FACT: You've Never Been Wrong Trusting Your Gut

If you’re a mom, then you know da da DAMN WELL that virtually every soul on this blue planet has a super grand opinion on what you should be doing with your child. Funnily though… this advice often gets dished your way despite these peoples’ own lack of expertise.

I mean, don’t you *lOvE* when someone acts like they’re an expert in something, which they’ve empirically demonstrated they are not???? Let me explain before you think I’m some presumptuous twat…

I am not the kind of person who thinks you need to have an acronym after your name in order to be competent in something, and therefore— and rightfully so— claim your expertise on that thing. I mean, the miracle of the internet has allowed so sooooo many incredible people the ability to showcase their competencies, and even work out those competencies in a fluid medium that allows them to reach the right people with their own special set of magic. I didn’t “go to college” for writing (definitely wasn’t patient or sober enough back then), but here I am.

Honestly, the whole concept of college will probably be almost nullified by the time my son is of age (except for professions like medical, legal, and engineering). The internet is the single greatest invention of our lifetime, making knowledge, sharing, and the reach of said information available to bagillions. But I digress here, because I’m still on this rant about people acting like they be experts on parenting YOUR child when their uterus didn’t do your work.

I stalk a lot of conversions on the Peanut app of women who question their own knowingness of how to raise and parent their child. And yeah, there are times when you’re feeling extra fucked because you’re dealing with the all-too-horrendous phenomenon of colic at one and half months of age, and you’re like WHATTTTT do I do with this crying babyyyyyyy? There are definitely times when you’re Youtubing stuff as a mom, trying to find a better, easier way, and nothing wrong with that.

But I see many women getting told this and that from their sister-in-law, their mother-in-law, their friend, ad infinitum… which twists up their own mind, making them doubt their inner wisdom as a mom who CAN get into communication with their own child and divine the rightest thing for the moment to do.

The funniest part of this though?!

When the people offering up unsolicited advice have outright demonstrated in life that they are NOT advice-worthy.

I mean, if moms weren’t already so sleep deprived and in need of more support than they ever imagined, it’d be hilarious! Kinda like this story…

Example:

My mother is a nurse and has been for almost 40 years. She’s basically retired now. I say “basically” because she got fired from her long withstanding job of 30+ years. And then when she actually found another nursing job in the town of 5,000 people (which is a feat in and of itself)... she got fired from that too.

Now stay with me. Yes, I just stated my mom got fired twice from being a nurse, but there’s more to it. My mother was, in fact, a great nurse, but the truth is, my mom sucks at technology and computers, and Earth’s workforce is moving all its systems online for good reason. So, my mom got canned because human resources wasn’t willing to train her sufficiently on the new systems the hospital was implementing. And you know what?

My tenacious mom SUED their asses for age discrimination, and won.

So, there! Asshole hospital. Muahaha!

ANYWAY—

The whole point of this tale of two cities is that my mom was a nurse and only a nurse, for decades. It’s the only profession she ever professed in her life. She never side-gigged, started a passion project (unless you count re-wallpapering the bathroom), or crafted a thing and sold it as a farmer’s market. We grew up inside in a corn field, yet no farmer’s market nearby! Make sense of THAT, if you will. Anyway, she nursed her ever-loving face off for many moons.

So…

You’d *think* that my mom would have a fair amount of nutritional know-how, yeah? Let’s lay out the facts:

Nurse - check

Taking care of people - check

Making people well - check

Helping people be healthier - uuuuhhhh*

*Not exactly.

You see, when my mom went to nursing school in the 70’s, she was taught that THE healthiest food was…any guesses?

Broccoli? NOPE.

Blueberries? Nah.

Spirulina? HA, you wish. That wasn’t even a thing back then.

Ya done guessing?

PIZZA. Yeah, pizza. The food you eat and then stare at your stomach afterward wondering what your waistline will look like in the morning. Every American’s savory guilty pleasure. FIGHT ME ON THIS, I DARE YOU!

Here’s the logic my pizza–promoting mom was taught, again in actual nursing school:

“You see, pizza has ALL the essential food groups. Meat for protein, cheese for calcium, crust for whole grains, and tomato sauce for veggies. We were taught it was THE perfect food.”

It’s a wonder Jesus didn’t summon pizza from the heavens when that one tribe got hungry hiking through the desert.

Why hasn’t Oprah told us that pizza is the answer to our nutritional dreams?!

I mean, MY MOM who’s been a nurse and only a nurse for decades, says PIZZA is the healthiest food… sooooo, you should believe her! After all, she’s been a nurse for almost 40 years! It’s the only thing she’s ever done! She basically invented nursing, if you ask her.

Based upon that deeply flawed, 1970’s-era logic, you can guess the smorgasbord of foods we ate as children.

