Opinion: Do Dads Draw the Short Straw?

I’ve been dancing around this post for a while now. I know what points I want to make, but I’m having a hard time trying to put it into words. Recently some rather horrible things happened to some people I know quite well and I’m struggling to get my mind around something. It seems to me that men draw the short straw when it comes to all things pregnancy and baby.

I’ll use this example to try and clarify what I mean. A person very close to me found out that his girlfriend was expecting. He already sees the baby as his child, but his girlfriend is terminating regardless of how he feels and is refusing to talk to him about it. While they’re not in the best position to raise a child and perhaps it may be for the best, he is shattered that as quickly as he became a father, he’s about to have it taken away from him.

Some may argue that should she keep the baby, he could change his mind later on down the track  leaving her with a responsibility she didn’t want, but that does not change the fact that right now there is nothing he can do to prevent what will be the death of his child. As you can probably imagine, he isn’t coping too well. (Please note that I am in no way saying that women shouldn’t have a choice in what they do with their bodies – I’m merely pointing out how helpless a man can be in these situations and that would royally suck to be in those shoes.) In pregnancy and birth, a man has no control over the outcome.

I recently read an article titled On Fatherhood over at Babble Australia where the author makes the following comment on becoming a father and the hurdles that he had to overcome:

I’m a guy, I don’t like things I can’t have at least SOME degree of control over, and I had absolutely no control over this whatsoever. I think that was one of the hardest yet most important lessons I learned from the pregnancy – that it’s OK to not be in control, that acceptance and support are in fact more important than the desire to “help” or fix things in many cases. Fighting the natural instinct to “fix things” was an interesting journey of its own!

So, does this analogy count in the example of my friend who has no say on whether or not his girlfriend aborts? While I think he’s accepted that he’s not in control of the situation, is he obligated to accept and support his girlfriend even when she’s not willing to accept or support him? I guess it depends on their relationship.

I know the time is going to come when my husband finds himself in the shoes of  ‘the guy who drew the short straw’. When I read my previous post to him he got a sad little look in his eyes. I only want one child, but he really wants more. While I’ve taken into account his arguement for more children, I can’t get past the fact that I may not be strong enough to go through another pregnancy. While he has accepted that ultimately I am in control of my uterus, it does seem unfair on him that his own desires get shoved aside. What affect will that have on our marriage…well I’ll guess we’ll cross that bridge when it comes to it.

Would You Accept a Cot from the Devil?

My husband has what I like to think is a very…unique family situation. To cut a long story short without divulging into too much of his personal life, his mother is a fruit loop. She has chosen not to attend any important event in his life; the latest one being his wedding. She has tried on countless occasions to poison him against me in a vain effort to get him to move back home. For the record, he is the youngest child by almost a decade and is the only one to have moved out, get married and is about to be the first to provide her with a grandchild.

I was only 8 weeks pregnant when my husband broke the news to her that she was going to be a grandma and within a week she had purchased us a baby bath, a NUK baby bottle pack, teddy bears and an assortment of relatively useless trinkets. I wasn’t even out of the danger zone yet and my linen cupboard was overflowing!

This kind of crazy buying finally subsided when we came back from our honeymoon and my husband asked her to stop. While she was quite happy to throw money at our unborn child, she had made no effort whatsoever to be a part of the pregnancy, or even to stop her campaign to get him to break up with me!

She was good for a few months, but it didn’t last. At my husbands last visit he was given a few more bags of baby goodies. Bags of baby goodies which conveniently had the receipts left in them. Then, we got the phone call which has started so much drama for my husband and I. Dear mother-in-law wanted to buy us a cot.

I’ll be honest, the allure of a free cot is pretty darned tempting! I mean, that’s a huge cost that we won’t have to bear. But, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this kind of generosity came at a far greater price. This was a “gift” from a woman who uses money to try and buy her sons love and I wasn’t sure I felt comfortable with her trying the same tricks on Liam. Was she planning on being some anonymous benifactor, or was she actually going to get off her arse and be a part of our family? This woman claims to never leave the house, so would we be obligated to continually take Liam around to her so she can glare at me the whole time and tell my husband that he should move home so she can do his washing?

