We have our wonderful guest blogger and mom-to-be Sara Bell writing in about the competition between mom’s! Do check out her interesting blog and even more interesting life on Traveling PhoBlogWriPher.
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Hi! My name is Sara Bell and I blog over at The Traveling PhoBlogWriPher.
I’m so excited to guest post over here on New Mom in the ‘Burbs. I’m going to be a New Mom myself this May so it’s only fitting!
I’m here today to talk to you about Mompetition. I have known for a long time that Mompetition existed, I just never experienced it firsthand until I announced to the world that I am pregnant.
Now I liken myself to a chubbier, more nauseated version of Katniss. I was thrown into an arena of several others and my OBGYN’s words rang in my ears. I looked around me and saw the hungry look in the eyes of other pregnant women. I felt nothing but fear. And nausea. Fear and nausea, and maybe a little bit of hunger specifically for Cheetos. Oh, and also some lower back pain and a little heartburn. But that’s it.
I’d been through what I considered was decently extensive training. I baby-sat in high school and college and have worked with young special needs children in some capacity or other for most of my life. I’ve volunteered in church nurseries, held friends’ babies while they tried on a new dress, seen movies in which women get pregnant and emotional. I was prepared, or so I thought.
Ha.
Mompetition is fierce. My best line of defense, I have discovered, is to stay home with my doors locked. If I avoid my phone and all books, magazines, television shows and websites I have an even better chance. If I dare test my luck with any of those things though, I am immediately bombarded with when I was pregnants and if I were pregnants.
I can run (waddle), duck(trip), and hide(ha) all I want. They’ll always find me. The rare complications and disorders hit me through the trees. The things I ought to be doing (or not be doing) grip the boots (slippers) beneath my feet and suck me in. The reasons I will be an inferior mother are everywhere!
Last week I went to a new pre-natal yoga class and vowed to never return. I walked in and was immediately bombarded with questions. Not “What’s your name and when are you due?” questions, “Will you breastfeed and will you circumcise and will you use cloth or disposable diapers and are you going to have an epidural?” questions. The big ones.
There was no winning. A yes or a no resulted in immediate tsking from one side or the other, and then a passive “Oh, erm, uh, I haven’t decided yet?” resulted in immediate tsking from both sides. “Say, what a lovely wall that is!” didn’t help me either. I was doomed.
“When are you due?” I tried with a smile. Perhaps I just needed to focus on one-on-one time instead of a larger group setting.
“When am I due? I am due when my baby is ready to be born. That’s the problem these days, everybody thinks you have to have a due date.”
Sigh.
Do grandmas deal with grandmompetition? If not, I want to skip this whole Mom thing and go straight to Grandma. Where do I apply for that?
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Thanks for sharing your experiences as a new mom-to-be! We wish you all the best with your pregnancy and can’t wait to see your pictures with your little bundle of joy!
Thanks for sharing me!! =]
hah! i love sara! i really haven’t experienced much along the lines of mompetition. maybe it’s because i live in my own little bubble. or maybe it’s because gage was born before most of my peers started having their own children.
but i will say that moms trying to ‘one up’ each other was one of the reasons i deactivated my facebook account. yeah, yeah, we all think our OWN children are wonderful. but there is no need to rub it in anyone’s face. i especially felt badly for those status updates that talked about how their kids were doing so and so earlier than the average child, when i knew i had friends whose kids were a little behind (and they were worried.)
as for grandmapetition? i have come to the conclusions that grandmas are more calm when it comes to talking about how perfect their grandkids are (because they have been there, done that.) however, they want to show more pictures. to anyone who will look.
Oh Momma, I feel for you. I’m 2 kids in and it doesn’t get any better. Fortunately I’ve found that it seems to exist more on the internet than it does in person, at least for me. Surround yourself with people who will support any decision you make :)
This was SO funny! I’m not pregnant yet, but it’s a nice glimpse into what it’s really like in the real world.
Yep, so true. I was so glad when I found a group of moms that didn’t do it. It was such a relief! We were all comfortable enough with each other that we could brag about our kids’ accomplishments and development, or lament about where they were delayed, we could express concern about breastfeeding without needing to defend our commitment(or we could say we were just done), and so on. If you wanted encouragement, you got it. If you wanted commiseration, you got it. It was lovely. They’re a fantastic group of women, and while I don’t live near them anymore I still consider them great friends.
So, the people do exist! You just have to find them.
Thanks Nicole, that makes me feel so much better! =]