You're Doing It Wrong

What mommy groups taught me about the online health space

I spent a solid chunk of my early motherhood years in Facebook mommy groups, and if you know, you know. The profile pictures of babies in pumpkin patches. The passive aggressive “just asking for a friend” posts. The comment sections that could start as a question about diaper rash cream and somehow end in a full ideological war about whether you loved your child enough.

I had a csection with my first baby (and the subsequent two). And if you’ve ever had a csection and made the mistake of mentioning it in a mommy group, you already know what I had to do every single time: perform my birth story like it was evidence in a trial. I didn’t just say “I had a csection.” That was not allowed. I had to explain that I labored first. That I tried. That my body wasn’t broken, I just had a situation, a very valid and medically necessary situation, and here are the receipts if you’d like to review them.

Because if you didn’t establish that you tried to do it naturally, the comments would find you.

The VBAC community was particularly passionate. Bless their hearts and their uteruses, truly. I went on to have two more csections anyway, because I got to a place where I trusted my doctor and my body’s history over a comment section full of strangers who had a lot of feelings about my cervix. The goal was always a healthy baby, not a gold star for the method I used to get one. That confidence took time, but once I had it, the noise got a lot quieter.

Here is where I have to be honest with you, though, because why even write this if I’m not.

At the exact same time I was being made to feel like a csection was a moral failing, I was being absolutely insufferable about breastfeeding. My first baby latched like a champ and I treated it like a personality trait. I was posting about it constantly. The humble brag check-ins. The “six months and still going strong” updates that nobody asked for. And when a mom mentioned she wasn’t breastfeeding? I had thoughts. I kept them mostly internal, but I had them, and they were not kind. She probably didn’t try hard enough. She probably gave up too soon. Breast is best and if you really wanted what was best for your baby, you would have figured it out.

I could not see the hypocrisy. It was standing directly in front of me wearing a nursing bra and I could not see it.

Looking back with the gift of a few decades and a therapist, I know exactly what was happening. I was a new mom, completely unmoored, desperate for an identity I could feel proud of. Breastfeeding was something I was good at, in a season of my life where I wasn’t sure I was good at anything. So I climbed up on that particular hill and I planted my flag and I looked down at everyone below me. It wasn’t kind. It wasn’t helpful. I was young and insecure and I figured out the hard way that making yourself feel better by making other people feel worse is not actually a personality.

I haven’t been in a mommy group in years. My babies are big, my breastfeeding days are long behind me, and my boobs have the receipts from nursing three kids for over a year each, especially after losing 140 pounds. That’s a whole separate conversation we can have later (RIP to my boobs).

The point is, I thought I left the sanctimommy world behind. And then I got into the online health and weight loss space and realized those women never actually went anywhere. They just grew up and found new material.

The GLP critic who wants to know if you really tried hard enough before you started medication is the VBAC mom in a different font.

The person rattling off side effects with just a little too much enthusiasm? The kind of enthusiasm that tells you they are less concerned about your wellbeing and more excited to be right? That’s the anti-vax mom who spent three years telling you to do your research.

The fitness girlie who is very supportive of your weight loss but needs you to know that you really should be lifting? That you’re losing muscle? That cardio is fine but have you considered….? That’s the breastfeeding mom smiling sweetly while implying that formula is the bare minimum.

The structure is identical. Someone found a thing that works for them, or a thing they believe in, or a thing they can feel superior about, and now your different choice is a problem they feel personally called to address. The concern is real enough that they believe it themselves. But underneath the concern is something older and more familiar: the need to be the one who is doing it right.

I know that need. I used to feed it every time I posted a breastfeeding update that nobody asked for.

The difference between then and now is that I’ve been on enough sides of this to see the pattern. I’ve been the one justifying my csection in a comment section. I’ve been the one silently judging someone else’s formula can. I’ve been the person on GLP medication defending my choice to people who wanted me to know about the risks, as if I hadn’t already had that conversation with my actual doctor.

And somewhere in all of that, I figured out that the people loudest about how you’re doing it wrong are almost never asking from a place of genuine care. They’re asking because your confidence in your own choice makes them uncomfortable about theirs. Your csection is a threat to the mom who sacrificed for her natural birth. Your GLP prescription is a threat to the person who did it the “hard way” and needs that to mean something.

It really has nothing to do with you but everything to do with them.

So whether you’re defending your birth story or your prescription or your relationship with the gym or the fact that you’d rather eat a sandwich than a protein shake, you don’t owe anyone the full explanation. You don’t have to perform your reasoning for a comment section that already decided how it feels about you.

But here’s where my journey parts ways with a simple “just ignore them.” Because I’m not interested in ignoring it anymore.

I spent years battling the comment sections and over-explaining my csections and quietly absorbing the judgment because I didn’t have the confidence or the platform to do anything else. I have both now, and I’m not going to waste them on staying quiet.

The misinformation is too loud. The stigma is too heavy. And I know there are people reading comment sections right now who are absorbing all of that garbage and letting it make decisions for them about their own bodies, their own health, and their own worth.

So I clap back. I fact check. Not because I think I’m going to change the mind of the person who showed up already decided, but because someone else is reading that thread and they deserve to see the other side of it. They deserve to know that the concern isn’t always concern, that the “research” isn’t always research, and that a stranger’s discomfort with your choices is not a medical opinion.

I learned that eventually. Only took three csections, too many years of breastfeeding, and losing 140 pounds, but I got there. And now that I’m here, I’m not going anywhere quietly.