Attachment? Uh! What is is good for? Absolutely everything!

I am so horrified that this thing that happened hours and hours ago is still bothering me really badly. There's a girl I know. In fact, she lives about a block from me. We don't really hang out, as she's not really my type, but we're in a lot of the same groups, and have a lot of mutual friends, so she's an acquaintance of mine.

Well, today she said something in a little online group that 10 of us have, which brought to a head something I have been thinking for a long time. I'll just copy and paste it here.

"dear child. just take your damn nap already. this screaming and crying because you can't cling to me right now, is ridiculous. you just ate, your diaper is clean, we rocked and you fell asleep..i laid you down now your up screaming bloody murder panic. I WILL WIN!"

She always talks about how "she will win", when it comes to this kid. It's about everything, but the idea I get is, "I will beat you into submission one way or another, you tiny defenseless baby!" The baby is 9 months old, by the way. Seriously. This woman is obsessed with trying to defeat a 9-month-old who is panicking. How pathetic is that? I know I'm not the only one who was really bothered by this either. Nearly everybody who saw it was. Before I knew that, even, I replied, because honestly, I'd sat silently for long enough, and all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing, so I spoke up, because hell, somebody had to do it. This is what I said:

"Chai always has a hard time going to sleep, too. When he wakes up, I just nurse him some more, or if he won't latch on, we just rock a while longer. Babies need strong attachment to their mommies. If they are crying, it is because there is a need, even if it's just the need for company or comfort. This is not about winning."

I think I was very nice, considering that this woman uses parenting "styles" that I, and most people I respect, equate to child abuse, like letting babies cry it out. A bunch of us actually believe she probably hits the baby, too, although we have no proof. It's a horrible situation all in all, and I was as nice as I could possibly be to somebody whom I frankly think is a horrible monster. This is what she had to say back to me:

Well, I'm not attachment mommy, it's her nap time, she always naps on this schedule. I did the CIO method, worked. Today she's in a funk. She's super tired rubbing her eyes and cranky.
a few seconds ago · Like

Have I told you that I'm horrified? I am. I'm completely horrified. Maybe it's because I was nursing Chai to sleep when this interaction went down. Maybe it's because I'd just come from my La Leche League meeting, where there were only really positive nice people, who are as nice to their babies as I am to mine. Maybe it's just because I know how fast the baby stage goes by, and how before you know it, that baby is 8 years old, and really is giving you attitude and expressing her own opinions, and doing her own thing. Maybe it's because I know the baby stage is the easy part, because I have one foot in that world, and the other in the school age world. For whatever reason it is, though, her being so forward about leaving a baby alone to cry because she has her schedule, literally made me physically ill. This woman is a disgusting monster. This may seem small, but imagine you hear nothing but this from this person for months, and then tell me what you think of them. I was kind because you catch more flies with honey, but on the inside, I was screaming.

She, of course, gave me venom in return. She accused me of being negative, and starting drama. (Funny, the only negativity and drama I see are from her end.) She also made a very foul comment about cosleeping, which is blatantly directed at me, because I make no secret of the fact that we cosleep. It's easier. Studies show that moms who cosleep and breastfeed get more sleep than moms who don't. Chai wakes up really early. I keep a diaper on my nightstand so I can change him real quick, then put him into the bed with us (he's usually in his little bed right next to ours. Room sharing is a form of cosleeping.) latch him on, and go back to sleep while he nurses. I get a lot of sleep. I was discussing this with somebody the other day, and she overheard me, so I know that's where that came from. I didn't dignify it with an answer. All day long, my phone was going off with texts from friends, telling me that this girl had made another post, just trying to bait me. I went through this evening when I was nursing Chai before bedtime (I'm always online when I'm nursing. It's the best way to pass the time.) and it was really foul. She really was just trying to bait me, and get me to scrap with her, verbally speaking. (Ha! Verbally speaking... holy redundancy...) Of course, I didn't give her the pleasure. I ignored it all. There's no right way to take someone on when they're like that.

In the course of this, I talked with a lot of mutual friends about her, and what was going on, and they all said they were tired of her, too, and that the way she acts is really disturbing, but they're all afraid of how to cut her out of our group without her going on a rampage of some sort. She's really volatile, and today, when I dared to question her even slightly, the way she reacted showed all of us that she's really more than a little bit crazy. We're pretty sure she has issues, like real, diagnosable issues, which maybe she should be on medication for, but isn't, so I don't know what we're going to do about her just yet. Maybe in the morning, things will be clearer. I guess we'll see.

Honestly, though, most of us genuinely fear for the baby. One friend actually said she's pretty sure she hits the baby. None of us have proof of any of it, other than how she talks about the baby, and of that, the only proof we have is what she puts online, so there's no way we can call the police or anything. We just know there's a bad situation, and we have to let it be. That, my friends, is horrifying. I don't know how well I'll sleep tonight, knowing what's happening just a block away.