Monday, January 11, 2016

Week 32: Unsolicited Advice & Our Maternity Shoot

Unsolicited Advice

Ahh...the joys of unsolicited advice. So free and yet, so unwanted! Some of the advice I find most frustrating is around SIDS precautions (and how I should ignore them). Many of my friends have told me that it is perfectly fine to use loose blankets, stuffed animals, and crib bumpers with our baby because their children used them as infants and they're "just fine". Nothing maddens me more than that phrase. Yes, your baby was fine but what happens if my baby is not fine because I listened to your advice? Are you going to bring my baby to life? Are you guaranteeing the health and safety of my baby? Why don't we just rewind 30 years and forget about carseats because we didn't use them back them and we're all "just fine" now?

Yes, we may be overly cautious these days. But we also know better and we have more advanced technologies and education to protect us. Why would we knowingly ignore easy precautions that many parenting books and reputable health organizations strongly advocate for?

Maternity Shoot

As I mentioned earlier, we did a maternity shoot at the Hakone Gardens in Saratoga this week. While it pained me to pay a photography fee when we have so much natural outdoors beauty in the Bay Area, most of it is barren and un-photogenic at this time the year. Hakone Gardens is one of the few places that's well-maintained with some greenery and foliage in January so it was worth the $80/hour fee. I love how the pictures turned out! I don't know if I'll have the opportunity to be pregnant again so I'm glad we are documenting this special time in our lives.

Hakone Gardens, January 2016


1 comment:

  1. Girl. You know how I felt about that unsolicited advice if you read that post :)

    I get why people *think* that stuff about the crib safety things but OMG it is 100% up to you and your experience and your comfort level! I sideeye people all the time for telling us "don't worry about it, it was fine!" Uh yeah ok, for YOUR kid at that time.

    For the record, yes, we did give LB a pillow, and then bumpers, and then blankets at around 7 months but that was only because we saw that ze was strong enough to wiggle away from anything ze didn't want to be in and was able to sit up on hir own, etc. THESE were the markers that said: ok, it's safe to add a thing or two at a time and see. NOT the fact that someone else's kid managed to live to adulthood! Plus I had hir with me pretty much all the time and I checked on hir frequently early on so I had peace of mind from actually seeing it be ok. Not because some rando told me it'd be fine.

    As with most things, "do what's best for you and your family" is the best advice I've heard.

    And yay for maternity shoot! I didn't think that we'd want to spend that money but since, like you, I don't know that we'll do this again, I'm glad we had some fun in memorializing that special time.

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