BABY SHOWER BLUES

Baby Showers bring out the worst in people.

Here's what I've decided...baby showers which are crucial for every first mother (how else would we get all the crap we're going to need for the pooping, screaming, puking bundle of joy?) bring out the very worst in every woman in attendance. Whether it is stooping to sniff diapers to decide what kind of crap look-a-like candy bar has been melted in it, tasting unlabeled baby food to guess the unbearable unsalted, unfatted, unflavored flavor of the pea green colored slime, or simply ooing and ahhing at the outfits, the baby wash, the tub, the burp cloths, the nipple rash cream and breast pads, the.......you get the picture, the whole scene would make an outsider think they'd stepped into an alternate universe of homeless twenty something year olds digging through garbage to win a baby bottle filled with Jelly Bellys.

Ok so the games and fake chit chat aren't that bad when you consider you are celebrating a woman that is about to go through the most unbearable and indescribable 24-36 hours of her life, all to welcome a child that won't truly appreciate her until she and I reiterate SHE gives birth herself. Why SHE? Because a man child grown into an actual man can NEVER fully appreciate what we go through to bring children into this world. They spend a few minutes huffing puffing and grunting and call the job done, but we're left with 9 months of alien baby playing kickball on our ribs and using our bladder for a trampoline...and that's just the beginning of the job....

WHEEWH...that was a tangent that has been pent up for quite some time...back to the baby shower.


So here is the worst part of these blessed parties. Every woman in the room has either had a child, or knows a million people that have had children, and they are willing to share or rather force all of their knowledge on you. This one LOVES Pampers, that one would NEVER give her child a bottle, and the granola girl in the corner wearing the polygamist dress-jeans-beehive-and unibrow combo swears that if you get an epidural you're not a real woman.


And there I sit. I hate Pampers, I breast fed for a whole week before my child refused me and I GLADLY gave him a bottle and reclaimed the dairy farm that I'd become, and without an epidural neither I nor my child, and let's throw in my husband, would have made it out of the hospital alive. I would have died with the kid still inside me and probably taken my poor husband along with me.

I don't like know- it-all moms, and I apologize for the times that I've been one. Every child, every pregnancy, heck every conception is different. So unless a pregnant person asks for advice, don't give it. You are only the authority of your own experience.


So when I tell you that my C-section was awesome and recovery time was a week, you think, "good for her," not, "well my neighbor's sister's surrogate aunt took three months to recover and she still waddles like a duck." Just be happy that I say Huggies and you say Pampers.


And while we're on the subject of diapers. Costco diapers are NOT cheaper than Huggies, look at the unit price people. Huggies wins! (and I will never bring this up again unless you specifically ask me which is cheaper!)