MotherDragName is superstitious, always has been. I come from a line of superstitious women. Can’t cut my nails on certain days of the week, if I put something on inside out and only notice when I’m out I can’t change it over, etc etc. a lot of weird things are drummed into me and it bemuses people.
She is also quite an opinionated person. So, the currently clash is over ‘the pram’ and she has twice told me in the less than a month she has known I’m pregnant that you ‘cannot’ buy the pram/bring it home till the baby is born and at home themselves. Which is cool and all but totally impractical. So she’s started this up again today and when I have pointed out it’ll be a full travel system we’ll be getting that we’ll need to have to bring the baby home from hospital as it will include a car seat she announced, like it was a good thing, that I never had a car seat (at least not to come home from hospital, which I very much did in a car. I am assuming I was in her arms at the time and she was not driving, I didn’t bother asking, I just felt grateful I made it home alive.)
I’ve already had quite pointed questions about whether or not I will be using reusable nappies (she did), whether I’ll be making my own baby food (she did), where will the cot be, etc. She was a lifelong single parent and did a cracking job, but I have also learned she was only able to take 6 weeks of mat leave, worked through part of that, and then told me a story about how she left me on my own in the flat she lived in, which was in the same building as her workplace/office, and heard me crying on the baby monitor and when someone else asked her if she was going to see if I was alright she said no, that I would settle myself.
She told me I should not pander to my baby every time they so much as make a snuffle when I told her about a newborn-toddler convertible high chair that I’d like to get for Junior so if I am in the kitchen they can be nearby and I can keep an eye on them and talk to them but that they might just like being held so I might get a sling and they could go on my back.
She’s not wrong but also… a lot of what she has said about my early life says a lot about a whole heap of my insecurities and anxieties that I hold 40 whole years later. I don’t blame her, she did what she had to do and I’m healthy and rounded and reasonably successful at what I do but, yeah. I’m also a bit of an anxious validation-seeking mess.
I obviously don’t want to fuck my kid’s whole life up with a terrible parenting style but I would like the same opportunity as every parent should have to figure it out for themselves. And everything I say seems to be met with this look of judgement. She had to wing it, I’d like the chance to wing it too and if my mental health dictates that I don’t use reusable nappies or homemade baby foods, then so be it. Will that make me a terrible parent? No. I don’t want to fall out with my Mum about this stuff but I could do without ridiculous superstitions causing me anxiety.
I’m too hot and I can’t get comfortable in any way; and everything is irritating me 
I don’t know what I’m asking for but maybe some positivity from other women who’ve been through it all?
