Everytime I go somewhere with the baby, people give me dirty looks. Most of the time they are older women, but I can understand they come from a different time where women had babies when they were older and married.
Justin and I aren't married. We plan to get married, but neither of us are ready for a ceremony. I know that sounds strange... I'm ready to be married, but I want to just go to the courthouse and get the paper signed... I'm not real big on the whole idea of a ceremony.
Anyway, the reason for my rant is this: I went to Target the other day with the baby and a friend. We were walking around, joking around and having fun. Rylynn is just learning how to sit up on her own so instead of bringing the whole carseat into the store, we put her in the cart. Well her little muscles aren't exactly strong enough to sit for long periods of time, and she hadn't had a nap yet that day so sitting was tiring for her. I look over at her and she's slumping over. She's falling asleep. This older lady walks by and TRIED TO TAKE HER OUT OF THE CART. She claimed I was being negligent and shouldn't have a baby her age in just the cart. I sluffed her off, took her out of the cart, and gave her to my friend so that I could push the cart up to the register. Personally, my goal was to tire her out so that she would take a nap, but by all means I did not mean for her to fall asleep in the cart. She was cranky, likes to shop, and eventually it will put her to sleep. It wasn't a long trip, and I was buying her some sleepers... Anyway, so the lady follows us up to the counter making comments as she's walking behind us. Saying things to her friend like "I should report her" "that poor child" "Babies shouldn't have babies" "she's not even married" things like that. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and turned to her and said "I may be young, but that doesn't mean that my daughter isn't my whole world and I don't do anything to care for her. She fell asleep, I picked her up. Babies fall asleep!" She guffawed and walked away.
We paid, left, and put her in the carseat. She was happily sucking her thumb and passed out in the carseat. My friend wanted to smoke a cigarette and I don't smoke in the car with the baby in there so I turned the air on, let the car cool off, and closed the door. Standing by the car smoking a cigarette, this freaking lady comes back and starts telling me she is going to call the cops because I am leaving my child in a hot car and that I care more about polluting my lungs than getting her home and putting her to bed. I asked her if she would rather me pollute my child's lungs and smoke in the car and she said "well I doubt you quit when you were pregnant so it wouldn't make much difference" and walked away. As we are finishing up, a cop comes through the parking lot. He stops, tells me someone reported a child in a car (it's a big thing her in AZ, kids die all the time because of stupid people leaving their kids in a car when it's 90 degrees out) and I explained to him that I have the air on, it's cool in the car and she's sleeping. It's not like she was screaming and crying because she was in there by herself. She was passed out! So the cop tells me to go home and that he didn't see anything wrong with it...
Needless to say, I'm kind of peeved about it. I know I'm only 21, but way back in the day, I would be an old maid for waiting so long to have children! I stay home with her, Justin makes enough money to support us comfortably, so what is the problem? Am I irresponsible for leaving her in the car while I smoke? If it's a short drive home, I will wait and have one when I get home. But if it's a long drive and she's not crying, I will smoke outside my car.
Please give me some advice here. I just want to know what you think and if I'm doing something wrong...
Sorry for such a long post...