Your Baby Is Fugly

There, I’ve said it. *Starts to dodge a flurry of knives*

Seriously, I get it. People will always think that their offspring is the greatest thing since sliced bread, the most special, better than all the rest. And they somewhat expect us onlookers to drop to our knees and start foaming at the mouth about the little alienface’s greatness.

The truth is, I don’t melt when I see babies, and for sure I’m not one of those who resolutely believe that all babies are beautiful and special. Some are gorgeous, absolute darlings, but some look like little trolls. And sure as hell they aren’t special because they do exactly what the next baby does. Special no, different yes.

With Facebook and about a hundred of social networks out there, one can be constantly bombarded with (fugly) baby pictures, besotted parents cooing about their (fugly) offspring, twittering about the earth-shattering dilemma of going 100% organic or not. Kill me already. Look people, most of us didn’t grow up on organic and we are fine. Our parents didn’t feel the need to sterilise the floor and every inch of the furniture, and we are fine. Your (possibly fugly) baby will be fine. Oh and organic food can’t cure fugliness either.

I hate it, resent it when a friend has a baby, and suddenly her entire world, her entire being and personality disappears into an abyss, never to surface again. ALL her conversations and thoughts are about baby-related topics, they want to discuss every minute detail of their latest development… like how they managed to flip over, hold up their head, how they are potty trained by x months but the “normal” baby only manages to be potty trained by x+y months. Okay. A) When was the last time you saw an adult who was not potty trained? B) I’m just beside myself with excitement, someone hold me down.

My dearest friends, didn’t you used to have hobbies, dreams, ambitions, independent thoughts and opinions? I would like to have you back please.

God forbid putting two or more mothers together. Beneath the smiley enthusiastic exterior, you can nearly smell the undercurrent of trying to one-up each other with their offspring’s achievements and greatness. Some mothers try to do it masked in very fake humility, some do it in your face.  ”Mine started speaking at two days… at two months he can spell onomatopoeia and compose poetry… what can yours do?” I’d love to say ” mine is pretty boring, he beats up nerdy kids who can spell useless words”. (I haven’t got any kids… I don’t think I have a maternal instinct but that’s another post altogether).

Yes truly, I get it. You can say “oh you will be the same when you have a kid”. I highly doubt it. You can say “having a kid is a 24 hour job, you can’t help but focus everything you have on the kid”. I hear the same thing when people get obsessed about their relationships, and kind of just become carpets to their other halves. STOP BEING SO BLOODY OVERWHELMED BY EVERYTHING! Grow a backbone. This especially applies to formerly strong independent women who become annoying earth mothers who goes “ommm” at passers-by.

Speaking of earth mothers, I just cannot stand those who proudly and snidely proclaim how they gave birth without an epidural. That is just plain masochistic. Not to mention, horribly vain.

1. I don’t honestly think a baby is impeded for life because their mothers had an epidural during birth.

2. I think it’s disgustingly self-serving to want the bragging right of going without an epidural.

3. I cannot abide the reasoning that one has to feel the pain to embrace the process of bringing a child into the world. I do not think that more pain = more love and bonding and you cherish the child more. In fact, it is immensely insulting and immature to imply that mothers who have epidurals or *gasp*, a c-section, cherish their kids less.

4. In this day and age, medical advances enables birthing pain management. Because birthing pain is not desirable and unneccessary. If women can give birth without pain or with pain, they achieve the same goal post anyway.

I find the whole “I’m better than you and yours” thinking just distasteful and competitive in a very meaningless yet vicious way. It serves no purpose other than making yourself feel better by making someone else look worse. It  starts from the pregnancy process – do you do pre-natal yoga? Does your husband massage you everyday? Did you give birth without an epidural? Do you feed your baby with organic food? Did you enrol your fetus / child in ballet/piano/gymnastics/baby genius maths school? What school / university does your kid go to? What subjects are they taking? What is their GPA? What job do they do? How much do they earn? What is their rank in the company?

Please… take a look at your kid. It might be fugly. It is not special. YOU are not better than the rest. And if you insist on making yourself feel so, you are much less of a decent person that you thought.

Ahhh I feel much better now.

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