The thing I'm hating most about motherhood? The competition. Between moms. To have THE best baby EVER. Particularly when it comes to sleep. Which yes, may be a BIG RED BUTTON for me, because no, I did NOT get a kid who sleeps, but whatever, I got the smiliest kid EVER... so there bitches.
See? Do you SEE what motherhood has driven me to? To competing! In the mompetition! F*!
Because no matter how hard I try, the thing I can't get away from, is the conversations that revolve around whether or not MY child is doing what YOUR child is doing. Or even better, the awkwardness that results when MY child is actually doing stuff SOONER than YOUR child, and I shrug it off kindly because I don't want to INDULGE in the mompetition, and you get all crazy trying to list off the million other accomplishments your child's had in oh... the last DAY... because yes, yes, your child IS smarter. Your child IS faster. Your child IS the best baby EVER.
And where it annoys me most - probably because I've had TWO good night's sleep in SIX MONTHS - is around sleep. Do you KNOW how many women with babies my age and younger claim their child sleeps THROUGH the night? And do you know when I really really REALLY dig into the details, all but ONE of them are LYING? Except to them, it's not lying, because their definition is different, so their baby IS sleeping through the night. So yes, let's not forget, their baby IS the best baby EVER.
These women? Well some are claiming this "sleeps through the night" myth when they put their baby to bed at 11pm and he/she doesn't wake til 4am. Because yea, that's DEFINITELY an entire night...
Others, well they're claiming this "sleeps through the night" myth when they put their baby to bed at 7pm, and he/she only wakes to feed once, twice, or even THREE times. Because again, yea, THAT'S sleeping through the night...
And others, well they're just in flat-out denial, because regardless of their situation, regardless of how EXHAUSTED they really are, regardless how badly they might actually need another shoulder to lean on in comraderie, they would rather lie than admit their child isn't perfect.
They'd rather create insecurities in moms like me who wonder if she's the only one STILL getting up in the night to feed her 6 month old - often once, sometimes twice.
They'd rather feed the mompetition than help another mother out.
And I seriously - SERIOUSLY - don't get it. Because to me, one of the best things about other moms SHOULD be commiserating on the hard stuff, SHOULD be sharing the struggles, and SHOULD be admitting to hating the pieces nobody ever wants to admit they hate. Yet instead, we're pitting ourselves against each other, bragging about things that sometimes are and sometimes aren't real, and actually making some of us stress quite a bit over something that probably shouldn't be a big deal because all babies develop differently.
- chicklet
- The miscellaneous spurts and blurbs of a [formerly infertile] new mama, living by the beach, with a husband who makes her laugh almost every single day.
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35 comments:
I hear ya. I am suuleeeeep deprived I am not even trying to lie. It's not the total hours of sleep that do it for me, it is the consecutive hours of sleep and I only get about 2-3 hours at a time and it is taking it's toll for sure.
I don't wish this on my worst frenemy..ever.
He is 8 months and as much as I love breast feeding I am wondering if this is the reason why he is not sleeping? UGGGHHHH definately not bragging and certainly not going to make up something.
Chicklet -- I noticed "mompetition" in the first couple of years, but it soon died out when we realized that it didn't matter...at all. Every kid is different!
I agree with you that all moms (no matter how old the kids are) should be supporting each other because we each do have the greatest kid in the world (for each of us) and they DO develop differently. And we also have one of the hardest jobs in the world!
I LOVE your term, "mompetition." Very creative...and fitting!
Katherine is 19 months and STILL doesn't sleep through the night all the time. She slept last night but not the night before...
But hang in there, it will get better. Or maybe not "better" but a different problem will be the focus.
I am/was always the one who got told about their child saying full sentences at 8 months while all K will say now at 19 months is Moo (and ONLY in reference to her My Little Pony - not to cows) and Bye. sigh.
The people who do that are cunts. Seriously. All kids are different and do things differently and at different times.
I didn't even know that this shit exsisted until after I had a baby. I didn't know that people DID this. And man does it ever suck.
People totally lie about what their kid is doing or can do or whatever. I don't get why it's so important for people to try to one up you with kids.
I got to the point where I started cutting people out of our life because it got on my nerves. I mean, aren't we all in this shit together? And shouldn't we be helping each other instead of trying to make each other feel worse? Because that's how it should be.
