Attitudes to prams and all things baby!!!

Davesmum_2

As a new mum, I have been amazed at the attitude of some people!

Recently while on a shopping trip, i stopped to feed my son, while sitting happily giving him his bottle, an old man approached me and tried to lecture me on the benefits of breast feeding, and how this would be so much better for him than "That stupid bottle" i was apparently "shoving down his throat"!!!!!!!!!!! I was raging and still get angry when i think about it!

I have also noticed that people are very intolerent of mums or dads with prams in shops, where exactly are you supposed to leave your child while shopping???

Is this just me or have others noticed that having a baby with you seems to give people the right to stick their oar in???????

;D

Final rant.......why is it 4:09am and i cant get to sleep!!!!!!!!

Queenie

SNIP .....
Final rant.......why is it 4:09am and i cant get to sleep!!!!!!!!

Because ... baby's don't *like* you sleeping at that time of morning.

Having had 5 myself I really *do* know what you mean.

I think one of the things that peeved me most was when I had 3 under 3yrs old. Imagine the scene: twin pushchair with two of them in, carrier bags dangling from the handles and then, attached to me in a sling was my 3rd.
Needed to buy the 2yr old a pair of shoes - enter shoe shop.
Women and Children's shoes? UPSTAIRS!!!!!
I highlighted this absurdity to the sales staff (bear in mind women buy the majority of shoes anyway and those of their children) and her reply? "We've always put them upstairs ... men just want to get in and out as quick as possible"
GRRRRRRR!!!

Cheer up though, baby's aren't baby's long ... society will soon move on to moaning about ..
your toddlers tantrums
teen tantrums
and
"the youth of today"!!!!

Ticklemouse

Seems you can't win which ever way you go.

I breast fed both of mine although the first one would take a bottle. If you'd have been breast feeding, no doubt someone would hav e come up to you to complain too. After all, if there are no feeding rooms, do they want us to sit in the toilet? Some would say yes, I'm sure.

My beef was mainly with people who used up the parent and YOUNG child parking spaces - I'm sure we could discuss this for hours, but on a smaller note, the people who used to use the automatic doors in for example, shopping centres.

Where I used to live we had a large shopping centre with sets of doors dotted around, one of which was automatic. It never dawned on me until a friend highlighted it, but a lot of able bodied people, unencumbered by prams/small children/vast amounts of shopping seemed incapable of opening the ordinary doors and were often to be seen barging in front of the disabled or those with children, to get through that door first. I joined her lead and if the person coming the other way didn't have a need for the door, then I wouldn't give way. ;D So, watch out, groups of able bodied 16 yr olds, prams can cause a few bruises ;D ;D

Oh, and for your info, I use the push doors even with my 2 yr old as the pram is no longer in use. Come on girls (and boys too) lets mow 'em down ;D ::) ;D

Bossyboots

I will open doors for people with prams etc but a large number of those people do not bother to say thank you. In addition, not all parents are considerate and think they can just leave prams and pushchairs whereever they like regardless of other people and safety factors.

It is these people that make it worse for those parents who wil be considerate but still need to get their prams through shops etc. I have seen people shove prams out of the way just to get past, when they only need to take a few extra steps to go around it.

There is no excuse for people telling a new mother how she should or shouldn't feed her baby. That is no-one's business but hers.

In relation to the doors in shopping centres, I always use the automatic ones in my local town as I find the ordinary doors far to heavy to push or pull. I always give way though to people with children and those in wheelchairs or with walking sticks etc.

Purdy_1

My children are out of pushchairs now (11 & 5) but what used to bug me the most is walking behind someone who was smoking who would then flick ash regardless of who was behind . The amount of times I would have to brush fag ash from my kids was terrible. >:(

Spendless

My sister has twins but the boy has always been bigger than his sister. Once in a supermarket an old lady noticed the twins and said to her friend about my sister
"hmmm she didn't leave long before having another baby"

my sister overheard and replied - "that's right 3 minutes!!!"
;D ;D

jellyhead

lol! what's wrong with having babies close together anyhow? my sister was born before i was 1, apparently mum planned it that way. there's only a year and a day between hubby and his sister although they were separated by 2 years at school because of the cut off date so one was the oldest in the year and the other was the youngest in their year. that was planned too. wouldn't it be nice if women were less critical of other women's choices?

about feeding, i posted on another thread about a busybody having a dig at me for bottlefeeding my nephew. it was breastmilk in the bottle, his mum had expressed it so i could feed him when i looked after him but that's beside the point, even if he had been bottle fed there's no need for interfering people to have a go at me for it. if it had been my baby i'd have been really upset, there's plenty we get criticised for as it is. no wonder so many mums get postnatal depression nowadays.

