Thumper or Thump-her?

When my daughter was only 10 days old, I developed a rare disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS).  Essentially, your own immune system starts attacking your nervous system, usually in response to an infection (no one knows which infection it was reacting too; I’d managed to have a sinus infection during my birth and I picked up pink eye on the way home from the hospital.  Oh, and I managed to catch a violent stomach bug in the Emergency Room at my local hospital before they sent me to Johns Hopkins.  Lucky me, huh?  Like giving birth and caring for a newborn isn’t exhausting enough!)  The symptoms were stroke-like and therefore terrifying, but the doctors at Johns Hopkins had me diagnosed, treated, and home again in less than a week.  (Hooray for living 20 minutes away from Baltimore!)  Amazingly, one of our neighbors said to my husband, “The reason your wife got sick is because she was out and about too soon after the birth.”  More amazingly, my husband didn’t punch her in the face for saying something so callous and rude after the most harrowing week of his life.  Not only did he catch the violent stomach bug too, but he thought his wife was going to die, leaving him a single parent of a two week old baby that he barely knew what to do with.  What she said was just mean!  Let me point out that not one of the doctors at Johns Hopkins mentioned “being out of the house with a newborn” as a potential risk factor associated with GBS.

So how do we deal with these mean mommy comments?  How do we ignore the crazy things people say, without getting angry?  I’m not an expert, but here are a few things that help me get through.

1. Give them the benefit of the doubt (or “the BOD,” as I like to call it.)  Maybe their parents/doctors/internet told them something contrary to what you were taught.  My neighbor grew up in a different generation, and when her kids were born she probably sequestered herself until they were sleeping through the night.  She can’t understand why I wouldn’t do the same. 
2. Educate them, as kindly as you can.  Keeping the moral high ground can be very satisfying when someone is particularly nasty.  For example, I could have said, “My doctor says it’s completely safe for us to be out of the house, and the illness is unrelated.  It was probably in response to one of several infections I was fighting at the time.”  Sometimes, I like to over-explain and make them sorry they made the comment in the first place.  Had I been there when my neighbor made the comment to my husband, I probably would have gone into detail about how GBS occurs, what my symptoms were, what the doctors had to do to diagnose it, how the food was in the hospital, and so on.  This can be especially effective with people you see on a regular basis.  You establish yourself as an expert, and make them try to avoid engaging you in such discussions in the future.
3. Smile and nod.  Every time I hear, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” I imagine Thumper in “Bambi” reciting this sage advice from his father.  Thumper’s dad was right.  Sometimes, you just make things worse by saying anything.  My husband looked at our neighbor like she had 3 heads, but he kept his mouth shut because he knew that if he started to say something, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from completely alienating her.
4. Be a total jerk right back to them.  Hey, it’s petty and childish, but sometimes it feels really good.  I’m not proud of it, but I’m sure God will forgive me if I slip every so often…