You said it! The sleep thing was making me INSANE. Why was I the ONLY one in the world (it seemed) whose baby didn't sleep all night. When I asked their "secrets", there was nothing. "oh we're just lucky I guess. So-and-so is SUCH an easy baby". Suck it. I decided to stop asking, and if its brought up unsolicited, to just "la la la la la" it away
I'm with you, I try not to bring up what my kid is doing b/c I don't want the other mom to feel bad if their kid isn't. I don't want to unwittingly fuel the "mompetition" fire.
And I too am totally baffled by why we can't just create a solidarity of sleep-deprived crazy-mood-fielding women who can help each other out.
I wish I could tell you it gets better, but it doesn't. The focus is just different. Next, it's crawling, and walking, and talking. My older child is 5 1/2 and it still happens--moms compete over whose kid is reading, who is at the top of the preschool class, who is the star of their soccer team.
Back before I managed to get pregnant, I viewed moms as a club. And I thought that more or less, the members of that club were friends and supported each other. How wrong I was. Everywhere, there are divides and divisions--and competition. Some moms seem to even believe they can't be friends with someone who doesn't make all the identical choices they do, from breastfeeding to preschool and beyond.
It's sad. I wish it could be different. I thought it would be so easy to make friends with other moms, but the judgment and competition just seems to block out true friendship.
Well I'm the big bitch that has a baby that actually sleeps 12 hours, solid, without waking up at all.
And speaking of competition my baby can do long division, say her alphabet and sing all the Beatles songs in Spanish at 6 months old, so there! :)
So, I am right there with ya. I hate the mompetition. I have a specific well-intentioned friend IRL that tends to do it all.the.freakin.time. Seriously. And then continues to give me "pointers" on how to get MY child to be like HER child bc HELLOOOOO HER child is just plain ol' perfect at 2. yeah, 2. And she's pg with #2. And God love her, she drives me in SANE sometimes.
That being said, you're not alone in the sleep stuff. B goes to sleep (in my bed--yes, I am THAT horrible of a mom) between 7-9, will wake to still nurse (at 11 1/2 mths old, say it isn't so!) at least once, if not twice, and will go back to sleep (most of the time) until between 6-7am. Yes, I'd like to sleep more/better. But, eh, it'll happen eventually. Even if it's when I'm dead.
Sleep? So over-rated:-)
Here, I'll make you feel better (well, maybe): my kid does not sleep anything close to resembling through the night. Nor will he sleep/nap alone in his crib after 5:30. So we have to trade off holding him while sitting on the couch to keep him down. We go to bed at 10ish, and a good night means he sleeps frm there to 3ish befor waking to nurse. Then up again at 5 and 7. On a bad night, add a 1sh nursing session to that schedule.
And yes, we started solids, and NO they didn't freaking "help" anything. They made it worse, cause now he wakes up farting and pissed off.
Christina, ROFL!
Ah yes, the claim to "sleeping through the night" just cause 8 consecutive hrs of sleep is what "professionals" consider through the night, I am by NO MEANS ready to crawl my ass out of bed at 4am and start the day... Not in this life time anyway. 4am is, unless you are getting on an airplane and flying somewhere tropical the middle of the NIGHT.
Haha, I knew you'd like that!
I think the "mompetition" is hell until they are about 2. It seems to get better after that.
I think the "mompetition" totally sucks. None of mine slept through early and it was hell.
You need new frey-ends. Or new beyotches.
Like mine. Mine are better than yours.
Our pediatrician defined "sleeping through the night" as 6 consecutive hours of sleep. When I complained that they go to bed at 7pm and wake up at 1am (and then sometimes 3 or 4am before the final 6am up for the day), he suggested I start going to bed at 7pm. Ha! Good thing I love him for the rest of his advice, or we'd be pedi-shopping. Anyway, this was around 9 months old and around 10 months old, they started sleeping from 7pm until 6am a couple of nights a week and it slowly became a more often than not thing.
But every kid IS different and it is so unfair to compare them, especially when you are talking about a good sleeper to a sleep deprived mom. I never believed the ones who said their kid slept through the night at 3 or 4 months old. I've actually heard moms claim this at 3 WEEKS old and I call BULLSHIT.
I try to remind myself that everything good and bad is short lived, especially when it comes to sleep. My daughter WAS a good sleeper at night. At 1 week I started putting her to bed at 7pm every night and she’d wake once to eat, at 5 week she stopped waking to eat and would sleep 11-12 hours per night without waking, it was heaven, but it didn’t last. At 5 months she started waking for whatever reason, I have my theories but they don’t matter. The fact is now at 13 months she is a shitty sleeper at night and it SUCKS. She wakes several times most nights and for awhile there were nights that she would wake and wouldn’t go back to sleep for an hour and a half. But I keep reminding myself that she has the ability to sleep and at 5 weeks with no warning she stopped waking and maybe she’ll do it again, soon, please.
