Before I begin my musings/thoughts/rants of modern day motherhood & all things related, I should really introduce myself. I shall go by the name of Elle J and I am 26 year old a first time mum of a beautiful 7 month old girl. I am unmarried but I do live my boyfriend (yes boyfriend, not partner... we do not do business together, well we do do 'the business' but not the suit wearing, briefcase carrying, blackberry tapping business. so he is my boyfriend) we have been together for around 2.5 years and for the purposes of this blog he shall be known as Mr B. I like many things in life and I am unable to describe myself in a short 'off the cuff' way because I am a complex character who likes to digress a lot... be warned! So I shall continue:
So, who makes these rules that us mums are supposed to adhere to? I am always hearing about new research and studies that tell me to 'wean my baby at X months', 'don't feed my baby X food', don't cuddle my baby too much', 'make sure my baby gets enough cuddles','don't pick baby up too much when crying', 'don't use controlled crying', 'don't allow my baby to tightrope walk whilst juggling batons of fire' (I'm sure there has been some kind of university of boresville study into this last one) it drives me completely mad. I created my beautiful daughter, I carried her in my highly expanding womb for 41 weeks and 4 days and I shall decide what she eats, where she sleeps and what she plays with. Except I can't do any of this because if one day I decided I'd had enough of boiling, chopping, blending, and painstakingly scooping food into tiny little ice cube trays and bought a jar of food (yes I heard the audible gasps at the mere mention of jar food!) for my little angel that would be bad enough but if I were to open up that jar in public I would face aghast glances and looks of horror from other mothers, I would hear the whispers off "she uses jar food!, that's not giving her little one the best of starts is it..." even if everyone around me was silent I would hear it, because its my head.
We have been exposed to so many magazines, newspapers and headlines telling us what is bad for our babies that we have become our own worst enemy. We feel guilty if we go to work and guilty if we don't, guilty if we buy baby food, guilty if we don't breastfeed, guilty if on the sixth night sleepless night in a row we pick our babies up and put them in our bed. Why can't these rule-makers just let us make our own decisions about our children and why can't I stop worrying about what everyone else thinks about me as a mother?
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