I thought I was not too bad with dealing with the fact that I do gentle parenting. I was really only running into issues with my MIL, but today I went to mothers group and I am now feeling really bad, I actually feel quite sick in my stomach.

We were just doing our normal catch up and what has been happening in the past week. I commented on that Maggie seems to be attaching herself at night, then of course I had to explain that I co-sleep. The usual comments came out of "I couldn't do that" or "You wouldn't get any sleep, would you?!" Fine I can cope with that. Then a couple of the mothers were talking about weaning or how they can manage to drop another feed, reasons being "want body back", "life back" etc Ok, I was still fine with that, but then of course I had to say "I still demand feed and will when when one of us wants to". As with Angel, there were also discussion on leaving our babies with others and I had to confess that she has only been away from both of us for 1/2 hour on 2 occasions.

It was beginning to dawn on me how differently I parent to the others, I felt really left out. It got worse when some of the babies needed to go to sleep. One was put in her cot, the other in his pram. Both parents sat there calmly as their babies cried and made matter -of-fact comments of "oh, I control cry" and of course one has been to sleep school.

Maggie was sitting quite happy, she had been awake for hours and wasn't sooking. They all marvelled at that. All during the get together they commented on how active and alert she is.

When we left 3 of us left together, Maggie then started to cry in the pram, her over tiredness had kicked in. Sleep school mum commented, "oh she'll go to sleep once she has cried", I don't like letting her cry. Then they pushed ahead of me a quick as possible, like they couldn't get away from me fast enough. I don't talk about the other mums in a negative way to any other mother, but I knew in my heart they were going to talk about me.

I really do feel sick now, I just want to cry. I never thought I would feel like this. I just feel so alone.