Baby Pictures (And Those Who Hate Them)

I might lose a few friends/followers with this one.

Social media is a big part of almost everyone’s lives these days. It’s an addiction, pure and simple. You wake up, you check your phone. On the toilet, browse through your timeline. On the train, update your status. It’s everywhere and unavoidable.

I have a child. I take a lot of pictures of him. I reckon most parents do the same. Occasionally I post the odd picture of him to Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or I stick it on this here blog. I like to show my son off if he’s doing something funny or cute but I don’t do it very often. So therefore people that complain about baby pictures though do my absolute head in.

Take Facebook. Aside from updating your status I reckon the thing most people do is share photos for their online friends to see. It’s basically what Facebook is made for. People post all manner of photos of all the various things they do in their lives, and scrolling through your own timeline you’re privy to whatever your collection of friends have decided to share, be it holiday snaps, something fun they were doing that day or, yes, baby pictures. Yet it’s only that last one that seems to get any sort of flack. I’d even go as far to say it’s the only type of picture that does.

Well, until I’ve finished this blog entry anyway.

“Ugh, so and so stuck another five pictures of his baby up today. Enough already” says a person who added 87 pictures of their most recent night out, most of which are blurry or contain at least ten near identical pictures of all their gal pals smushing their faces together. The irony apparently lost on them.*

*To clarify. I’m aware of the implied irony of this post as well, however I’m complaining about the complainers, not the pictures they put up. Mostly.

You know who you are.

You may not care about my baby pictures. That’s fine. Scroll right past them. It’s what I do with most people’s photo albums on Facebook for things that don’t interest me. I figure it’s what the majority of your Facebook friends do as well. And while you’ll never complain to the person actually putting the baby pictures up to their face, choosing instead to air a general complaint about the onslaught of baby pictures, let me hit you with this truth bomb: do you think I give a flying fuck about your poolside view, your new car or your night out? No. Not really.

If you’re making a big announcement - engagement, pregnancy etc - common decency would prompt me to write a message of congratulations, as if you’re on my friends list one assumes I like you or have some form of connection to you. And if you happen to post an interesting, cool or funny photo, or if it’s a particularly interesting, cool or funny night out, car or poolside view, I’ll ‘like’ it. But if it’s something that doesn’t really interest me, I won’t complain about it, I scroll on by.

[Right here is where I had written a theory on why I feel people don’t like baby pictures, and while I do believe it holds true to a degree, it was a little mean spirited and would almost certainly lose me some friends/followers so I deleted it. Long story short, jealousy. But that works both ways so it’s not really fair to use it against the haters of baby pics.]

Now while I understand there are people who post nearly everything their son or daughter does, up to and including pictures of their first poo in a toilet (seriously), it’s not as if parents are the only culprits. If I posted 50 photos a week of my son, I’d understand if someone told me it was excessive. No-one needs to see that many pictures of him. Frankly, no-one needs to see that many pictures of anything. I’ve written before about how Facebook is a magnet for shit you don’t care about yet look at everyday anyway, among other things, but the point is at least one person on your friends list is going to be interested in the things you post. That’s why you’re friends with them. Your family are, of course, going to be interested in pictures of your baby too and if you can make someone else on your friend list chuckle or go ‘awww’ at your picture of your child, I don’t see why you shouldn’t because a minority might sigh at ‘another baby picture.’ Fuck those people; those who’d rather expend energy complaining about it than simply scroll past and ignore it.

So next time someone moans about the amount of baby pictures someone has posted I’m going straight to their Facebook page and see how many pictures of meaningless shit they’ve posted and demand to know what the difference is.

P.S. I’m probably the worst kind of Facebook friend to have.

P.P.S. Here’s a cute picture of my son.

Daddy's Little Jedi

"And I thought they smelled bad...on the outside."

Breastfeeding Rant!

There was some research out last week about how breastfed babies are smarter. I won’t link to it, cause, well, fuck ‘em, basically.

First, some background.

We had a problem when it came to breast feeding, in that Isaac for whatever reason, just didn’t take to it. He wouldn’t latch and every attempt to do so caused a screaming match and after a few exhausting days during which my wife used the breast pump for what seemed like hours each day to get only the smallest amount of milk, we decided that bottle feeding was going to be the way to go, not through choice but through necessity of needing our son to, you know, eat. We could have kept going with the breast pump but seeing the strain it was putting on my wife (she literally had the pump clamped to her all the time whenever she wasn’t actually feeding) and how tired she was going to be if this continued, we started on the formula.

So this article has royally pissed me off.

As if there’s not enough guilting of parents who don’t breastfeed at all, we’re now told that your baby is going to suffer later in life because you didn’t – couldn’t – breastfeed.

Fuck. That.

And fuck anyone who comes to me with this news.

Stupid babies need the most attention.

There’s a culture that I’ve noticed, and I’m sure everyone else in the midst of pregnancy has too, that breastfeeding is best. That’s not the annoying part, that’s true. But the other is that if you can’t do it, or worse don’t do it, you’re a horrible mother, denying your baby of the nutrients he/she needs. I could see it in some of the (older) nurses eyes in the hospital after we noted that we were only thinking that bottle feeding might be the way to go, as we were at that stage. That look of, “well, just keep trying until the baby is absolutely starving and then we might just consider trying that heathen formula milk.” We had wanted to breastfeed, mainly because it’s natural, gives baby all they need and frankly, it’s cheaper, but were prepared to go with the flow with whatever Isaac decided. The nurses were not of this opinion. Breast is best! Breast is best! One of the nurses came in, took Isaac in her hands and practically smushed his face into my wife’s breast to try and get him to latch. Now, I’m not saying this method doesn’t work, some babies I’m sure will latch fairly quickly and there’ll be no problem. Isaac was screaming. Our baby, not even 12 hours old was being forced to do something he clearly didn’t want to. This continued over the next few days because as new parents we tended to do what we were told when it came to this sort of stuff. Still he screamed. And screamed and screamed and screamed.

Once we were home and had tried ourselves with no success we moved to formula. And he took to it with minimal fuss. Why, I have no idea, but he did and he was happy. And so were we. So to be told that by wanting our baby to have a full tummy and to give ourselves some peace of mind, we’ve doomed him for life with a lower IQ has made me very very angry.

The study itself is very vague and states that a number of other factors could also be responsible for the lower IQ, including upbringing and funnily enough, level of education.

So fuck anyone telling me that what we did for our baby was wrong.

Fuck anyone telling me that we’ve already lumbered our son with average intelligence.

And fuck the breastfeeding brigade getting up on their high horses with their “I told you so” faces.

We fed our son when he needed fed. He’s happy and healthy, and eating all the food we give to him and has done since we started weaning him before Christmas.

Rant over. 

Rascal

We have discovered our tongue.

Also, if you can guess where the quote is from, you get a point.