Let this be a lesson that you can dream up any, and I mean ANY, justification for anything with this major mind fuckery.

Leftover birthday cake for breakfast.

Reason: Hey, if you drink milk with it, you’re getting your calcium, so it’s all fine!

Kraft mac n’ cheese for lunch with Oscar Meyer hot dogs.

Reason: Hey! There’s calcium in that cheese sauce somewhere, and those hot dogs are protein. WIN, fucking win.

Keebler cookies or Oreos for snack.

Reason: Drink your milk, and that snack just became a bone-building miracle!

Frozen fish sticks with ketchup and creamed corn for dinner.

Reason: That ketchup is tomatoes so that’s your vegetable, and those mystery fish sticks are protein. That gmo corn is a vegetable. WINS all over the place.

Fruit roll-up for dessert.

Reason: HELLO?? It’s fruit! Therefore: healthy.

So you can see the kind of nutritional genius I was raised with… and it wouldn’t be worth comedically ridiculing if feeding us kids cake for breakfast didn’t come with consequences. All four of us kids have had debilitating hormonal and health issues (premature hair loss, horrid acne, weight issues, digestive chaos, etc.) that I’m sure stemmed from god awful foundational nutrition.

So what am I getting at? This:

When my mother attempts to assert nutritional advice for my 4-month-old baby?

I can’t decide whether to faint, fall over down the back steps and into the backyard and smack into the fence… or just stare at her in disbelief.

When my mom emails me a passive-aggressive email (yeah, my mom emails me like a coworker) about what nutrition I should be feeding my baby, I feel a mix of bewilderment and anger.

Where was your let’s-feed-kids-healthy-foods ideology when I was a first grader being fed Premature Diabetes Puffs for breakfast on the regular?

I want to righteously list out all the staple foods I was raised with, only to find out later rotted teeth and disrupted hormones. (Meaning, we almost never drank water, but only the cheapest soda. It’s no wonder I probably single-toothedly kept our dentist in business.)

I rev up my I’M-RIGHT-YOU’RE-WRONG engine in fury (because I AM actually right here!)…

And fizzle the fuck down.

You know why?

I’m nice.

Ughhhhh… I’m nice. Pounds fist through cheap drywall.

I don’t want to ruin someone’s day— or week— with my truth dump, which will only make my loving mother feel Catholic-flavored guilty.

But you know what?

Being nice has its downfalls.

When you’re nice, you don’t find yourself replying, “YOU? Mrs. Pizza? HA! Taking nutritional advice from you for my baby is like taking manners lessons from ISIS.”

And yes, I don’t want to deliberately stomp on someone’s emotions. This is my mother, after all. But, there is a bigger lesson here, particularly when the counterpart isn’t your elderly, cherubic mom…

When you’re too nice, you find yourself not saying what needs to be said.

When you don’t say something, you erode your ability to say things to people who, like, REALLY need to be said things to.

Like your neighbor who steps over the line.

Or a teacher who’s not registering your concerns as serious.

Or a significant other, when you’re struggling to make energy ends meet, and you really need help right now.

Or a boss who’s running you over, and you’re scared to lose your job if you don’t acquiesce.

The downward spiral of being too nice has consequences, and those consequences may start out as a little less breath in your lungs or a loss of pep in your step, but they swirl like toilet water down to Shit City unless you take note, and say to yourself:

My opinions fucking matter. Especially as the actual mom here.

You’re not stupid, and your gut twinges for a reason.

This is what I tell my boyfriend when he checks with me on something he already knows deep down to be true.

I have a bad feeling about hiring Sammy the Sucker, just seems not right.

Then don’t, babe. You’re having that feeling for a reason, and you are not stupid. You know when something isn’t right.

Because the truth is, and this is something I have to hammer into my own head quite often—

It’s when you don’t listen to yourself that you get into trouble.

Listening to others sometimes comes with consequences, particularly speaking of when others give you advice against your own better intuition. I mean, you should listen to everything I say though on this blog, I’m normal and good. KIDDING.

I doubt that anyone ever really regretted the decisions they made by listening to ONLY themselves. It’s only when they went against their better-knowing grain and committed the opposite of what they thought was correct that they were like SHIT, that ended up being wrong.

I can say personally that every mistake I’ve made in my life was heavily, HEAVILYYYYYYY influenced by someone else, and when I think back honestly, I know that if I listened to what I felt to be correct, I would have done something different and avoid a multitude of heart aches.

So mama, listen to yourself first. You know more than any doctor or teacher will allow you to think, and you’re the senior thought leader when it comes to raising your children. Your genetic material has trillions of years of wisdom baked into the DNA, and I can’t say it enough:

You know more than you think.

So, honor that.