I Was THAT Mom

We took a trip to the zoo yesterday with our friends, all was well for the first hour or so and then I stopped to get a frozen lemonade drink and all hell broke loose. Davis decided to start crying, I got some ice for his cup, poured some water into and thought that would help him. He threw it. I gave it to him again, he threw it. I then decided he must be hungry so I sat in the picnic area that was shaded and started giving him some food, he stopped crying for a moment and then started up again. I looked up for a moment and saw other moms and kids staring at me and my child. (maybe they were not really, but it felt like it) After a few minutes of him crying uncontrollably I told my friends I needed to leave, I could tell he was not going to let up. On our way out we decided he needed to walk around a bit, we found a grassy area with shade and I took him out of his stroller. He proceeded to cry as he walked around, he wouldn't even take a toy to play with, he just hit them as hard as he could. After a few minutes of this I put him back in his stroller, he threw a bigger fit and slid out before I could strap him in. It took me 3 trys to get him in the stroller, I honestly thought I was going to have to ask someone to hold him down so I could strap him in. We made our way out of the zoo while Davis cried the entire time, the longer we walked the worse his crying became. By the time I got to my car he was in full on, pissed off baby mode. People in the parking lot were staring at us as I quickly tried to put all of our crap into the car. I changed his diaper in the back of the Jeep which caused Davis to get very angry with me, I put him in his car seat and turned his TV on, usually the TV does the trick, it did not. He just cried harder. He cried the entire drive home at full strength. About 5 minutes before we got to our house he stopped, I figured he cried himself to sleep. He did not, I got him out of the car and he was all smiles. What a change from just a few minutes ago. We got in the house and he was adorable the rest of the day, playing, smiling, being his cute old self. I'm still not sure what caused the meltdown, but then again he is a baby and who knows what sets them off. Maybe it was because I had the canopy pulled down too far in the stroller, maybe he hated the zoo, maybe he didn't like being surrounded by girls (haha), maybe it was his teeth, I'll never know. What I do know is yesterday I was THAT mom, you know, the mom that cannot get her tantrum throwing child to stop. I was the mom that I used to see out before I had kids and think, hmph, do something with your kid lady, make him stop crying for gods sake. I was that mom that I'd see and think, wow, you have such a brat, I'll never have a kid that cries in public. Oh, the things you think before you are mom. I now realize all those times I thought these things about other moms that there was probably nothing they could do about their crying, tantrum throwing children. Sometimes you can give them a sippy of water and all is better and other times they pass the point of anything making them happy and there really is NOTHING as a mom you can do. Whenever I see another mom out in public with a crying child I feel her pain now, I know that she is embarrassed and I know there is probably nothing she can do to get the child to stop. The only thing you can do sometimes is remove the child from the situation which is what I did.

Side note: This is the first public meltdown I've ever experienced with Davis. We have had plenty of meltdowns at home, but never in public, we have had crying in public but not a full on a meltdown. Quite honestly I didn't know what to do and my best solution was to leave.