Answering Your Questions

Throw them at me!

QUESTION from new mom with 3-month-old: “So right now the question everybody-not-a-new-mother likes to ask is “is he sleeping through the night?” which makes me want to choke them, of course… Can you tell me what the next question will be after this one? I so look forward to it.”

RESPONSE: The most commonly asked obnoxious questions: I hate to tell ya, but the #1 question I get is still about sleep. Our doc told us that once Archer doubled his birth weight, he’d start sleeping through the night. I can’t remember if that proved true. Obviously it’s different for every baby. Truthfully, I hate to say it, but the sleep seemed to coincide with the introduction of formula which seemed to mean he stayed full longer, letting him sleep longer. He slept less during the day than most babies which maybe helped him sleep longer at night.

The #2 obnoxious question, my personal pet peeve: “Is he a good baby?” This was a sensitive spot for me when Archer was a newborn since he cried all the time and my life was hell. But that question seems to suggest he could be bad or evil or like he was purposely being a pain in the ass for everyone. People who say they have a “bad” baby are saddling their child with so much misplaced resentment and personal baggage. I reminded myself often that it wasn’t Archer’s fault that our lives were total miserable hell for the first weeks – he couldn’t help it, and wasn’t enjoying it any more than I was. Of course he is a good baby. EVERY baby is a good baby.

The #3 obnoxious question is “Who does he look like?” — some say my husband, some say me, I can’t tell, I don’t really care, his looks will continually change, why does it matter, obviously he looks like both of us because he’s our kid, etc.

The #4 obnoxious question for me was “Are you pregnant?” because it took me so long to lose the baby weight (I”m still working on it), and I always kinda look pregnant anyway which I’m self-conscious about as it is. I remember being in Babies R Us during Archer’s fussy phase, maybe he was 6 weeks old. I saw this brand new baby, like maybe a week or two old, and the mom was wearing these cute skinny little cut off shorts and tight fitting shirt, super toned and thin and pretty…. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a weird old lady behind me in line asked when my baby was due. I told her I’d just had a baby. She looked at me and at the new mom in front of me and told me “you have a long way to go” — It was so ridiculously rude that I laughed, but part of my wanted to hit her.