Baby Bores: Four types of super-moms that drive everyone mad

Ah, the bliss of parenting. The fierce love you suddenly discover for your newborn. The way every little thing your child says is fascinating. The blind stupidity that makes you think everyone – but everyone – is interested in your parenting voyage.

We wouldn’t tell our friends how many times we went to the loo or what we ate for every meal. It’s just pure over-sharing. We wouldn’t tell them how much we love our husbands. We wouldn’t drag every conversation round to the topic of our recent gynaecological examinations. Then why assume they are interested in a blow-by-blow account of your kids’ lives?

Little Ria walked for the first time today. Little Aaryan did potty in the potty. Little Kiara had wind today, so I had to buy Woodwards gripe water. Welcome to the oh-so-tedious world of the baby bore. Recognise yourself?

So many women turn into baby bores the minute they give birth (I say women because in this very unfair world of ours men usually do much less parenting, and therefore are much less obsessed by their kids). And now that we have technology on our side, Facebook and Twitter allow us to carpet bomb our friends and family with our parenting milestones.

The plain truth is that while your children may be the centre of your universe, they are not the centre of anyone else’s life, except possibly doting grandparents. Ok, you can talk about them for say up to five minutes, just enough to reassure your friends that you haven’t abandoned them in a baskets on the local church steps. But any longer is just plain rude.

Baby bores come in a number of varieties, each as tedious as the other. Read on for a guide to which kind you or your over-sharing friend might be:

The Facebook Mommy: Enough already with those show-offy status messages declaring, “My little Ananya is the most precious treasure in the world. I looove her so much.” When did loving your kids require a public announcement? If you love your precious treasure – who is likely sitting five feet away – doesn’t it make more sense to just walk over and give her a hug or a chocolate bar?

And please, let’s ban those maudlin status messages which go “Thank you, God, for giving me such a lovely daughter. Paste this to your status if your children are your best friends and you love them more than life itself." The last I heard, God doesn’t read Facebook. This is competitive mum-ing at its worst, and has nothing to do with loving your kids and everything to do with wanting to brag about your superior parenting devotion.

Mummy Brain-dead: Then there are those otherwise intelligent women who insist on playing dumb once they have had children. They blame their much-maligned “mummy brain” for not being able to talk about anything or anyone else.

“Oh god,” they moan, “Since I had my kids I don’t have time to read anything, even the newspaper.”

“It’s only natural,” everyone nods understandingly.”After all, you are a mother now.”

Yes, let’s just ignore the many, many female CEOs, Pulitzer Prize winners and indeed prime ministers who are mothers. We are mummies, so we must be dim! That’s fair enough if you have a newborn when your life revolves around feeding and sleeping routines. But why are you still incapable of reading the paper ten years later?

Baby Yuppie, or Buppie: This upwardly mobile mother is intent on scaling the ladder of motherhood. She’s the kind of woman who describes herself as CEO of the Sharma household. Or Chief Domestic Engineer. Or Managing Director of Two Little Monkeys. The designation is all.

The Baby Buppie’s kids are always “gifted’ even though they inexplicably fail all their exams. Teachers always struggle to understand her children because they children are “so sensitive." They always have an unusual number of allergies, and manage to be lactose- gluten-, and carb-intolerant, leaving mom no choice but to feed them exclusively on organic rice and imported broccoli.

Her kids don’t learn piano, play cricket, go for Hindi tuition or anything so mundane. Instead, they learn African drumming, learn Mandarin, and go for capoeira classes (“I like to bring them up to be ‘world citizens’”)

The Conversation Hog: No matter what you talk about, the Conversation Hog always drags the discussion around to her children. Sample:

“Do you like Chinese food?”

“Well, I do, but I think the soya sauce in it is really bad for children. I read a study which said that children who eat too much sodium end up with low IQ.”

Or you may try talking to her husband “So, what’s work like?” But she will cut in and field the question, heading it off at the pass: “Little Dhruv said he wants to be an engineer just like his father. So cute, na?”

You can run, but you can’t hide from the baby bores.

Of course, my kids are beautiful, talented and naturally gifted. But I know my friends are about as eager to talk about their achievements as they are to discuss the RBI’s inflation policy. I love my offspring, but I loathe talking about them. After a long day of parenting, my brain needs to be let out for a walk, or maybe even a nice, brisk run.

Baby talk? Save it for the babies.

Kavitha Rao is a freelance journalist and parent who detests parenting manuals. Her main parenting mantra: “This too shall pass.”