I am 7m pregnant.
This friend has just asked where we are planning to 'put the baby' when she is born, the point being that we only live in a very small 2 bedroom flat and one bedroom is currently my office ( I work from home). I of course said that the baby would be sleeping in our room with us at first. She said, "sure, but eventually are you seriously telling me you aren't making a nice nursery for all her stuff with pink teddies on the walls etc etc?..."
2 points:
- this friend is loaded beyond belief (not a problem for me, btw, I have never had the slightest problem with her having tonnes of money and a huge home because it's just pure luck and I think there is more to life than money BUT we are NOT loaded beyond belief, my friend knows this and knows we are going to struggle to move somewhere bigger with the baby when we eventually have to.
- is this not just an incredibly insensitive thing to say to a pregnant woman who quite obviously HASN'T turned her (still much-needed) home office into a gorgeous nursery for her brand new baby?
I would love nothing more than to have been able to make a gorgeous nursery for my very first baby and have been feeling very guilty already that we are unable to provide this BUT I had reconciled myself to the fact that newborns don't need any trappings except mum and dad and milk and love.
Now after this conversation with my friend I am sitting here stupidly crying and feeling an inadequate parent again because I am not able to bring my baby home from the hospital to something from an interiors magazine.
I didn't know what to say to my friend on the phone so I ended the call as soon as possible.
The irony is that she may have provided a gorgeous nursery for her own children but she has spent the past 4 years dragged through a hideous divorce (not saying divorce is necc at all bad for a child btw, but the way my friend and her ex have done it, it's bloody awful for everyone in the vicinity!) and I have NEVER once suggested to her that she is anything other than a great mum who is doing her best.