a clean house and a super powered baby, what with all this “natural” stuff going on. Speaking of a clean house, that’s a whole new topic.
What? Your house isn’t spotless? But according to media and all parenting magazines and shows and everything, you are supposed to have that under control! Your house is supposed to be inviting, and warm, and not smelling like baby poop! Didn’t you know there are all kinds of contraptions and devices you can buy to create the dreamy kind of setting you’ve seen in the celebrities 108,000 dollar nurseries. You also better watch out with the way you clean. If you use any product with chemicals, your whole household is going to melt like a pot of toxic waste. And don’t forget about anything you use with scent in it. I recently learned about off-gassing and the dangers that it presents to your lungs and your well-being. (Is anyone starting to get this kind of narcissistic and hypochondriac kind of feeling from these naturalists?) At least, if my house is unclean, I haven’t used any crazy products that are going to kill us all. Instead we’ll die a slow death buried in our own filth. And when the fire department comes, they won’t be able to find us under the thick layer of dust and toys that covers every surface of my house. I can’t decide which is a better fate.
The next pressure is the all consuming materialism. Not as much relating to the all natural movement, but it’s pressure, none-the-less. Your kid better be decked out in all the designer labels. He or she better not watch TV, or they will become a belligerent little hellion. (possibly true!!!) If you do let them watch TV it must be only Baby Einstein and other such shows that make you want to stab yourself in the face. You better have the coolest stroller, nursery, diaper bag, and baby gear in general. In other words, as soon as that little pee stick gives you the plus sign you were (or weren’t!) looking for, do not pass go, run directly to the bank or nearest credit card company. Or, get a second job. The baby better have the best and most educational toys, or he or she will be a dummy. Everything must have bells and whistles, or the baby will be bored (this is often pushed on us more by toy manufacturers than other moms). Stimulating! You must stimulate! If you don’t speak through every diaper change and everything you are doing, your baby’s speech will be delayed! If your baby is not attached to your body at every moment, his or her social development will be delayed! AAaahhhhh!!!!!
And last, but not least, we come to the greatest pressure of all. Parenting. Have you heard of “Natural” or “Attachment” parenting? These are the people who are afraid to use a negative word with their child. The ones that have convinced our schools that they are no longer allowed to give a child a failing grade. The ones that are more concerned with every experience in their child’s life being like a walk in a beautiful garden, then raising socially responsible and well rounded experienced children. (by socially responsible I just mean that these children are often so self centered they can’t deal with other children because they think the world revolves around their desires and therefore take over anyone else’s needs) These parents also want you to co-sleep, never leave your child’s side, allow your baby’s needs and wants to trump everyone elses (although this is sometimes legit), “natural” home birth (what birth isn’t natural?! A baby has to come out!!), breast feeding, home schooling, baby wearing, anti-circumcision, anti-vaccinating, etc etc etc!! (those last 2 are more huge pressures that I didn’t touch on here!)
In writing all this, I don’t mean to say that all these alternative things are BAD. I think you should make it a point to at some point, try at least one of them. I know I have, and will continue to. I definitely want what is best for my baby. But I don’t want to drive myself to insanity trying to achieve what everyone tells me is best. I don’t like all the pressure. I don’t want to be made to feel like I HAVE to do something, or I’ll just wreck everything pertaining to my kid. The most important thing you can give your kid is a calm relaxed atmosphere where they feel happy and loved. But I don’t think you should keep them in a bubble where they only ever feel happy and loved. Sometimes, kids will feel that how you are disciplining them is unloving. Haven’t we all shouted “You don’t love me!” at our parents, knowing full well that what they are doing is the whole meaning of love? I’m going to do what I want to do, when it comes to how I care for my kids. And I hope that everyone else does the same. There’s going to be stuff we’ll disagree on, but why do we have to pressure each other to do what we think is best? While I do know that your kid watching 3 hours of TV everyday is definitely NOT best, I don’t know if using organic cereal is going to make that much of a difference. So if you’re going to? Then good for you! But don’t look down on me because I don’t want to pay those prices at the check out. So my nursery didn’t cost 108,000? My child will not even notice or care. They will notice when I go crazy and shave my head and start partying like it’s 1999. I guess all I’m saying is, can’t we all just get along?