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Everyone's OpinionIt takes a village -- a nosy, busybody, opinionated village. |
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I personally wanted a home birth. I liked the idea of having my baby in a relaxed environment. Even my husband thought I was crazy to want to have a baby at home. "Babies should be born in the hospital where they belong." I soon found that my natural desire to have as little medical interference as possible wasn't going to be fulfilled when complications set in. Suddenly I found myself on bed rest with preeclampsia and going to the hospital twice a week to be given non-stress tests to make sure that the baby was doing okay. All at once my home birth idea had to be put to rest because I would need monitoring during labor to check my blood pressure. Then when my water broke, I felt my head-down baby flip around and end up in the transverse position. Now instead of a home birth, I found myself in the operating room being prepped for a cesarean. Everyone told me "See? What would have happened if you hadn't listened to us?" As though my baby, sensing my desire for a home birth, decided to turn sideways just to spite me! I was determined to breastfeed immediately after birth. I had read about how babies will seek out the breast and actually attempt to crawl up the mother to find the colostrum. My baby went to the NICU due to breathing difficulties and must have missed the crawling instinct because when he came out of the NICU, he didn't want to latch on at all. My mother told me that some babies don't nurse and that formula would be okay, too. Way to be supportive mom! My milk came in with a flood at two days postpartum and with a lot of work from a lactation consultant, I finally started nursing him fully a week after his birth. I was so proud to be finally breastfeeding and wasn't prepared for people's reactions. Some people told me that my baby wouldn't get enough from my milk. Others told me that they only needed my milk for the first six weeks. Immediately the uncertainties came back and I started to doubt myself. And when he got reflux and seemed to be spitting up all the milk he drank, I really wondered if I was doing the right thing. I was going to breastfeed for at least a year, but found my milk supply almost disappear overnight. I went from oversupply to no supply. Someone suggested I take a pregnancy test and sure enough, that's why I had no milk. Apparently some women lose their milk when they get pregnant. After a week of pumping like a woman possessed, I finally accepted that my milk was gone and went to formula. Of course, some people said that eight months was more than enough to nurse my son anyway, and others said I should have tried harder to keep nursing, after all, they nursed when they were pregnant, so if I wanted to bad enough...... When my doctor and I discussed how we would deliver my second child, we both decided that for me, a vbac delivery would be too dangerous. When I told people I was going to have a repeat cesarean, most of them thought I shouldn't do a cesarean. They all knew someone who had had a cesarean and went on to have successful vaginal births, and the recovery was so easy! I always felt strange when they would say that. Do I tell them about all my personal complications? I doubted that anyone really wanted my medical history. Or do I just ignore them? I found myself justifying my decision to perfect strangers, who really had no business making a judgement anyway. When I went into labor on my own at 37 weeks, I was actually tempted to go through the vbac, even though I knew it would be dangerous, just so that these people wouldn't make such judgements about me. Luckily my doctor and husband brought me to a more rational frame of mind. I am coming to the conclusion that I need to stop listening so hard to other people. If I breastfeed my daughter until she is two or older, it is only me that is doing it so no one else should be able to decide whether or not I wean. If I have a cesarean, no one else will go through the recovery but me. I have decided that I am the one that knows my child the best and I am doing a good job, even if some of the things I do may not be the same things that other people might choose to do. At the same time, I pray that I am becoming less judgemental myself of the choices that other parents make and more sympathetic to the struggles that they go through as they also make decisions about how they will raise their own families. I have come to realize that listening to everyone else doesn't make us good parents. We are not good parents when we decide to have a medication free birth, breastfeed, or make our own organic baby food. We are good parents when our decisions are made with love and concern and the desire to do our best for our children and our family. Even if our moms or the stranger in the grocery store line may not agree. |
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1. amyinbc
Jul 14, 2006 01:38
SO well said. You can't please everyone so you might as well please yourself. (completely ripped off from some country tune but oh so true!) I wish more mothers realized early on that these are THEIR children and what you feel is best for them is not to be shamed or questioned.2. Michelle
May 12, 2008 13:56
I heard so much crap from people when I was pregnant. Stuff like, "Don't stretch your arms over your head," and "if you have heartburn, your baby will have a headful of hair." Completely idiotic things like that. I never got any good advice and learned that I had to listen to my own instinct and to tell everyone else to shut up or to f*ck off. People aren't ever as well-meaning as we like to think.They always have opinions, and once they see that you don't give a rat's ass about what they think, then they will start to ease up on their "advice." The proof of your wisdom will show in the connection you have with your child, regardless of whether you breastfed for 8 months or had a repeat C-section.
I did find that people tend to try to control the behavior of others because they often feel that they themselves did something wrong. They want to live vicariously through you. Some just want to be know-it-alls who get validation from telling you what to do, or they think that if you do something differently that you will judge them for how they did things. Their insecurity is so transparent and toxic that it can make you crazy if you let it.
How your baby comes out of your body is between you and your doctor. How you feed your baby is between you and your baby. Are the people who dole out "well-meaning advice" gonna pay for your kids' braces or college tuition? Will they take off from work to stay home with them when they are ill?
Ask them that, and when they say "no," tell them they have no right to even have an opinion about what you do.
You go, girl.