Melanie, that's awful!

Here are a few from my mum that still hurt.

DS was 3-4m old: "He's not sleeping through? I wonder what you're doing wrong. You and your sister slept through from 8 weeks. I wish my mum were alive, all hers slept through from 6 weeks; she was good with babies." All that remains of that is that I'm doing something wrong and am bad with babies, in particular my baby. Of course, my mum has now remembered my sister was up all night until she was just over a year old and has backed off with the sleeping (DS now gives me ~6h a night in a stretch, 11h overall) but the "bad mother" label is all I hear now when we talk.

Compound that with "Is he good?" "Yes, he's perfect." "Oh, so when did he start sleeping through?" conversations with every stranger in the world (or so it seemed at that point) and I was so stressed DS's sleep was worse thanks to my upsets.

Then at 7m old (just 2w ago):
"You don't need to breastfeed that much, he should be on solids all day. You just had one feed at night when you were 7m old." I know I was the dream baby who just adapted to all my mum did, never bit, slept through, OK hated company but otherwise perfection as the media portrays it, but breastmilk is so much bbetter than solids for DS and I know this (I even do voluntry work as a scientific translator for a BFing charity) but the whole "you are doing it wrong" thing just makes me feel so inadequate as a mother, as if I am damaging my son and a complete failure.

MiL told me pre-birth the best advice she ever had was to start as you mean to go on. I did - demand feeding, no playing at night, cloth nappies, never letting DS cry... she keeps saying I need to think about how I mean to go on. Like this, believe it or not! But MiL doesn't upset me like my mum does.