Screaming Stroller in Safeway

Going places with baby has become less of a daunting experience. Our stroller is divine, my diaper bag is the height of fashion, and I'm far less squeamish about nursing in public that I thought I would be, using my special nursing cover-up of course. I'm not going to just whip my boob out in public, that's nonsense.

But, I am still struggling with how to cope with a crying (screaming) baby in public. At this age, I have a hard time letting her cry-it-out for any unnecessary length of time -- she's too little to be crying for any reason other than legitimate ones, nor is she old enough to be reasoned with out of a crying jag. However, when she starts crying in her stroller the second we approach the doors to Safeway, I'm not going to turn around and go home -- I'm already there and I have things to buy. Most of the time I will try to pull us to the side and take her out of the stroller and hold her to calm her down before laying her back again, which usually works after the second time. But it's still embarrassing when people walk by and everyone stares cause everyone has to be all up in everyone else's business these days. And on top of that she's a little newborn so she attracts attention. But you know, go away, I'm tending to this crying infant.

Finally, yesterday, though I hated to let her cry, I just carried on with my shopping. She's a baby, she cries, it's what they do, and I needed to get my shopping done, so everyone else can sort of suck it, really. But even though a fair number of people did in fact turn to look as my screaming stroller went past them, most people were in their own worlds and didn't seem to really notice it much. There was the one old lady, of course, who called the baby a "he" and kept trying to peer into the opening between the two roofs on the stroller to look at her, and when I said the baby was 7 weeks old, she said, "oh, I thought she was a newborn." In my opinion, babies are newborns until they're three months old. Clothes for babies goes from 0 to 3 months. So, they're either 0 or 3 months and above. And while she is still pretty smell compared to my friend Janet's son who was born only a few days after her and is huge, I've noticed that she's getting bigger than the little bitty newborn I brought home from the hospital. Aw...