To feel alone in a sea of Kath Kidson

[PeriodFeatures]

everyones child has a toy called sophie....

I don't want to talk about baby food and really don't care what kind of bloody pram you have got.

How can that 'Yummy Mummy' bag be any compensation for not being able to carry a proper handbag anymore..

'would you like a drink'

'I'd love a coffee..'....
.'yes we have some de-caf,'
(I don't want de-caf I want fucking caffine you cunts)

That scares me. It's as if their personality was zapped during labour

Spot on..and without a reality check I feel like i'm getting it wrong for not being so absorbed...aagghh..

By caring about about what bags and toys the yummy mummy's have, you are as bad. Don't you see?

Why do you give a shit?

Ilovemydogandmydoglovesme

I think they are pretty too and I'm not judging you. It's just it seems to be a concentration of them at the NCT group. A uniform.

Aaaah PeriodFeatures don't give up just yet.
You can join our group.
We meet on Fridays and we always have wine...

Yes I agree with you about the uniform.

I once got coerced into going to a bit of a yummy mummy type group. All earth flowers and organic and Haribo-hating. Nearly everyone there had something Cath Kidston. And the kids were running around in Joules and Boden. Now I actually love Joules sweatshirts and stuff but I feel like one of the bloody crowd now and it puts me off wearing it. Which is a total reverse snobbery and just daft.

It is lovely though and every year I covert something else. Oh bollocks to them.

I like baby joules ilovemydog....dd has a horse printy one. I've brought a few bits from ebay. I wear joules sweatshirts when i'm mucking out the horses in winter, have done for years. They have really high necks and last for ages and still feel ok when they are covered in shit....

Thanks Mulberry I'll look forward to it.. :D

Hate all that Cath Kidston malarkey....my changing bag was a pink Billabong record bag I found in a charity shop for £2.50

I'm probably a reverse snob though...I do things like put my toddler in zombie t-shirts and skinny jeans

Does that make me an enormous twat?

I don't really care....I tend to live in zombie t-shirts and skinny jeans as well....and Converse Chuck Taylors....however I refuse to spend nearly £30 on a pair of canvas shoes that will only last a month or two when I get get some similar ones from Aldi for a fiver.

Oh no. I have a Cath Kidston handbag and matching wallet, and was thinking about getting a yummy mummy bag. I just like the design - pretty and practical. My bag is the only smart thing about me and you can never be too fat for a nice bag.

oh ye gods and all the little minor deities

I have just googled Yummy Mummy bags to see what the problem was
I cant stand cupcakes without irony

This thread has had me in tears of laughter! I can relate to so much. The Sophie giraffe, the jogging mums with their pushchairs, you've all described 80% of the mums in my village! We live in a rather affluent area (although there is the average part - where we live!) so the people at the local children's centre are as described in this thread! And I don't fit in at all! I'm common as muck, me. I stopped going because I just felt like a bit of an outcast! And I would usually be left to sit on my own. Nobody wanted to talk about anything non-child related, where as I was dying for some adult conversation and company and talk about "me" and not "mum" me. But it was all foods, and sleeping habits and nannies.

I will, however, confess to having a CK changing bag when my DS was a baby. I saw it in the shop and fell in love. It was £60, stuck it on the credit card and told myself I will get so much use out of it that it'll be worth it. And it was very functional and I DID use it a lot. But I soon realised that the pattern looked ridiculous and you could see me coming a mile off. And DP looks silly carrying it! If I decide to have another, it'll be a plain black bag that fits under the pram (which my great big CK bag didn't)

You're totally right, once women (well, all women but you) have children they turn into boring stepford mums and their degrees, careers and interests don't go past baby food any more. Or just perhaps they start off with the obvious shared topics before moving on to more interesting things as they warmed up, but you never gave them the chance.

Your instinct to dismiss other mothers as 'yummy mummies' is exactly the same ones that make some employers shunt us on the mummy track when we go back to work. Surely this site alone demonstrates that mothers come in more than one model.

You sound schoolgirlish and mean and you and your DCs are the only ones missing out here.

Move to Germany, OP - where Sophie has been banned for safety reasons, Cath Kidston non existent and coffee liberally dosed with caffeine.