In my opinion when it comes to developmental milestones your kid does what you make room for. They all have the ability to learn and move and will perform whatever it is you spend time teaching them.
OMG - this so happened to me the other day. Only I was the bee-otch. I have a co-worker whose daughter is just a couple of days younger than Cade. He was telling me about how she is already walking (at 7 months? Really?) and before I even realized it, I spat out, "Yeah, well my baby has two teeth!"
Ugh. I didn't even see it coming.
I might, just might, have indulged in the mompetition when my older daughter was a baby. I didn't want to, but it was damn tempting, and after all she was a good sleeper...
The thing is, she was still a complete shit about all kinds of other things. And when your kid gets to be, say, two, you see first hand that ALL kids are shits about something. And if they aren't a shit, then they are eerily quiet and you wonder what is up with THAT.
Now my friends and I get together over coffee or drinks and share parenting war stories, which is so much more fun than competing.
@ Jamie: I think I would cry if my baby was walking at 7 months. There is no need to rush into mobility! I'm actually hoping that my current baby is a late crawler and walker. :)
Oh I hear you. At nine months 5 hours is the longest sleep I've ever had and I am so tired with people telling how great their kids sleep. Or eat. And the biggest problem with it all is that it leaves you feeling isolated and with no one to really discuss your worries with. Why would I want to talk about Little Miss seriously regressing in her eating with someone who will just comment on how their child ate truffles and fois gras at 6 months or some such shit. I don't want to talk about sleep deprivation with someone who claims that their child naps regularly and sleeps at least 12 hours in their own bed then wakes and cleans the house.
But you never know where it'll come from so you have to pick your confidants carefully. And you can always call me for sleep deprivation comiseration!
Yep, I hated that part too. I think the whole mompetition thing is based on a desperate need for reassurance. Because you get SO little feedback early on, even if your kid is the smiliest ever.
I've actually found that it's gotten better when our babies get older. Moms get to know the whole MOM thing and their kids a LOT better, and it becomes clear that kids catch up if they're 'behind' on milestones.
And I've found that once we hit toddlerhood, it's ALL about commiseration - tantrums, how you manage picky eating, etc. We commiserate and ask each other's opinion on how it gets handled. It's much LESS mompetition now.
Maybe it's because I've surrounded myself with friends who don't play into the mompetition thing. I don't know.
With the sleep thing? O didn't sleep FULLY through the night until 18 months. We had some extenuating circumstances - we fed him pasta with egg in it despite his egg allergy (yeah, I rock the mom thing!) and it gave him a stomachache, so he used milk to help him manage it.
You are NOT the only one who gets up with your six month old to feed him through the night. I did it, too. And I know how frustrating it is.
xxx
You know where I live, Crunchytown, where we eat the granola straight from the tree. Over here NOT sleeping through the night is a badge of honour - the less you sleep, the better mom you are. So me and my sleep training ways are frowned upon. But I don't give a fuck. Seriously, I don't. In my baby group I was the first to wean, sleep train etc - and that was at one year.
I'm sure a few of the moms clucked at me, but whatevs. My babies ARE the happiest, smartest, most gorgeous, so I'm doing something right. ;-)
The mompetition pisses me off too. My daughter doesn't sleep through the night...she's 6.5 months old. To me sleeping through the night is going down at 8pm and sleeping until at least 6am. That doesn't happen in our house. Sometimes I'm up only once, sometimes it's 5 times...it's a crap shoot. I just don't talk about it with other people.
You go girl! I TOTALLY agree. I was lucky that my oldest friend was brutally honest about the shitty side of having a baby. Yes, its wonderful and amazing, but its also fekking hard and shitty too. She (and now me) refer to the first few months as the "dark times."
My kid is shitty sleeper too. "Hello, my name is Leah and my son has never slept through the night." And that's okay (for now).
