When it comes to people’s opinions of newborns, people tend to fall into two different camps. There are those who see the perfection in these tiny humans. They marvel at the beauty of new life and are unable to see these babies as anything other than miracles. Then there are those who think newborns resemble something extraterrestrial. They struggle to see the ways in which they even look human at all.
Most folks keep those opinions to themselves as not to offend parents or speak ill of an innocent child. But one mother didn’t feel so inclined. Instead, she shared her less-than-pleased thoughts about her own child’s appearance online.
‘I was in shock after labor,’ the new mom said.
Jess, a 20-year-old mom from the UK, went viral for her thoughts about her son just after he came out of her body. In a TikTok video, Jess showed a clip of herself and her son in the hospital bed. “I literally stared at him and cried,” Jess wrote over the video. “I thought he was so ugly while I was in shock after labor.”
@jbag17 ✨hormones✨
♬ hozier x do i wanna know arctic monkeys cover – churchofhozier
Jess blamed her hormones.
To clean it up a bit, Jess added a postscript. “I thought he was cute after a few hours,” she explained. “Don’t come for me.” But that wasn’t enough. The video, which has been viewed over a million times, is full of comments telling Jess that she had taken things too far and done too much.
“I think this is actually so cruel,” one user wrote.
Jess wanted people to know she’s had no trouble bonding.
Some people questioned what type of mother Jess would be to the infant. When one user wrote, “Mother of the year,” sarcastically and continued “poor child,” seriously, Jess responded with a video of her nursing her son, cuddling him in bed. She captioned this video, “staymad.”
Some understood her.
While there were plenty of disparaging comments, there were others who seemed to understand Jess’ sense of humor.
“My dad says I was the ugliest baby he’s ever seen,” one user shared.
“God forbid a girl has a sense of humor,” another wrote, defending her.
@mikiraiofficial #stitch with @aimeelco personally I think the baby is real cute 🥹 #nurse #baby #babies ♬ original sound – Miki Rai
A nurse showed how to say this more dilopmatically.
Jess is far from the only person to have such strong feelings about a baby’s face. One labor and delivery nurse even learned a strategy to handle it to avoid sharing their less than polite feelings with parents.
“If the baby is cute, you can just tell them the baby’s cute,” said Miki Rai, a health care professional from Seattle, in a video. “But if the baby is ugly,” she laughed, “you just tell [the parent] they look just like them.”