In the end I put my foot down and told my husband that I couldn’t accept such a generous gift from someone who I can’t trust. I’d much prefer it if she made some kind of physical effort to get to know Liam rather than just quoting her credit card number to some retailer. My husband told her this, and now we get to play host to her for a BBQ. It will be her first time visiting our home since we moved in two years ago.

History says that she won’t rock up. At the last minute some tragic event will befall her and she’ll have to give it a miss. Then what do we do?

Why Do Mums Judge Other Mums So Harshly?

After reading The Case Against Breastfeeding: Is it Anti-Feminist? over at PhD in Parenting and then being verbally chastised in public yesterday about my choice in sleeping arrangements for when baby Liam arrives, I realised something quite alarming. Where Mums should be banding together to support one another, they’re some of the worst critics a new mother will encounter. So, why do mums judge other mums so harshly?

I’ll admit, I’ve been guilty of being judgemental of other mums. I have a friend who pretty much exclusively feeds her child chicken nuggets. I have another friend who doesn’t believe that children should have a set bedtime or be encouraged to sit at the table when eating meals. I look at some of their methods of parenting and I’m horrified. They’re basically my guide on what not to do when raising kids. Why do I do it though? If my friends feel that Nuggets and no structure in the family home are whats best for their kids, then what business is it of mine? They’re not related to me, I don’t have any personal investment in those children and I’m not the one who’s going to have to deal with any problems it may cause down the track.

The same goes for breastfeeding. Why do other mums feel that what works for them should work for everyone? What works for one family isn’t necessarily going to work for someone elses. I plan to breastfeed, but I understand that things may conspire against me and it may not play out that way. Just like how I want to have a natural birth, or I want Liam to be the next Einstein. Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way we want it, and other mums should understand that. So why is it, for example, breastfeeding Mums look at Mums who use formula like they’re feeding their child Sulfuric Acid?

I was raised on formula food; not because my mum was lazy and hated me, but rather because due to a medical condition she had no choice. She wanted to breastfeed so bad, and she tried her darned hardest to get it to work, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I like to think that even though she fed me toxic waste formula, I turned out okay. At last look I could hold conversation with other people and I only drool when I’m alseep. We have the health benefits rammed down our throats about breastfeeding, so people who choose not to do it have their reasons and its not our place to judge.

Mum has been an amazing help through this pregnancy, and I love asking her for her advice on all things baby. Afterall, I happen to think she did a bloody good job raising me! So now, because I’ve taken her advice, it feeels like I’m the only Mum in the universe who has a bassinett and plans to use cloth nappies over disposables. I mentioned to one of our friends who has a 5 month old baby that I brought a bassinett so Liam could sleep in our bedroom for the first few months and was quite agressively told that I was “wrong to do that and that he should only be in our room for the first few weeks”. Um, okay. So, are you saying my mother was wrong? That is, afterall, how she raised me.

While I appreciate people offering their opinions, I do take issue with being judged needlessly. I am going to do things my way regardless of whether you think its right or wrong. I have my reasons for wanting him in with us for the first few months, one of them being that he has a congenital deformity in his right kidney. I shouldn’t need to justify my decision, least of all to a person who doesn’t live in our house, understand the dynamics of my relationships, or know the source of my information. Also, while I say that I want Liam in our bedroom for the first few months, it may not work out that way. If he doesn’t fit in the bassinett, then he’ll be in the nursery sleeping in the cot and I’ll have the baby monitor glued to my ear. Ironically though, should I put Liam in the cot with a baby monitor, my Mum will think that I’m the worst parent in the world. There is no winning!

New mothers have so many challenges to face when their baby comes into the world, and it really is sad that people who could offer help and guidance instead choose to criticise and judge. I have a feeling that the phrase, “What is right me and my family may not necessarily be right for yours.” will be one I say alot during the next 18 years.