Social stress

[ailbhe]

So my NCT social event is over, and two women came, one with an external baby and one with an internal baby. They were lovely, if a bit more interested in adult-led weaning than I am, and stayed for about an hour, and it was fine. Now I'm feeling angry and stressed.

I'm annoyed, as far as I can tell, because I find it very hard to clamp down on my strong feelings about various things baby-related, but I do, and other people seem to me to be less reluctant to speak out to strangers on these matters. (Online journals don't count as talking to strangers; if you don't like what I say you can click away). I tried to be as moderate as possible on the topic of eco-disposables and cloth nappies, and on breastfeeding (I really, really stayed very quiet about breastfeeding, and didn't even mention that I'm still feeding Linnea, which felt very like not being Out), and I didn't even enthuse too much about sling use, though I did tell the pregnant woman that feeding a baby in a sling was a valuable skill and she's welcome to come and practice with my slings once her baby's external, before she buys one of her own.

They were nice, but I feel self-repressed, and that leaves me feeling a bit bitter. Ho hum.

Comments

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

I never made any proper friends at NCT coffee mornings. I was intersted in cloth nappies when I had Kate & niaively asked at an NCT coffee morning & all the women were horrified! That put me off totally & I only felt confident using them with Holls bceause of the fabulous lj support. I was also the only one who had a sling & everyone adnmired it, but no-one ever bought one. I had a tomy one as well, not even a "hippy" type one.

I have actually found another mother at Kate's schools who has similar views to me, uses a sling, uses cloth & is breastfeeding her nearly 1 year old. She's the only one out of all the dozens, possibly hundreds, of mothers I have known / met in rl. I've nevere, ever seen anyone use cloth when out, apart from myself & I've even demoonstrated how easy / cool looking it all is, but no-one ever bites.

[k425.livejournal.com]

Hang on, I thought we'd met?!

YoungBloke is cloth-nappied most of the time (including when out, depending on how long we're going to be out for) and still breastfed and he's NEARLY THREE!!!

I never got on with slings, but we wilkinetted for months.

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

I'm finding that the NCT friends I'm making are not the ones from my antenatal class but rather the tutor and the co-ordinator. Somehow I just don't seem to have much in common with the others from my class. I'm the only one of the group who (a) isn't planning on going back to work, (b) is using cloth nappies and (c) (I think) is still (at three months) exclusively breastfeeding.

[thealmondtree.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I was the only one who didn't buy everything brand new for their first baby. The only new (rather than new-to-us) things we have are the chest-of-drawyers/changing unit, the cloth nappies (partly because the bamboo ones haven't been around long enough to be available second hand!), and things people have given us. Everything else has been either given or bought secondhand.