Good Gracious Me

I didn't feel like being gracious today, except that this is the woman who wields the needles going into my beloved Baby Loquacious's arms.

It was vaccination day, and although it made me sick to my stomach to do it, I brought Baby L in for shots.  Don't get me wrong - I'm not queasy about needles, and I'm generally not too queasy about needles going into my baby.  I am also 100% okay with most vaccinations.  However, today's set included two shots that, when they were produced back in the day, used stem cells from aborted fetuses.  That is what made me queasy, and entirely uncomfortable.  However, the risks of not getting my girl vaccinated far outweighed even this cost, and my rationalization is that the baby whose life was sacrificed was at least for a greater purpose, rather than all of those poor babies who are killed in utero every day for no reason at all.  It's a weak and tenuous rationale, I realize, but leave me to it; otherwise I would be spending the rest of my week in the bathroom vomiting my guts up.

But that's totally not the point of this post.  I was being gracious to the nurse who was sticking it to my baby, but inside, I really wanted to tell her off.

Why? Because she tried to tell me how to parent my kid, and when I graciously told her thanks, but we're okay, she kept going.  Hubbs (who witnessed the entire thing) was good about keeping his mouth shut, but afterwards I discovered that he wanted to interject a few times to put this woman in her place and tell her to zip it.  He was actually a little bit miffed that I wasn't more aggressive, but allowed this discussion to take up more than a minute of our time.

Reading her Globe & Mail

So what was the nature of her unsolicited advice?  Sleep training.  Yep.  She suggested Pantley's method, and I told her I owned the book already, and we were working on it but for now she would be bed-sharing and nursing to sleep.  She talked about the burn out factor for us and how hard it would be to get Baby L out of our bed if we wait too long.  I told her we were aware of this risk, and we had already consulted with a sleep consultant.  She kept going on and on, I told her that I am a proponent of attachment parenting and a fan of Dr. Sears and Dr. Gordon and not of Dr. Ferber and his "gentler" cohorts.  I think I just sort of yeah-yeah'ed her and mentally tuned out at some point, because she honestly went on for like 10 minutes.  I know my kid, and she does not.  And I know what the pros/cons of bed-sharing and nursing to sleep are, and she may not.  Frankly, I don't even know why she would bother to argue this with me, since neither Baby L's health nor well-being are at risk.  (She's a 24 lb, 30.3", large-headed bundle of smarts).

But I was trying to be gracious, so I indulged her little rant.  I hope I get an extra crown in heaven for that!

Next time, however, I am going to say this:

"Thank you for your unsolicited advice.  I will take it under consideration."  And repeat as necessary.