Moms That Just Don’t “Get It!”

Hey Y’all.

So, in an attempt to take up less wall space inside Atlanta Mom’s Club with my own personal rants and raves, I decided to start a blog.  If you are an Atlanta momma and need an awesome tribe of down to earth, ACTUALLY helpful momma friends, go to facebook and apply to join here: https: //www.facebook.com/groups/AtlantaMomsClub/

After my not so fun gym experience at LA Fitness a few months back ( if you have no idea what I’m referring to, see these: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gym-apologizes-to-mom-after-barring-… or http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nation/2015/09/17/32550223/) I decided to finally hit the gym again. I really love group fitness classes, I’m currently into yoga and Zumba,  its sort of the best combination of passive aggressive competition. You all know what I’m talking about…there’s always the overly perky one up front that thinks she’s better than the teacher, a few silver sneaker old ladies who lost their way, and some horribly uncoordinated women shuffling around to Latin music and flailing their arms around like their directing traffic. I like to believe I fall somewhere in the middle of out of shape mom meets, I used to be a dancer in high school, but now I’m 30.

Anyway.

My biggest fear in going back was actually taking Elliott to the group day care while I worked out.  He has food allergies, like severe, long list of food allergies that require me to be constantly vigilant and obsessive about what he comes into contact with and where his epi pen is at all times. (I ordered this to ease my fears and he wears it on his ankle, http://www.amazon.com/Allerbling-Food-Allergy-Awareness-Bracelet/dp/B005…)  When we went to tour it was my first question, do you allow food in the area with children? No. phew! Next up, do you allow anything other than water with them? No. SWEET!

Well. First day I show up I see a ton of leaky milk sippy cups and bottles. My heart sank. I HATE to be the complainer or to cause unnecessary attention on myself or, heaven forbid, be the cause of someone else’s inconvenience. I told the sign in woman about his allergies and sort of tip toed about the milk thing to test out her attitude. She got it. She was a peanut allergy mom. YES! She instantly took all the cups and put them away and had signs out by the time my Zumba was over that they no longer allowed any liquid other than water in the day care. phew. What a relief.

Fast forward to today, week 2 of gym and as I’m standing in line to drop off, I hear one of the assistants telling the woman in front of us that they would not be able to feed her baby a bottle during the class anymore. She had a FIT. They tried to explain that it was a policy before but wasn’t enforced. Then she tried to tell her that they weren’t even legally allowed to feed the babies because they weren’t a licensed day care, the same reason they don’t change diapers. That didn’t help. This grown woman’s response to them was, “you better not come interrupt my workout to feed her or I’ll be pissed”. It took all my willpower not to reach out and shake her and scream in her face that her work out was not more important that my sons life. She did not “get it”. I also felt an undue amount of satisfaction in the fact that she totally sucked at Zumba. Serves her right.

Fast forward a few hours later and we’re at the allergist, doing the dreaded skin prick test on my sweet innocent baby. I hate that part you guys. Its so hard to hold him down while they prick his skin over and over and he just looks at me screaming and crying and cant understand why on earth his mommy would subject him to this torture. I nearly always cry. It looks something like this.

The day ended pretty sweet when he was cleared of shell fish, soy, seeds and (drumroll please…) PEANUTS! I took him right home and did 2 different skin patch test areas then gave him a taste. It was like Christmas day and my birthday and being able to get drunk and not worry about kids all rolled into one. So, we’re still milk anaphylactic and that witchy woman at the gym will have to feed her own little snow flake a bottle a little longer.  Bless her heart.

Caroline Hoffman, My Atlanta Moms Club