Child free group of friends. One friend has had a baby

[Shebaguinea]

I'm in a group of about 10 friends in our 40s. Always been child free. Lots of conversations about not wanting children. Several friends do not enjoy being around kids at all. Id prefer to not be around kids, but will phone it in and do my best to try to help out friend.

1 friend unexpectedly found herself pregnant after a short relationship and now has a small baby.

Things are now becoming difficult socially. Friend often requests help/babysitting/people to go to child friendly events and soft play etc. I do not babysit. Never changed a nappy, never wanted a child etc. but I've cleaned her house, helped with laundry, batch cooked for her etc.

She now wants more help and has suggested a babysitting rota so she gets a night off a fortnight. None of us want to do this. I've always helped with cooking and cleaning and have done lots of lifts for hospital and dr appointments...but I most definitely do not want to help with childcare. None of us do.

Are we awful people? Friend seems to want us to step in as family/other parent and help her. I'm happy to assist with other things but honestly I don't want to.

She needs to find some friends with babies, so she can go to soft play and other child friendly places with them. You don't need to step up in this regard, at all, YANBU. If she wants a babysitter, she can do what most people do, hire one.

My friend accused me of holding her baby in a weird way. 😂

I've literally held babies for about 3 minutes of my life. How would I know what I'm doing?

But we don't love kids. And I think I've been a pretty good friend cleaning and cooking for her and driving her around.

why would she approach a bunch of 40 something childless women to help with her DC?! Think she has pitched to the wrong audience. She needs to join local mother and baby groups and make some new friends.
You have nothing to feel bad about, I think she is asking a lot from you all.

It sounds like you've done a lot to help already.

The most useful thing I read in a baby book was that when you have kids you are more or less on your own. There is no friend or family member that can just step in for you.

That is what makes it so hard and isolating and the first year is absorbing the shock of taking on a new responsibility and job for the next twenty years (longer now, kids are less independent) and there is no quitting.

There will be family that helps but it's generally, for most people, not that much. Friends will help a little. But apart from that it's on you.

And that is what your friend signed up for. And you didn't.

It might be that she is genuinely sinking. It might also be that she is one of those parents that takes the piss with other people. As a mum I am now pretty wise to them as I've been burned a lot in the past by feeling sympathetic/guilty/what's one more kid etc.... better boundaries now but it took a while.

Like you, I don't particularly want to look after other people's children. I have my own, that's plenty.

She needs to sort her life out - find other parents, find childcare, work out a household cleaning system that works, carve out some time for herself etc.

But as others have said, it's not up to you and you have absolutely no obligation to look after her child if you don't want to.

My friend accused me of holding her baby in a weird way

And there's the other reason I wouldn't do this if I were you - you've stepped up and done a favour and then it's not to her liking.

You've held a baby for three minutes longer than I have, then.

I think she has infiltrated your group, with the intention of persuading you all that you like children, and you will one by one get pregnant, or adopt babies...................but what sort of organisation could she be working for?

Absolutely, but you cant demand that EVERY meeting is at a vegan friendly place, when everyone else still likes to eat their steaks.
They can go to a vegan friendly place every once in a while, no problem. Just not ALL THE TIME, which is in essence what the friend with the baby wants them to do.

OP why cant she get a babysitter??? It doesnt seem like you and your group are particularly struggling in life (though having a child can be expensive), so why is that not an option for her?
Or could you maybe pitch in for a babysitter for her every once in a while?
Not ideal, but better than one of you having to do it!

As for her being upset youre planning a trip she cant attend... thats on her. She had a child. That means you stop having the freedom to do whatever the hell you want. Life doesnt stop for other people.

Being around babies alone freaks me out a bit tbh, I have no idea what they want of what to do with them when they're upset!

Even though I have one child of my own, I feel like this with other people's babies! I would never babysit. YANBU at all.

As far as I know it was casual, she told him, he didn't want to be involved, and she didn't contact him again. In her career (from which she's on maternity leave) she's very highly paid and she isn't interested in him contributing financially and doesn't need it. Money isn't an issue.

She needs a new group of friends. She needs to go to baby groups and meet people who are at the same mothering stage as her.

She must realise that you guys are just not on the the mothering wavelength.

Reassure her that you'll still be there but for the next few years she needs to extend her friendship groups

Haven’t read all the thread, but to expect other people to look after your child is cheeky.

