Day 311: Pressure and tolerance

For those of you who've been reading my blog since the beginning know how conflicted I've been about having to work while my daughter is little. Last night I was confronted with someone who is making an amateur movie about how going back to work after your children are born is evil. While he said it was purposely over the top because it is a propaganda film class, it was obviously how he feels.

It took me a few minutes to realize he was serious. In this day and age to be so blatantly against working mothers is ridiculous. This economy makes two income families almost an absolute necessity not just a luxury. But having a strong opinion is one thing, it is another to be so intolerant of other people who might feel differently. I don't even know why he brought up his movie, but it seemed like he was trying to make a statement to us. Both my friend Liz and I were very offended. Liz just completely shut down. I think she was biting her tongue!  She didn't really say much the rest of the night and left pretty much as soon as she could. I guess I felt like I wanted to justify my decision. We both love our daughters very much. We both are making every decision we can to do what is best for our babies and our babies' futures.

I didn't think about it, but considering how much pressure I am already feeling for going back to work, I wanted to strangle him. When I think about all the moments I miss every day, it breaks my heart.  I thought he might realize he put his foot in it when I said how much we spent to adopt her and that we needed to replenish our savings as much as possible. But instead of letting it drop, he slyly just almost to me said, "I was making eight dollars an hour and my wife stayed home."

I wanted to cry. I want nothing more than to stay home with her. Today, she was a little stuffy and not feeling so great, so I got to hold her and snuggle her in a big fluffy blanket for hours. She would wake up and look at my face and smile brighter than the sun. I read to her, played little games with her and we had a great day.

We spent almost $40,000 to adopt our Lil Bit. It took all of our savings and more. I have almost no retirement because of moving around with my husband, and we have two vehicles that we need to have paid off if I want to have a chance to stay home even if it is for a year or two when Chad gets a new duty assignment. With Chad deployed, my working makes the most sense financially and emotionally. If I were home all day, every day, the missing him would be so much worse.

I posted a brief comment on Facebook and spent all day hearing from all the lovely ladies in my life about how out of touch he is. But I am still pretty upset about it, maybe because I agree that my staying home would be best for her and I want to do that and his opinion didn't leave any room for anyone to else's ideas or opinions or life or struggles. Then he talked about letting his kids eat Captain Crunch and watch Saturday morning cartoons. I think Captain Crunch is the equivalent of spooning sugar and preservatives straight down their throats. But he thought he needed to critique my parenting.

I see kids everyday whose parents are complete disasters. They shouldn't have ever had kids. They don't even love and care for the ones they have and keep making more. I think there are a million things you can do wrong as a parent. If you tried to do everything perfectly, you would probably end up in an asylum or divorced or both. But I think if you do the big ones right: loving them, teaching them values, helping them love to learn, and guiding them to being good, happy, healthy people as much as possible - well, then you've done the best you can.

Maybe you could teach your child two more lessons: tolerance and not to judge someone unless you've walked in her shoes. This man, who probably didn't take any time off when his children were born, didn't give a second thought to the pressure mothers are under to be perfect today, to work full-time jobs; to feed her children all organic, fresh food; have creative lessons and learning throughout the day; to keep her house spotless at all times and supremely organized in the face of any crisis; to be supremely organized so that no one is ever late or under dressed or unprepared. I only hope he is as perfect as he expects everyone else to be.

Jesus said, "Judge not lest ye be judged." Unless someone is putting their children at risk or in harm's way, live and let live. "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." Mmm, maybe his stay at home mother should've gone back to work because he would have learned those lessons in preschool.

Day 335: Play nicely, children!

Why can't people just be nice?? This is just going to be a quick rant about mean people on the Internet. Last night, I heard that my baby formula company, Abbott, was recalling some of its batches of Similac due to a possible contamination risk. Of course the website was clogged all day due to concerned parents like myself trying to find out which batches.

I tried to find news sites that were carrying the numbers of the recalled batches. On one site I was scrolling through comments to see if anyone had posted a link to a site carrying the information. One comment made my blood boil. She said essentially that having contaminated baby formula was what we deserved because we weren't breast feeding our babies.

How ridiculous!! I would imagine that most parents are a lot like me and my friends, doing the absolute best we can in our given situations, or in my case, in my given body. While technically it is possible to breast feed if you adopt, the process is generally difficult especially in a post-hysterectomy patient, and even in the best cases, still might not produce more than half of the milk required to sustain a child. Plus, my daughter is lactose intolerant and has to have all soy formula. She couldn't have been breastfed if I were her natural mother. Other women can't produce milk, babies can't latch on, working mothers don't have pro-lactation workplaces. There are a host of reasons why people use formula. We certainly don't deserve to be unintentionally feeding harmful things to our infants.

I understand people feel strongly about breastfeeding. I certainly think it is God's best answer for feeding our children, but also understand that you can love your child and make a different choice. I don't think my daughter should watch 98% of television. Do you love your child less than I do if you let him watch Teletubbies (mm maybe ; p )? I am teaching my daughter sign language so she can communicate with me years earlier than she will be able to speak. Are you a bad mommy because you don't know sign?  or don't think it is wise? We don't all agree on what we like on our burgers, how in the world would we all agree on raising children?

Isn't differences and tolerance the basis of our current educational policies? Yet that woman ranted about formula using mothers as if we should all raise our children exactly the same. I bet if her son is dyslexic or ADHD, she will fight to the death to get him accommodations in the classroom. All people, lives, situations aren't the same. You can disagree, offer suggestions or just shut the heck up and be tolerant of people who are different.

Goes back to that famous book, "All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all and play nicely, children!