Some mums like to do & discuss what's best for their kids & are genuinely interested in chatting to other mums about stuff like buggies, food etc.

Not sure why you have a problem with babies that are teething having a teething toy.

Cath Kidston isn't my cup of tea but it wouldn't cross my mind to be up in arms about some people liking it.

Caffeine keeps me awake so if I drink it when breast feeding, chances are it'll keep the baby awake too.

I know AIBU threads are lighthearted, but being bitchy and critical about people trying to be a good mum is just a bit crass. So YABU.

HelloLA said all this much more eloquently than me.

You are not alone! The yummy mummy brigade threatened to call the police on me, I was only on the school run!. They hate me round our way.

They come to school in their gym gear, swap bags of crab apples and ask each other who owns their own houses.

I think the OP is not being unreasonable to note that motherhood seems a lot more all-encompassing in 2013 that it possibly was in say, the 80's/90s/ (speculation, obviously).

My kids are no longer babies but I remember the oppressiveness of it all, it sometimes seemed impossible to escape.

I don't know if people were more or less materialistic or brand-conscious in the past, but I'm sure there was an equivalent to the Cath Kidston brigade, and an equally judgy anti-Cath-Kidston type. I doubt there has ever been a time where people didn't seek to feel better about their own lifestyle choices, especially parenting, by slagging off others'.

If you're feeling isolated and unsure by new motherhood (which is common), it's easy to blame this on everyone else around you being Stepford Wives with Yummy Mummy bags. It's so sad and superficial to dismiss these people as potential friends, though. And statements like (I paraphrase) 'all those Yummy Mummy types are judgmental bitches' and 'look at them, with their stupid overpriced organic kumquats, giving me evils about my baby's food' are inadvertently hilarious. Like that guy who once told me 'all Japanese people are racist'.

And if you want non-baby-related conversation, hang out with child-free friends. I have conversations with child-free friends about work politics and internet dating, and sometimes for entire seconds I forget I have a baby. But no one should be made to feel dull or dismal for wanting to talk about weaning or whatever during the first months of parenthood, especially with other people they've met on a parenting course.

No, the NCT is not all like this. I'm still in touch regularly with all but one of my antenatal class 4 years on, and I don't think any of us possess a single item of Cath Kidson. More likely F&F. And we drink coffee. And gin. And swear a lot. And even dress our DC in (whisper it) second hand clothes.

I'll go to the barricades for Sophie La Giraf though.

You can buy Sophie la Giraffe in French supermarkets for a fraction of the John Lewis cost. Both DC love our Soph.

And upthread someone mentioned that general pissed-off-ness at DHs when babies are v young. Apparently it's biological to stop you getting upduffed too quickly .

I find it weird that you're finding such unadulterated versions of the yummy mummy around you. I think of it more like a spectrum.

Isn't Cath Kidson for 14 year old girls now?

I wouldn't be seen dead with any.

Peking I agree, I view it as a metaphor.

My niece went bonkers for it when she visited.

It is as though entering the world of motherhood is so new and challenging we all default to our school disco teen selves - 'Hmm how to make the Right impression? Salt and Peppa or Pepsi and Shirley? And of course the marketing bods turn that genuine search for a new persona that encompasses care, sacrifice and self assurance into a fucking shopping trip. Behind all the bollocks are women trying to work out how to be the woman they were and the woman they now are. The labels get in the way and it is not easy to see past them sometimes,whatever they are.
Good news - sooner or later everyone relaxes into their new reality and life can continue at a less lunatic pace. In the meantime -

Ha ha. Funny thread.

Im sure you would all hate/whisper/ laugh about me.

I have a fucking Cath Kidston PUSHCHAIR! Purchased for me by my mother because she saw I had a CK purse

Ha ha. Wouldnt choose it myself perhaps, but it was a gift that I could ill afford to turn down.

Seriously though- If I truly gave a fuck what anyone thought about what I was wearing/pushing then I probably wouldnt leave the house.

Funnily enough im sat at the train station now next to a woman with a polkadot cath kidston changing bag and her baby is sucking on a Sophie giraffe

Haha @ Sophie. Close mate of mine is in the midst of the new mum years and her DD has this Sophie giraffe, apparently "it's the in thing".