Rebecca Eckler's going to lie around gorging on guacamole for six days in Mexico, with her fiancé and without her 10-week-old baby. Got a problem with that?
Never one to shy away from the spotlight, the Canadian mommy blogger is stirring chatter after oversharing that she'll be "ditching" her son shortly to spa it up.
"I'm not sure he's really going to miss me," Ms. Eckler writes in a piece for Mommyish.com, arguing that she doubts separation anxiety would take hold so early, and also that she has no clue what her little blob is thinking much of the time. "All I know is when he wants to eat, needs to burp, needs a diaper change, or a cuddle and that's only because he cries."
Ms. Eckler's "wonderful nanny" and her fiancé's mother will be tasked with reading those cues once the blogger sails off to her charity golf tournament in Mexico. She argues the experience might actually imbue the infant with a "sense of independence."
Most commenters on Mommyish.com didn't seem to care, pointing out it's Ms. Eckler's personal parenting choice. They did, however, take issue with her logic: If her son isn't old enough to notice his mom is missing, how will he simultaneously gain "a sense of independence" – as grandma and nanny change his diaper no less?
"You're not teaching a 10-week old anything," one commenter chimed in. "He barely knows if he's awake or asleep from one moment to the next. You're just leaving him with a different person-shaped-object that feeds him for a few days, and it isn't going to make any difference one way or another."
Ms. Eckler questioned whether she was being "cold-hearted," but concluded she's just "super laid-back," this being her second pregnancy. "I think a happy mom makes a happy child, and you know your child better than anyone else," she told ABC News.
"Nine months of pregnancy is a very long time and is very hard on a woman's body. Pretty much by two weeks in I think most women actually do need a vacation."
(Here, Mommyish commenter Amber beat Ms. Eckler to the punch: "Mom of three here – and yes, I have left my kids at home while I have went on vacation. The clincher is that my baby was five weeks when my husband and I got away. So, Rebecca, I have you beat in the 'worst mom of the year' category.")
Other readers spun the story into one about privilege: "It's the Eckler formula!" writes 1st-Time mommy. "Try to make lazy, apathetic parenting seem glamorous and enviable."
And never mind Mexico at 10 weeks, what about facing the end of paid maternity leave at six weeks, as is the case for many American women?
What do you make of the ditched-baby-brouhaha?