Thursday, March 10

Well Said

I just read a post on the Advice Smackdown from my favorite blogger, Amalah, about mom judgey-ness. The post was actually about cloth diapering, but the part that really hit home with me was this:

You’re either the Weird Mom who won’t let them have food coloring or the Bad Mom who treats them to McNuggets for lunch. And honestly, I could not care less about any of it anymore. I’m a cloth-diapering breast-feeding bottle-supplementing co-sleeping crib-transitioning baby-food-making baby-wearing stroller-pushing ingredient-obsessing cartoon-watching Weird Bad Good Enough Mom, and I LOVE IT.
Like every other mom out there, I'm full of contradictions in the way I parent: I have fed Milo fewer than ten jars of store-bought baby food, but his birthday cake is coming straight from a box. I have given Milo exactly one bottle of formula, but I'm still feeling guilty about giving up pumping at work one week before his first birthday instead of pumping all the way until the year mark. I put Milo on an alternative immunization schedule in order to prevent too much bad stuff from going into his little body all at once, but I have given him Ibuprofin pretty much every day for the last week and a half.

And I hope no one judges me for any of those decisions. That's the way I do things because it works for us. And I love it, too.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Love this post! So true. You should be proud of how you're parenting Milo! :)

katy said...

seriously. sometimes not giving your kids something or letting them do something gets you more grief than giving them whatever controversial item may be. why do moms have to be such whackos? we're all so defensive :)

Anonymous said...

I love every bit of this post. ALL OF IT! Every Mother is different, every child is different and that is the joy of motherhood. The quick judgements and know-it-all opinions really bother me but there will always be peeps like that so I just try to not let them get to me! I think you are doing a stellar job!

Emoly said...

1) I liked that Smackdown too.
2) I've made cakes from scratch and they were just not as good as Betty Crocker's
3) No kidding about the Motrin, right? You wait and try not to give it to him but then he's teething and it makes him feel so much better. I would want the Motrin if I were him.