Mayim Bialik has a message for moms: Stop the competition.
The former "Blossom" star sounded off in a new video, telling a story about how she went to a moms' group 13 years ago, after her first child was born, and felt all the moms in the room were competing with each other.
"Women at this moms' group were encouraged to brag about how fast their labor was, how precocious their babies were with pooping, rolling over, sitting up, smiling," she said in the clip, shared Thursday on Facebook. "I overheard one woman bragging to another mom about how fast her milk came down after the baby latched onto her breast."
"Everything was a competition," she continued. "These were not my people. I left in tears."
Bialik also said she felt different from the other moms there.
"I instantly felt out of place," she said. "I used cloth diapers, I didn't use pacifiers or bottles. I didn't have fancy clothes, neither did my baby. I didn't get a manicure. I mean, I barely had time to shower — how was I going to have time to get a manicure?"
Bialik's point? She wants mothers to share their experiences out of compassion, not competition.
"So if I ask you, 'What was your birth like?', I'm not asking because I want to be competitive about it," she said. "I want to know what it was like for you. Were you scared? What did it feel like? What did it bring up for you? How did you prepare for labor? What was it like when you held your baby for the first time? How did your partner react? What was your recovery like? That's what I mean when I say, 'What was your birth like?'"
The same goes for how a mom chooses to feed her baby, she said.
"And if you ask someone, 'Did you breastfeed?', it shouldn't be assumed that you're asking because you want to pass judgement on them," Bialik said. "It should be because you sincerely want to know, how did you choose to feed your baby, and what was that like?"
She encouraged moms to band together over what connects them.
"Let's get back to a model of camaraderie that reduces competition, fosters friendship and empathy and increase the success of a society that is built on the foundational principles of woman-to-woman support, which has sustained our species for so long, so well," Bialik said. "We can only do this together. Moms, are you with me?"
Bialik, most recently known for her role on "Big Bang Theory," has two children with ex-husband Michael Stone.