I'm sorry I judged you. I'm sorry as a non-parent I thought I knew more about parenting your child than you did. I'm sorry I glared at you disapprovingly and bitched behind your back, when I should have been offering you a foot rub and carrying your groceries for you.
As a fairly new parent myself, I've had some time to reevaluate my stance on a lot of things I was pretty sure I was an expert on. These things I will never, EVER judge another parent for doing, EVER AGAIN.
Their screaming child
In a plane, in the supermarket, in the restaurant, fuck any public place in the world. I will now, simply give them a knowing 'I've been there' smile and offer to pay for the bottle of vodka I recommend they buy. When we bought my bub home, he screamed. All. The. Time. I was basically a hermit for the first 3 months we had him home due to the fear of death glares I would receive when we went anywhere where the noise level was less than 3,000 decibels. Now, I don't give a fuck. He's a baby and he'll scream if he wants to. Don't get me wrong, I try and stop the screeching but let me give the non-parents a heads up. The sound of a baby crying to YOU is annoying. Possibly mildly headache inducing. I know, I've been you. But to the parent, it is SOUL DESTROYING. Especially if they have tried everything they have in their parent repertoire and it's not working. So take whatever feelings you have, multiply them by 10, and shove that look fair up your arse. I take back every time I did it, because trust me, karma was in fact a bitch.
Feeding your child shit food
My bub is below the 3rd percentile in weight. He was born this way as he was growth restricted in-utero and has followed the line so far. He's healthy, but the fact that he is little plays on my mind constantly. His weight is in the forefront of my brain the majority of the time. He has started solids, and it's a mission trying to get the food down him. Before this, and still now, trying to get him to take a bottle was/is a mission where basically an hour or two was spent being covered in milk/formula and ended in us both in tears. The boob was even worse. It got to the stage where I would have gladly fed him strawberry milk if it meant that he drank it and put on weight like he was supposed to. It's a fight. Every. Single. Fucking. Time. And the constant worry about whether he's getting enough nutrition is quite literally making my hair fall out. So if feeding your child Maccas once a week means your resting heart rate is actually within normal range for once, you go on with your bad self mumma. No judgement here. Well, no judgement anymore.
Not looking like a supermodel or 'letting yourself go' as it's so fondly referred to
My elbow at the present moment is so dry it hurts. Mostly due to the fact that moisturising is number 723 on my list of priorities right now. Make up? You're lucky if I brush my hair before leaving the house most of the time. In fact I only washed it today because I couldn't remember the last time I had. I know, I know, how does my husband control himself right? I used to think 'gosh when I have kids I'll make sure I still look presentable, how embarrassing for that women with eyebrows like caterpillars'. As a mum now, showering is a luxury & not necessarily a priority. I'm so tired that my eyes are blurry 75% of the time, so sometimes I don't notice that bit of throw up on my shoulder until I'm out in the blaring, non-forgiving light of day. And you know what? It took me 25 minutes to get out of the house in the first place, so you can bet your left nut I'm not going home now to change for a little bit of spit up. Deal with it. If you don't like what you see, don't look. I'm not here for your visual pleasure cockhead. And by cockhead I am of course referring to my pre-child self.
Being late & only being available at certain times
Time has only just recently started to exist for me again, and even then it's only in the form of baby asleep & baby awake times which generally fall in 45 minute blocks. I can start preparing to go out an hour and a half before I'm supposed to be there but you can guarantee that 15 minutes before I'm due to walk out the door, a pooslosion or a vomit the size of a grown drunk man will occur and I will still be 15 minutes late. Pre-child, waiting for a post-child friend would piss me off. Now, I not only understand but expect it. Kids don't care about time. They're little arseholes. And you know what? It has taken weeks, WEEKS of non cry it out sleep training to get my child to sleep longer than 30 minutes at a time. So many tears. So little sleep. So if I have to have lunch with you at 1030am because bub's biggest nap is somewhere around 1130-130 and he won't sleep when I'm out and as a result of being tired becomes the devil with roid rage and makes me want to stab myself in the eye, well guess what? You're having lunch with me at 1030am or not at all. Thems the breaks my friend.
Anything that happens when a mother has post natal depression
The story of the mother who left her baby in a drain? Well I felt complete heartbreak for her because it was at a time when I was also considering the various ways I could escape motherhood. Pre-child, I had nothing but pure hatred and contempt for any mother that could do anything but love their child silly. Now, as someone with PND, my child is extremely lucky that we both had a great support system that stopped me from leaving him on someone's doorstep. Literally. I was also lucky to have people that could recognise that my behaviour was not me, and did not judge me for it, but rather showed concern & compassion. Because judgement would not have helped the situation in any way, shape or form. It would have made it worse. Much, much worse. Because I can guarantee that whatever judgements you were passing about me, I was passing them on myself but twenty times worse. When you have a child that literally screams for hours on end, every single fucking day, the future looks bleak my friends. You add in the hormones of breastfeeding, a traumatic birth, the pressure of society, the mummy guilt and health problems, you've got a cocktail that I like to call 'shit just got real and it stinks'. With this point especially, I cannot apologise profusely enough. My pre-kid self was a judgemental, know-it-all cunt and I take back every Judgey McJudgepants comment I ever made about a mum with PND.
That age old saying of 'don't judge someone until you've walked in their shoes' is actually pretty accurate when it comes to parenting. I had no idea what being a parent was like, and all my friends and family that just gave me that 'you don't know what the fuck you're on about' smile whenever I started a sentence with "when I have kids......", well guys, I get it. I get it now. And I'm sorry I was a bitch.
Cheers,
Qld Nurse.
