The Peanut Gallery Highlights Reel.

If anyone regularly reads this blog I apologize that my writing is less than sporadic. I post as I have time/energy and that seems to be in short supply this year. We have gone from the ups and downs of the first pregnancy, to the joys of everyday life. I continue to attempt a resemblance of balance between managing pain and caring for an infant, a task not for the weak of heart.

The thing that I would say was most shocking in becoming a first time parent was not so much the challenges of having a baby as much as the constant comments and criticisms that people feel are now acceptable to make. Now that we've moved into parenthood they seem to question and comment out loud on everything you do: to swaddle or not to swaddle? co-sleep or bassinet? cry it out or spend all night soothing/feeding? breastfeeding or formula? schedule or on demand? Vaccinated or unvaccinated? somehow these are all mole hills people are now willing to die on. When did we stop being happy that others just had happy fed babies.

The first few months, I felt was full of battles of theses opinions, then came the questions about development.. is he holding his head up? rolling over? crawling? is he fill-in-the-developmental-milestone? is he, is he?

During all the tsunami's of well-meaning advice that parenthood brings its good to take moments to step back and realize he's alive and well, that's really all that matters. I need to remind myself to stop taking these comments so seriously. So I've come up with a High-light's Reel of crazy comments we got from our first year of parenthood:

• When a visitor sees baby's first poop thats black and freaks out that he has internal bleeding and the dr.s need to look at him immediately. 
• The visitor that insists the nurse stop taking his blood as it's cruel to do that to a baby. 
• The barista that says if his sleeps really bad you should flip him over your head, and upside down as it resets the babies body clock of night time and day time. Proceeds to come from around the counter to attempt to show you...(#back-away-slowly)
• If he's crying you should feed him immediately or else your starving the poor thing. Claims that by not feeding him your with-hold food which is such a cruel way to treat a baby. 
• Your 5 month old should just wear mitts all day so you don't have to put them through the trauma of cutting their nails. (#have-you-ever-tried-to-keep-mitts-on-a-squirming-baby)
• When your having trouble breastfeeding and someone not close to you tries to show you the right positions, and attempts to jump in and help you....soooo awkward. (#violated-on-so-many-levels)
• When someone finds out you have low milk, then goes on to say how they did too and describes in vivid detail their breast infection that caused it and says they should really look and to see how yours are doing to make sure they're not infected. (#your-not-a-doctor-or-my-dr)
• Someone tells you they can't believe your 6 month old is on solids because now he could choke! You should wait til he's older. Next week same person asks why he isn't eating more solids because most babies his age are already eating meat!
• That it's such a shame you have to feed him formula because he's going to get allergies now. 
• When your child has bad eczeme and the Dr has said to bath him every other day. Then someone tells you your dr is wrong and you need to bath him more often as it will get rid of it. After repeatedly going over why your following the dr's advice they proceeds to text over articles about proper baby hygiene complete with highlighted sections. 
• Someone hears you fed the baby carrots as his first food, with shock and outrage cries oh no that's terrible we know so and so and they're distantly related to you and allergic to carrots! 
• Someone changes the baby's diaper for you, and sees two pink spots on his bum proceeds to cry which makes the baby cry... Tells you that he definitely has an infection and needs to go to the dr asap... you open diaper and can't see the skin or spots because from just below his belly button all the way to his but crack is coated in thick white cream because the zinc will cure the infection. 
• Being told your baby has eczema because you use a certain hypo-allergenic baby lotion and someone not genetically related to the baby is allergic to that specific brand so you need to stop using it immediately.
• Come home and your toaster that was on an island unreachable to the baby that doesn't roll over yet has been unplugged because so and so's kid stuck they're finger in a toaster and got electrocuted.  
• Every time a person hears your baby started eating fill-in-the-blank food and needs to tell you about someone who they know that is allergic to that food. 
• When someone finds out your pregnant again and starts wailing, "oh no, oh no" with their head in their hands, and says (directly quoting here) that they feel like they're going to die, and asks if this is a bad joke, then continues to say they're sick with worry because they know you can't handle it. 

In the end I look over the list have a laugh, and think wow it's amazing how much people care about all the details that make up my babies life. Its amazing how once you reach motherhood boundaries that existed before seem to have evaporated. Personal space while once it was a thing and meant I had a comfortable bubble, is now a meaningless term to both baby and others. Talk about people wanting to be all up in your business, it seems endless. Each stage of life brings new challenges and the best you can do is roll with them and find humor in it.

~Elysia B