One of my very best friends recently took the terrifying cliff dive into motherhood, and is now the exhausted but proud parent of a one-month-old daughter (who I happen to think is really cute, but I admit I may be slightly biased -- she could actually resemble one of those stomach-exploding spawn from Alien for all I know).
Despite the trepidation I feel about our future friendship, having heard horror stories of the strain that new motherhood can put on BFFs, I really am happy for her. Beth is one of those women who seem to be made to be mothers. She's awesome with kids, knows how to have fun with them AND properly discipline them (which I think is becoming a lost art in this country), and has never had a doubt in her mind that she wanted them.
But as happy as she is to be a Mom, she amazingly hasn't even tried to sugarcoat the horrors of becoming one, or how much it actually sucks on a day-to-day basis. Which is awesome for two reasons: 1) The blunt honesty is refreshing in a time when admitting that parenting is an unrelenting pain in the ass can get you branded as a bad mommy; and 2) It gives me plenty of blog fodder!
Since not every childfree person gets the chance to have their decision reinforced like this, I have a series of posts planned detailing some of the more heinous things Beth went through for her kiddo that make me happy not to have one of my own. There are horrors of pregnancy I didn't even know were possible beforehand; plus I was present for the birth itself, and despite the fact that I didn't pass out once, not even when they shoved a big-ass needle into her spine (go me!), it was an awful, awful, awful experience for everyone involved. And that doesn't even get me to the postpartum funtimes.
So to kick off the series, and because I'm not doing it in any semblance of chronological order, I'll start with one of the after-pregnancy social annoyances my friend has recently been experiencing: unsolicited parenting advice from complete strangers.
Beth remarked on a Facebook status update this week that she is already tired of strangers telling her how to parent her child. Since she's only a month into being a mother, doesn't leave the house often or for prolonged periods of time, and typically has a high tolerance level for bullshit (ask her husband) this must be happening almost every time she goes out.
Can you imagine? Picture leaving your house for a 15-minute trip to the supermarket, where at least 3 total strangers stop you, out of the blue, and tell you all the different things they do to whiten their teeth. Or look thinner. Or fix their hair. Or whatever.
The first couple of times you might just be slightly bewildered. A couple more times and you'd start wondering when the hell people decided it was okay to be so nosy and rude in public, and why no one sent you a memo. Several more times and you'd start offering people free vacations at Camp Smack-A-Fool, courtesy of The Back of Your Hand. (Or you'd at least be sorely tempted.)
I'm enough of a nutty hermit already; if I got accosted like that in public on a regular basis, the world would never see me again. I'd wind up ordering canned food and toilet paper off of Ebay, then starving to death if my Internet connection ever went out. The authorities would find me months later, curled around my keyboard atop a pile of hand-written emails to Mr. Toehole, my sock puppet friend.
So it's a good thing that, normally, most people in public mind their own damn business. That is, unless you have a baby. Then, apparently people suddenly decide it is their sworn duty to let you know all the stuff you're doing wrong with your kid, and how to correct your mistakes before you completely ruin your child's life, you horrible parent! Because it takes a village, right?
Ugh. And this little gripe doesn't even include all the other social annoyances that come along with childrearing, like play dates (shudder) and annoying, self-righteous super-mommies (shudder shudder).
No thank you. Kids, and all the rude, intrusive, unsolicited advice that goes with them, are not for me. And while it may not be the most pressing reason for my choice to forgo motherhood, avoiding all that unwanted attention is definitely a lovely perk of the childfree life!
What kinds of advice has she been getting from strangers?
ReplyDeleteomg, I was there when one of my good friends had her son. I had planned to stay near her head, but everyone else was watching(her SO, Mom and another friend) so I figured it couldn't be that bad and I watched the baby come out. oh holy hell, there is no way I am EVER doing that. I think he was average sized, and he looked HUGE coming out. And then she had to sit there with her legs wide open while they stitched her up and everyone passed the baby around. Whenever people talk about having kids, I just say "I'll pass".
ReplyDelete@Amy -- I'm not sure what the latest round of advice has been, but the last time I talked to her it was mostly about breastfeeding, which she'd been having some trouble with. She was depending a lot on formula until some things cleared up (infection, problems getting the baby latched on, milk flow issues), and apparently, "So are you breastfeeding?" is an acceptable question to ask a total stranger. And my friend is way too nice to tell people to mind their own business.
ReplyDelete@charmed -- Beth ended up having to have a C-section (yeah, more on that later), so I didn't get to see the baby come out, but I remember all the other details leading up to that point (the blood stain on her back from the epidural, the smell of amniotic fluid, all the wires and monitors they had hooked up to her, the 27 hours of labor), and that alone was enough to reinforce my decision to remain childfree. Beth herself has sworn that she isn't having any more kids after going through all that.