Babysitting rota? You can’t be serious? She needs to get a grip.

Yes.

I'm willing to babysit when he's older. But not now.

It's not cultural. We're all English, her sibling and parents are in NZ.

Goodness no. She is being a right cheeky fucker.

Look, if she had say an emergency operation for a burst appendix or something and needed someone to muddle through looking after the baby for a couple of hours until a relative arrived or something and you all saw “ew, babies yuk” that would be one thing. But expecting you to babysit so she can go dating and for everything to be baby friendly for a group whose core defining factor was child agree status. She needs to get a properly experienced babysitter if she wants to go out. Or is cost the problem?

I wonder whether she is thinking of Miranda in sex and the city who has an unplanned pregnancy and Samantha does a babysitting session voluntarily so M can get a haircut and thinks “well if even Samantha would do it…”

Thinking on it further I do wonder if her view of all these friendships has always been quite one sided and placed much more meaning in them then you do,

I get that your friendship group has been strengthened by a shared view that children weren’t for you but I think your friend obviously thinks that the friendships are long standing and deeper than that. I still don’t think you’re in any way UR, but I know how all encompassing and isolating the baby phase can be and I’m not sure your friend has thought much further than ‘these are my amazingly good friends and I’m struggling’.

I suppose I do see the point of those saying she should be supported in the way she’s asking. I don’t agree at all but I do feel a bit sorry for her that she’s over stepped boundaries she likely didn’t even realise were there.

This.

Her life changed not yours.

Does the ONS even know he's a father? Or has he categorically stated he's not interested?

I think @Shebaguinea sounds lovely and has done masses to help and is being perfectly reasonable. However, it does sound like her friend is really struggling with being a single parent so far away from her family and can now feel her friends slipping away. Please treat her kindly, does she seem happy and content in her new life or could she have PND? Suggesting a babysitting rota sounds like the kind of thing you read in a parenting magazine or from a health visitor and she could be in absolute dispair that you're all saying no to helping her once every 6 months.

I had 'friends' who rounded on me and told I was completely unreasonable to ask them if it was possible for them to help look after DD1 when I was in labour with DD2. My Dad was dying and my Mum was caring for him and so couldn't fly down to be with me when the baby came. I was so upset and felt completely alone and attacked by them when I'd only asked because I was so desperate. She is probably feeling similar right now so please be kind to her. I haven't seen them for years now and have other friends who came to help straight away when I went into premature labour with DS.

I'm impressed you've offered to deep clean her house every couple of weeks!!

She chose to have this child, knowing that she had little to no family support and that the dad was feckless. She's made her bed. I would probably offer to babysit occasionally once the baby slept through the night but she has no right to be saying that you can't be going to adult restaurants. She needs to compromise too, as you seemingly already have.

She can pay for a babysitter. Perhaps you can gently say to her that it would be better to have her little one looked after by someone with experience in looking after children.

Think you may have hit on something there.
Those friendship groups that do so much brilliant stuff together look so attractive from the outside, but they tend to be very contingent on everybody being at more or less the same space in life. There's commonality and convenience as well as good old fashioned getting on well.

Which is obviously fine. You're friends who enjoy the same things, not a commune.

That is unbelievably cheeky. She's the one who decided to do this and now she wants it to impact everyone around her. Raging entitlement.

If she's ok financially and she wants to go out, why can't she just pay for a nanny for the evening?

Hahahaha NO. You are not being unreasonable, she is.

We have no family help, and so I have made friends with other parents to do activities like soft play as they also want to and so that if one of us needs help in a true emergency we could help each other. We also have two paid babysitters who we can use. I’ve had 2 child free nights in nearly 3 years so I find your friend outrageous actually.

I already think you’ve been doing waaay too much for this person and I’d be pulling back. I would never ever expect my CF friends to babysit and I always ask if they want to meet up as adults (dinner or cinema we do just adults anyway), but they will sometimes say they want to see my child as they haven’t seen him much, but it’s never child focused activities but more like me taking my child to a brunch, or going on a nature walk with a friend and child is in the buggy. Otherwise I have babysitters!

I don’t expect my friends to entertain my child and actually I don’t enjoy it when friends expect me to entertain theirs, I’d be so pissed off if I was asked to babysit!! Stand your ground OP.