i'm pregnant now and have already been asked by lots of people about will i breastfeed, will i use washable nappies, will i have a home birth without drugs, etc. with implied criticism if i don't. it's really not a good idea to get so strongly attached to the idea of a drug free birth at home and then breastfeeding, when i was pregnant with my first i was 'advised' that this was the only way to do things and was devastated when i was induced in hospital with lots of drugs (pre-eclampsia) and then didn't produce any milk in spite of lots of help. i'd been so determined to do things the 'right' way and had been swayed by the women claiming that anyone who doesn't follow that route is a terrible mother, when it came to my not being able to breastfeed i felt like a failure, i felt like i was a bad mother and i had terrible postnatal depression.

i'm more confident now and will go with the flow with this new baby. i'm not going to feel guilty about any of the choices i make and i'm not going to have any firm decisions in case i can't do things the way i wanted to. as long as i love the baby, keep it warm and fed etc. then i don't think anybody has the right to criticise my mothering skills. harumph! rant over :-)

Spendless

Good for you bargain bunny deciding tio go with the flow.

My birth plan for my eldest read something like
No Pethidine
baby delivered onto my tummy
husband present

(i was also going to breastfeed)

What actually happened was he was born by emergency C-section under GA with husband stood outside - not allowed to watch ::)

I also struggled with breast-feeding and changed to bottle feeding.

I ended up very upset that all the things i thought would happen didn't.

3 years later when i had second i refused to do a birth plan - and guess what another c-section under GA

At 9 months pregnant we were still telling most people we hadn't thought of a name cos of other peoples comments.

Why is this. You wouldn't dream of saying to someone
"I don't like your dress/hair? choice of wallpaper" but tell them you're thinking of calling you baby x and someone is bound to tell you they don't like it :-/

trafalgar_2

My children are out of pushchairs now (11 & 5) but what used to bug me the most is walking behind someone who was smoking who would then flick ash regardless of who was behind . The amount of times I would have to brush fag ash from my kids was terrible.  >:(

I know exactly what you mean,the people that used to complain when all they had to do was move their kids ::) ::)......I'm kidding ;D

What annoys me a lot though is people who are walking their little ones along side them and forget they are there ::),they barge past you and the little ones nearly gets an adult sitting on them because mum or dad forget they are now wider by the width of a child :-/ and the poor little mites get walked straight into oncoming legs and bags..........I always give way to mums or dads with prams as I remember what it was like when I had my kids but honestly some of them think they are driving battering rams >:(,give sokmeone a chance to move please,it's a lot easier without bruised legs or run-over feet ;D

jellyhead

:-)

i do have some ideas of how i'd prefer to do things but i don't want to be too sure about it in case i'm upset if it doesn't happen.

i always keep my opinions of baby names to myself though, i don't see why others can't, as long as they aren't completely ridiculous. the snide looks in mcdonalds when a mum is calling to her toddler called chardonnay can't be nice for the kid. if ciaran (my mum chose the name) had been a girl i was going to call him tabitha and everyone told me how horrible they thought that was. i liked sam or tom for a boy but everyone quoted the most popular names of the year and sam and tom were in the top 3 (they're not that common in his school actually, all the boys are called jack or connor so i could have called ciaran tom or sam without any problems).

now i'm pregnant again ciaran has actually chosen the name tabitha for the baby lol! (he watched a bit of pop idol and loved tabby). we've been through lots of names and haven't found a single name that all 3 of us like. a friend had chosen chelsea for her baby but when the baby arrived she said she 'didn't look like a chelsea' and changed her mind. nothing wrong with waiting until the last minute, or naming babies after hospital staff lol! if anyone asks me about it i'm going to pretend i'm calling the baby 'rainbow' regardless of sex lol!

Poppy9

I too have left behind the pram stage but there are things you can do to make it less stressful when shopping with pram in tow. Don't go to town at the busiest times i.e. saturdays and lunch times. From the babys point of view its quite scary being at such a low level when there are crowds of people in town. The christmas switching on of the lights must rank as one of the worse times. Hordes of babies in pushchairs at the mercy of peoples dangling shopping bags.

Saw a dreadful thing on saturday in town. A baby dropped her bottle from the pram. Mother bent down still with fag in mouth picked up the bottle took out fag and sucked the teat to clean it. Popped it straight back into babys mouth. Lovely. You can always tell the babys of smokers cos you pick them up expecting that lovely baby smell but instead get the whiff of stale smoke. I debated whether to tell one of my friends who prided herself on not smoking in the house when her kids were about that their clothes still stank of tobacco. Would you have? I didn't.

Finally - when naming child think how you would have felt if you had an unusual name. My friend Eloise hated her name as everyone always said to her "Thats a funny name" . Quite common now but she still hates.