Mommy drive-bys

Others have already commented on the comments stacking up at Chez Miscarriage in her "Mommy Drive-By"post. They are funny and sad, but mostly sad. I initially read these thinking, "no one's ever said anything like that to me!" But then I remembered a couple--the guy on the Venice boardwalk who said "Hey, you're frying your kid!" when he saw Mariah in what we used to call the "baby-dragger" attached to the back of Mark's bike, sound asleep in the sun. With a floppy hat and lots of sunscreen on, but what did he care? But he went away quickly. Then of course my mom mentioned --on seeing me in maternity clothes with #2, at something like, oh, two weeks along-- that she had never needed maternity clothes before the sixth month. Can this even be true? Did I invent it? Probably.

The thing is, the first guy, well, a) not a mom, so it's not really a mommy drive-by and b) he did go right away. And my mom is, well, my mom, and if she even said that (I am more and more doubting it), but if she did, so what? That was in the days when --as she's also told me-- her doctor told her that if she gained more than fifteen pounds in her pregnancy he'd put her on a diet. Now, seeing as I weighed over eight at birth, well, you do the math. Of course she wasn't in maternity clothes!

I did a lot wrong --still do-- with both kids, and some things right, and I am never quite sure which is which. So I try (I'm sure I often fail, but I do try) to be humble about it, and apparently I mostly hang out with others who do the same.

Oh, and my own worst (I hope!) example of doing a mommy drive-by myself, was when my friend mentioned that her daughter (then about four) was up almost every night, and she had to get up with her. To take her to the bathroom or something, as I recall. I said (I cringe now), "Oh, I'd never put up with that!"

Famous last words. My own four-year-old daughter developed night terrors not long after. We dealt with them off and on for the next five years. Getting up only once a night would have been a dream in those days.

(Oh, and Caroline? I apologize for any insensitive older-sister mom remarks I may have made, or will make in the future. I think that's a whole other category...)