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And I just want to say as much as I don't agree with you on this (and that's why we're friends coz we can respectfully disagree), I do understand your pain. And it makes me mad that you were ever made to feel that way. :hug:
And I bet if this woman knew that she was seen to be badmouthing another mother she'd probably feel pretty awful, as I'm pretty sure someone who would take the time to share her own regrets wouldn't want to cause another mother pain.
xx
It depends on how you take it. I've had parents have discussions with me about my children, babies through to toddlers to school-aged to late teens, and there is judgement in the fact that they were in prams, or had lice, or spent all their time at a restaurant on their phones, or were taking drugs, or had left school early... the list is extensive, I assure you. With their judgement, they made me question how I may have done things differently, to analyse if I made the best choices, or came to the best decisions for them. If I felt, after all that, that I did make the best choices, then I was happy with that. If not, I make a note of how I might have done things differently. That's the way I take it. Albeit not without guilt, or even being offended at the time, but I generally come away accepting that I'm not going to have all the answers, and I have done the best I can with what I knew at the time.
Can I change the way I did things then? No. But I can change the way I do things now based on the lessons I choose to take away from those discussions, because parenting doesn't stop when they turn 18. And just because I may have made a decision that may have been wrong in hindsight, doesn't make me a bad mother. Because I made plenty of right decisions too. And wanting to make the best decision, rightly or wrongly, is what actually makes me a good mother.
Well, I'm willing to bet I'd rather have a beer with the author than with the people propping up their baby with a bottle.
And that's from someone who's had an epidural, had an elective caesarean and has bottle fed. Meh, birth and breastfeeding are not things we can always control to go according to plan.
But I agree with the general premise that children are often treated as an inconvenience. Hell, I do it myself sometimes, infact too often lately - not in the sense that she's talking about but just not having as much fun as we should.