Yesterday Baby Leone, Etani, and I walked two miles to pick up Athena from school. The stepmother of one of Athena’s classmates was there, so I got to see her son, who was born three days after Leone, for the first time.
The babies smiled at each other.
“How much does she weigh?” The mom asked me.
“I don’t know,” I began. “We don’t–”
“She’s so tiny,” she interrupted.
“Tiny?”
“Well, maybe she just looks puny compared to MY baby,” she said. “He weighs fifteen pounds!”
Of all the adjectives I would use to describe Leone, “puny” isn’t one of them. She’s like a sumo wrestler with so many chins you can’t see her neck. She has chubby thighs and a Buddha belly. I don’t get it. Was it because she had a boy that this mom was sure her son was bigger than my daughter? The most bizarre part is that we weighed Leone at the Y a few weeks ago and she was fifteen pounds then so she probably actually weighs more now than the other mom’s baby.
“First time mom?” My friend Victoria, whose kids are 10 and 7, asked on the phone when I told her about it later that day. Etani was in the tub while Leone sat on my lap and watched him splash around. Athena was drawing, Hesperus at gymnastics.
“Uh huh.”
“That explains it!” Victoria cried. “You say–and think–all sorts of crazy things when you’re a new mom! You know that as well as anybody.”
I remember coming out of a restaurant with Hesperus in Atlanta when she was just a few weeks old and bumping into a new mom with a baby around the same age. We started comparing height and length and percentiles, as breathless and oblivious to anything but our own babies as teenagers in love, and as fierce in our comparison as if we were talking dick size not head circumference. My dad rolled his eyes and moved away from us. With ten years of hindsight, I realize now that my dad must have been embarrassed by the meaninglessness of our conversation.
I’ve been at this long enough that the puny remark shouldn’t have got my hackles up. But it did. I thrust Leone into the other mom’s arms.
“Here,” I said. “Hold her. She’s pretty hefty.”
Leone immediately started to fuss. Athena took her. She quieted right down in her sister’s arms.
Why do you think new moms act competitive with each other? Have you ever inadvertently insulted another mom’s baby? How do you respond when people you barely know say hurtful things? Should I have responded differently? I’m really looking forward to reading your thoughts in the comment section below.
Tags: comparing babies, gender differences in babies, hurtful things people say, sexism
© 2009 Mothering Magazine
As one of your older readers and someone who was ultra-sensitive as a younger person, may I suggest age and life experience help? I still bristle at criticism but know not to let it affect me.
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My first weighed 11 lbs 8 oz so there was no competition when it came to size! I do remember when our son was born, some friends had a baby who was 2 mos older and I recall feeling like they were winning some competition b/c theirs was doing things ours wasn’t! I don’t know why motherhood has to be competitive!
When I was a new mom, we compared and contrasted, but never in a competitive way. However, I did have one friend, who is no longer my friend, who insisted her baby was the biggest, the fastest, the strongest and it didn’t stop there. Even when we talked about our lives, our husbands, our parents, her stories were always the best or the worse. I was never at ease just having a conversation. I think there are just some people who are always comparing themselves to everyone around them and haven’t learned that, in the end, it really doesn’t matter.
PS – the use of the word ‘puny’ sounds very hostile to me.
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What can you really say to a comment like that? Sometimes silence is simple the best answer.
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I remember that stage of parenthood. I called it the “baby Olympics,” because it seemed as if all of the parents were trying to one up each other. Mine is bigger than yours. Mine rolled over before yours did. Oh mine started walking at 6 months. Is yours talking yet? Mind started doing that a long time ago!
Thankfully once they get into preschool, that competition seems to die down, probably because kids are so unique by then. Or maybe the parents have lost so much sleep by then that they no longer care. Who knows.
I feel your pain.
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Oh, I so hope you can let go of this one, Jennifer. It’s so hard when your kids are little (as in young) and people make insensitive comments (and I say this as someone who has probably called a baby “tiny,” in a sweet way, though never “puny.”) We wordsmiths are especially sensitive souls.
I had a bruiser of a baby boy (not bragging honest!). But people always used to comment about how serious my son looked and how he rarely smiled (for them:). Truth is, my boy has a great, sophisticated sense of humor and I so wished I could have saved myself a few wrinkles and not worried about the natterings of other anxious parents.
Here’s something I’ve learned to do when people hurt my feelings. I tell ‘em. I say “ouch, that stung,” and even if they don’t apologize it takes the edge of.
And, since I’m a tad, um prone to foot-in-mouth syndrome myself, if someone let’s me know I’ve been insensitive I’m quick to apologize. Life’s too short for silly misunderstandings, don’t you think?
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I think it is pretty natural to think that your own babies are the most amazing, especially first babies when it is all new and exhilarating. I just smile and encourage the other moms to be in love with their babes, and don’t play in to any competitiveness. My first baby was always being called “tiny” and “cute”. At one year old people would ask if she was 6 months! She of course was perfectly fine and other people just have their odd perceptions. I remember bragging because I was just so darn proud. Bottom line is, let it roll off your back! I don’t think people mean any harm in the “competition”. They are just proud parents, which is good!
I think some of that is first-time mom comparison.I actually worried with my first born because my friend’s babies all got their teeth earlier. I can’t imagine now why I worried about it(have you even heard of a kid whose teeth NEVER came in?) I wonder if she was actually worried that her baby was TOO big, and that’s why she was eying the size of other babies.
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Wait until your kids get into high school. Insecure mothers can be really cruel then. If they think your child never gets into trouble, and theirs do–a lot–they will find something, anything, to tattle on your child about. In fact, they’ll WAIT for it, as if waiting to pounce on you and hurt you as they are hurting. It can get ridiculous. When you realize that, you realize it’s more about them than it is about you and/or your children. If you just remember to focus on what you think of your baby–So precious, not puny. Perfect. In the only way this baby can be–then that will be all you have time to think about, especially when you’re around insecure mothers like this one.
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I looked up the definition of puny and this just does not make logical or sociable sense which is why you were puzzled and insulted. I think you SHOULD have felt angry and then, let it out, as in here, and then, let it go. Consider the source, or better yet, don’t consider the source or her comment for one second longer. She is obviously very insecure in her role as a mother beyond the normal first-time mother limits.
Well, it was certainly an insensitive and competitive comment. But I would imagine that it comes from an insecurity and insensitivity that isn’t just about being a new mom. Most new moms are insecure, but don’t give themselves license to put others’ babies down. And I must say, not having been the brunt of her comment, that I feel kind of sorry for her. Which isn’t to say that excuses her. I’d want to punch her lights out!
I can’t stand stuff like that. There is a natural human response to be competitive. I ponder over it in general quite a bit.
As far as moms and baby perfection goes I blame Dr’s and the whole ‘well baby check up’ society we live in. It’s partly the charts, the scales, the averages, the FEAR seed that Dr’s plant in moms from the very beginning of, well conception, that something is wrong with baby. Babies are a huge business and what keeps moms coming back is the constant fear of their baby not being up to “standards” and that they can’t ‘do it’ without help. Moms want the confirmation that their baby is: healthy, fit eating right, pooping right, sitting, drooling and crawling all on cue.
We don’t do well baby check ups, so when my baby was 4 months old I was shocked when some one asked me how he likes “tummy time.” Not quite understanding I played along wide eyed as she explained that her grandson hated “tummy time” but the ped said to try to work it in to so much time a day. I think that is so weird. lol.
~Shauna