Essential Baby blogger Amity Dry
I’m sure all of us are aware of the controversy surrounding the Bonds Baby Competition and the mothers who brought it into disrepute with their insulting and racist comments towards other babies in the competition. You really have to wonder what the world is coming to when a grown woman can abuse a baby, A BABY, because she’s angry that she wasn’t able to spend enough time voting for her own pride and joy. Or, should I say, harassing her friends and family to spend all their time voting for her pride and joy.
Look, I’m not going to bag those mothers who submitted their babies for the Bonds Competition, it’s a mother's instinct to want to show off her baby. In fact, I was intending to enter my own baby, but forgot to register on time so missed out (I know, what kind of mother am I?) However, after reading the comments on the Bonds Baby Facebook page and picking up the general obsessive and aggressive vibe from some of the mothers involved, I was awfully glad I did forget. Seriously, what could possibly come over these women that they would lose all rationality like that.
Motherhood, that’s what.
Show me a mother and I’ll show you some one who is convinced their baby is the most beautiful, talented, gifted child who ever walked this earth and could name all the reasons why. It’s our job to feel this way. Yet with society becoming more self focussed and narcissistic than ever, are we getting a little over-zealous about our promotion of it.
This subject reminded me of a conversation I had with my brother once. He had been on an international flight where a mother continuously walked her toddler up and down the aisles, clearly proud of her son and his newfound ability to walk. My brother recounted how the child grabbed on and dribbled over each new row of seats, and each new row of people, as the mother praised his efforts loudly and profusely. Again, I get this. When my own son learnt to walk it felt as though he was the first child to ever achieve this milestone and I too would have been proud to show his efforts off. But, as my brother pointed out, for those passengers who had no relationship to this child and spent their entire flight being accosted by him and his beaming mother IT WAS ANNOYING. They didn’t care that he had just learnt to walk, they didn’t even care that he looked cute doing it. They just wanted to sleep, or work, or watch a movie in peace.
So, as much as I teased my brother for being heartless at the time, I try to remember this story. To remind me that as much as my own children are smart, gorgeous, witty, creative and wonderful to me – they are just two more kids to everyone else (except my family, who are equally one eyed and rightly so.)
I try and remember it when I think of emailing the 50th photo this month of cute expressions Poppy has made, or recounting the 10th story this week of funny things Jamison has said. I try and remember it when posting Facebook photos or Twitter updates of cute things they’ve done and I try and remember it when my mother instinct to obsess about them gets too strong and I forget other people just don’t care that much. I admit this is a work in progress and something I have to constantly work on. Jamison does say a lot of funny things and Poppy is particularly gorgeous. You see, I’m doing it now.
But I’m not alone. Reading the online comments to stories on the Bonds Baby saga showed there are many people out there who are sick to death of hearing about their friend’s perfect, beautiful, gifted children and pretending to care about whether or not they were robbed in a beautiful baby competition. People who are up in arms that their Facebook feeds are being cluttered with self-absorbed Mummies and their boring baby stories. In fact, one such person has started a website purely to make fun of these one eyed Mummies. STFU Parents (I’ll let you guess what the initials stand for) is a site where people post oversharing Mummy Facebook updates in an effort to name and shame them. It is both hilarious and frightening.
But that’s what happens. We pop out kids and suddenly lose all sense of what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour. This includes boring people stupid with stories of our offspring, showing videos of our ultrasound and expecting people to be interested, continuously talking about bodily functions, sniffing our baby’s nappy in public, wiping off their snot with our hand and referring to ourselves in the third person, ‘Mummy said no.’
I recently saw comedian Kitty Flanagan live and she did a hilarious spot in her show about what happens when women turn into ‘Mummies.’ Those women who once ran businesses, but were now happy to devote an entire conversation to poo. Women that once partied all night but now needed to be home by 6 so they can ‘stick to the routine’ and women who suddenly speak like Playschool presenters who EMPHASISE. EVERYTHING. SLOWLY.
Which brings us back to the women who are so one eyed about the potential modelling career awaiting their child, they spend hours every day voting for them and make insulting comments about their fellow competitors (a.k.a other babies.) Is this what it's come to, really?
So what makes us lose our minds like this? Is it simply a physiological response to motherhood that we are powerless to stop, or can we overcome its evil grip? I have a feeling it’s a battle I will continue to wage throughout my life, but one I am determined to fight. So I can continue to be a mother who is naturally one eyed and slightly obsessed, but also able to remember that, while my offspring are the centre of my universe, to everyone else they are just two more snotty nosed kids. Just don’t say that to my face. You don’t want to mess with a one eyed Mummy.
Are you a one eyed Mummy or do you try and keep your obsession in check? And what do you do now that you would have cringed about before you become a Mum?
Comment on Amity's blog.
