The kindness of strangers

Last week, I was in Tesco doing my weekly food shop. To start off with, Caleb was pretty chilled out. I always hope that he will be asleep when I do the food shopping as it always just makes life so much easier! But alas, this day, he was not. I was about 3/4 of the way through doing my shopping when he started crying and I'm not talking just a few tears, I'm talking complete screaming, inconsolable crying. Now I know that people often say that you always notice your baby's cry more than anyone else does but trust me, EVERYONE noticed. Lots of people were looking around at me. You can really spot the difference between people who have children or like children and those that don't because for those who have them / like them, even though they look, they're nice and slightly sympathetic at the situation, whereas the other group of people glare at you and tut, assuming that you're a bad mother because you can't stop the baby crying.

I ended up taking Caleb out of his carseat (we were using one of those trolleys where the carseat goes on top of it) and holding him, whilst also trying to manoeuvre a really heavy trolley. Which we all know is difficult at the best of times, thanks to trolleys that never go where you want them to, but when I have tendonitis in both wrists, it's pretty hard! I would have just walked out of the supermarket and gone back another day had it not been for the fact that I was so close to the end. Caleb calmed down a little bit, but when we came to the checkout, I had to put him back in the carseat so that I could put the shopping onto the conveyor belt. More screaming yet again. Loads of people were looking over at me and it was so awkward. Then I noticed that the customer from the checkout next to me had come over and had started to unload my shopping onto the conveyor belt for me. She was lovely and she commented that we've all been there and that it's good to help one another out. I could have hugged her there and then, it was so kind of her to help. A couple of minutes later when I was putting the shopping into the bags, an older couple came over and looked into the carseat. The lady asked if she could hold Caleb. I was a bit hesitant as she was just a random stranger who I didn't even know but Caleb was crying so much, I was trying to hurry to pack the shopping away and everyone was staring so I just said yes. She picked him up and was cooing over him. Her husband kept taking his glasses on and off to make Caleb laugh and it worked, he was really happy and smiley with them.

Even though my shopping experience wasn't the most fun in the world, I left feeling pretty happy that there are such lovely people who are willing to help out others when they see them struggling a bit and I hope that I can do the same for someone else at some point!

In other news - we have the internet! And Caleb is 4 months old today. And we are in our new home. Happy day!