Oh, Pro Moms. What a special breed. A group of women so headstrong and organized, they could easily have run Fortune 500 companies, but have elected to invest said energy into the (equally important!) task that is child rearing. They read the books, they listen to the podcasts, they buy the Montessori kits, they eliminate all traces of chemicals from their households and spend nights researching preschools that are most likely to catapult their peanut-size bundles of joy to Harvard. Mommy and Me is the equivalent to their weekly industry Happy Hour, the place they go to cross-reference integral developmental milestones, such as how many inches their baby can crawls in a two-minute time period. Here are some of the things I always secretly fantasized about saying to them.
“I didn’t sleep train.” (Lie.) Nothing is more triggering to Pro Moms than sleep training, which, in recent years, has become an industry in of itself, complete with Ferber methods and feng shui nursery gurus and 500 dollar mom shrinks masquerading as “sleep therapists.” (Tip: get yourself a fellow Pro Mom friend who pays for one and bombard them with questions). And yet, no matter how much money you spend to be reassured that letting your kid cry it out for a couple of nights won’t ruin their lifelong psychological and emotional well-being, there’s always a part of you that is convinced that you will. Hearing a fellow mother tell you that she selflessly forwent said practice at the expense of her own sanity is a stage 10 trigger.
“We don’t really do schedules.” (Another lie.) When you become a mother, your whole life goes from spontaneous and fun to a vigilant timetable of feeds and poops and naps, with everybody in your household abiding by said laws sans questioning. (This is why bringing in the grandmas, who don’t give a rat’s butt about schedules, is a true stress test.) To hear that there are women out there who don’t move through life with lieutenant energy and still manage to keep their baby alive is akin to seeing Emrata’s post-baby abs. F*ing infuriating.
“She’s been sleeping through the night since she was 4 months old.” (Big lie. Huge.) This is triggering to all moms, not just Pro Moms. If your child happens to be one of the .00001% of babies that miraculously skips the sleep regressions and jet lag and nap boycotts and all that other good stuff, keep this information to yourself. There is absolutely no need for anybody who spent two hours in the middle of the night bouncing around a dark room like a human Snoo to know this. P.S. The baby eventually goes back to sleep, you never do.
“I just have SO much energy after having kids.” (LOL.) Part of the definition of being a mom is always being tired – even if you’re not actually tired, even if you slept 7 hours, if you have a nanny or a grandparent on call, even if you just came back from vacation. (Side note: a vacation with baby is not a vacation but merely an exploration of the limits of your sanity.) The only thing worse than saying this is saying you are now skinnier than you were before baby. That one will make you persona non grata in the mom circuit until your child is a pre-teen.
“She’s [crawling / walking / insert age inappropriate milestone] already.” This one is hard to pull off, since your baby is in front of them and they can tell that she’s still a pea-sized puff predominantly interested in shoving everything she sees in her mouth. And yet, it’s worth a try, simply because there are few human species other than real estate agents and pro athletes who are more competitive than Pro Moms. Sure, they’ve read all the books and know that it’s best to lay off their kid and just let them develop at their own pace, but this doesn’t mean that they do it. The race is always on, and may the best crawler win.
“We’re learning French at home.” (Last lie, promise.) This one is the worst one yet. Say something of that caliber to a Pro Mom and watch her mind flash forward to a dystopian future in which he/she gets one-upped in the pre-school rat race by your French-speaking tot. Or other French-speaking tots. Or Mandarin-speaking tots. Bonus points if she takes out her her phone and start texting around for language tutors right in front of you.
Et voilà! Happy triggering!
