The Stares
January 4th, 2007 by WaS
Having a baby changes your life in so many ways - everyone knows that. You get no sleep, have all the joys, yada yada. But there are a lot of changes that nobody really tells you about. For one - shopping is never the same again. If you want to go to the mall with the baby prepare for a big day of nothing.
First, you’re now tied to a 4-wheeled contraption that makes stairs and escalators off-limits. The first thing to do when arriving at a mall is get familiar with all the elevator locations. Kings Plaza has one. I was shocked to find a whole underworld of elevator travelers at the mall. I always assumed nobody really used those but to my amazement, they were packed with strollers!
Then you have the regular baby maintenance. Entertain him, change him, feed him. This severly impacts the shopping experience to say the least.
It’s important to find stores that don’t mind you leaving dirty diaper presents behind in their changing rooms. The maternity and baby stores are good, and we’ve given more than one “gift” to Victoria’s Secret as well. (That’s payback for the thousands of catalogs they send us)
The best is when they fall asleep while out. He falls asleep in a few minutes when being pushed around in the stroller - only problem is, he wakes up the second you stop. So while the wife shopped, I made laps around and around the mall to keep him asleep. Not very fun!
The worst though - was when we went shopping on 7th ave (in Bklyn) the other day. In one of the stores he started crying uncontrollably. To prevent it from echoing throughout the whole store I took him outside a bit. He was screeeeaming away. I thought it would help if I held him a bit but that only made it worse. Now I was holding a screaming baby on a crowded sidewalk. Every person that passed gave me a nice big stare. Some were the “what-are-you-doing-to-that-poor-baby” look, but most were the “thank-God-that’s-not-me” look. Awwww - that used to be me.