Boy, does this resonate! I hear you loud and clear!! My guy was similar at 6 months, and I had the exact same issues/feelings with other moms. It has gotten better as he has gotten older. But now, even though he does sleep through the night and tap good naps in his crib each day, he certainly doesn't sleep nearly as long as the other babies we know, so once again, my baby isn't as good as the other ones. I suspect their moms are exaggerating about length of sleep, once again. I was just as shocked as you when I started digging deeper to find out that what other mothers called Sleeping Through the NIght was not what I would call Sleeping Through the Night. Funny, that. Hang in there. :)
i'm with Serenity on this -- it does get better and ends up being more of a commiseration fest.
i have to say though, i was probably the worst at this with MYSELF. it's hard not to compare your kid to others and wonder if everything is okay. auden was a "late" walker and i fretted about it for a long time. it was hard for me to see the milestones on a continuum.
also? my kid still doesn't sleep through the night! sleep is his greatest challenge, so we must suck it up i guess. this next one is going to be an awesome sleeper though, and i shall shout it from the rooftops! ;)
My baby turned 1 yesterday and he's not sleeping through the night, so don't feel bad. I think he's actually a good sleeper, but if he's sick, teething, or who knows what else, then he doesn't sleep well. That's normal.
And by the way, my husband was supposedly the best baby EVER - sleeping through the night at 5 weeks old, loved the nasal aspirator, and other crazy legends that are probably not true. At any rate, and I say this with love, he didn't turn out to be a rocket scientist or anything.
I will not indulge the mompetition by gladly sharing to the world just how exhausted I am. Getting up once a night would be HEAVEN, but so not happening over here. I don't understand why anyone would lie about that. The last time I checked, sleeping wasn't a skill you could get an olympic medal in. If so, I would so win gold, especially given how sleep deprived I am!!
No, my kid isn't writing his dissertation just yet, but he's happy nevertheless. Sounds like your guy is a happy fella, too. That's all that matters. Luckily I've avoided the mompetition as I haven't been joining any mom groups as of late. When I do, I will brace myself for the silliness.
http://elpalpite.blogspot.com
You'd have loved me when my kids were little. Just sayin'.
Can I tell you how much I love you? No seriously. I just posted a very similar rant on my blog (post called Comparing). Don't feel bad b/c my 2.5 year old still wakes up most nights. My 10 month old ALWAYS wakes up at least 1 time for a bottle. Those other bitches are all LYING!!
My 9 month old still nurses once or twice a night too. I stopped complaining about what a horrible sleeper he is to 2 of my mom friends b/c their perfect children always sleep through and they would make me feel like it was my fault my baby woke up so much (ie I shouldn't still be nursing him). I didn't want their advice as this is my 3rd child and I know how it goes. I just wanted to vent about being sleep deprived and they turn it into tips about what I could be doing differently. So now if they ask I lie and say he sleeps great! But I would never lie about it to another sleep deprived mom. Hang in there! It will all get better.
Liza
Just dealt with this today when someone told me her 4 month old was sleeping through the night. No, 7 hours, while blissful, is NOT sleeping through the night.
But I've gotta disagree with one thing ... my baybee is the smiliest!!
I do not like the competition either. Having children who walked early then earlier made it so frustrating for me because I had a hard time with them doing that and others acted like I was bragging because they had when I was trying to discuss the hard stuff.
As for the sleeping, and the competition a couplethings that I realized and that helped me personally.
first with regards to others saying their child slept through the night, I turned it in my head to mean "when their child slept in a way they could live with" not a through the night per se. I was totally ok waking up 3-4 times a night when all I had to do was wake for a minute and put my boob in his mouth and go back to sleep. With Soul she slept 6 hours in a row from birth which freaked me out but then it shortened later to 3-4 hours. But with both what made it ok for me was when the wake ups did not include crying and long times of me being up walking with them up and down the hall. I had friends though who needed 8 hours sleep uninterrupted, and until they got that they were in hell. I felt for them. So when others talk about sleep, and they all do because when it sucks it is sooooo bad, I think of it that way and tried to start talking that way which brings me to the second thing.
At play groups I began talking it terms of what i needed or wanted for Bliss (haven't done playgroups with Soul yet). So instead of what my child was doing I talked about new challenges and what I was having a hard time with for me. So I would say something like "For me I am ok with laying down with him to nap but I wish I could get up after he was asleep so get stuff done"
Or I would bring up some aspect of sleep stuff prefacing with that I am happy we are co-sleeping and would not change it for the world but that struggle was with ...
(Shit I feel like I am so not making sense) I just took the competition out of it relating it to what works for me and what I was choosing in a parenting style for me.
I hope this made some sort of sense.
My baby has a flat head. Yep, I said it. I did all the right things and he still has a flat head. Moms are now telling me about a special helmet. No mom wants to hear about a "special helmet" for their child. I am now terrified to take him out without a head lest I get any more "special helmet" comments.
As for the sleeping comments, it's all a myth.
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