Help asking to bring baby to a wedding

[Fedup2910]

So ladies, I need your help to try and ask my friend to bring baby to wedding.
DD 9 months is EFB, I have been trying to weeks to get there to take a bottle but she won’t. My mum is coming to look after both my kids.
Realistically I can’t leave DD 9 months for like 11 hours without milk can I?! So she’ll need to come, I’m thinking for the ceremony and then wedding breakfast, and then home between breakfast and reception, I’ll supply my own food for her and remove her if she was to make noise.
It isn’t completely no kids at wedding, it’s no friends kids, only family kids (one of which is the same age as my baby).
I don’t think I’m being unreasonable to ask? I just need help composing a message.
Only other time I’ve left my baby was for 5 hours to go to the hen do.
Only other alternative is I drive home a couple times in the day and leave the wedding to feed her which I don’t really want to do as it’s half an hour each way.

This is about manners.

If you are invited to an event and you don’t like the circumstances of the event (whatever they may be), politely decline the invitation.

i wouldn’t ask as baby isn’t newborn and isn’t solely reliant on your milk

if she’s eating enough solid food a few hours without your milk is fine

maybe go home early if you are worried

you never know she might take the bottle or cup when you are not an option

if she gets distressed you can always leave and return home

That is an AWFUL position to put your so called friends in!!! 😳😳😳😳 Whoe ent rifled are you?!?!

Jeeze. Please don’t be that guest @Fedup2910

For whatever reason the bride and groom have asked for only family children. That’s their absolute prerogative, whatever anyone else thinks.

9 months is not a babe in arms. Thinking back to my DC then it was full-on, active, noisy… plus they were chomping on all sorts.

Sometimes our parenting decisions mean we can’t attend an event, or have to modify how we do attend. This seems to be one of those occasions.

If you’re only 30mins away, you could legitimately go to the service at least. The reception most likely. 11hrs reference is nonsense.

Or you politely decline if you just can’t leave your daughter. The bride and groom will likely have recognised that perhaps some guests won’t be able to attend (for various reasons… distance, illness, childcare…) and are comfortable with that situation.

YABU
Your post reads more about what you want and not what the bride and groom want. For their wedding.

If you don't feel you can leave your baby, decline the invitation. Or find a workaround where you don't force your needs on their day.

I had been invited to a wedding and it was no children other than family. We were very, very close friends. I had 2 children then fell pregnant which meant my due date was 3 weeks before wedding. I wasn't allowed to bring my newborn so I declined the wedding. I guess it depends how strict the bride is.

Not what you were asking, but my EBF baby wouldn't take a bottle from me, or from my husband if I was anywhere in the vicinity. I was really stressed the first time I left her with the childminder, prepared to come back straight away etc. Got a text from the childminder a couple of hours later that she'd taken a whole bottle of expressed milk without any bother... Might be worth doing a trial run with your mum to see if that might happen.

like other posters have said, don’t ask them. Explain the situation and say that you can’t leave her for the day as she won’t take a bottle. Leave it in their court to offer, but be prepared that they likely won’t.
I had to do this when my little one was 7 months old (I’d already RSVP’d yes as she took a bottle at the start and then stopped 😬) so I do sympathise with you.

Surely at 9 months old they are eating and drinking water? So why the worry about milk? Will they take expressed milk from a cup?

People keep saying this - at 9m my son would do no more than nibble some cucumber!

I find it so odd when people only seem to have met one kind of baby. The babies I know vary wildly in their eating.

Ok but then you would need to decline the invitation as you cant leave your baby, not ask the bride to bring your baby to a child free wedding.

Why is this so hard to grasp.

I never said you wouldn't decline the invite, I've said similar myself up thread.

I'm just astounded that so many people seem to only know babies that ate enough at 9m to be left most of a day.

There wouldn’t be a need to explain the situation. Just decline rather than put the bride and groom in an awkward position in having to explain again that it’s a child free wedding.

It does say in the OP that she would bring food for the baby so I'm assuming OP's baby at least eats more than a nibble on a cucumber.

Agreed. Then that leaves the problem of where is the high chair going to go. Who is going to provide that.

A high chair messy bibs and messy baby food on the table at a child free wedding at the wedding breakfast.

Decline the invitation.

So she’ll need to come, I’m thinking for the ceremony and then wedding breakfast, and then home between breakfast and reception, I’ll supply my own food for her and remove her if she was to make noise.

Your baby isn’t EBF if you need to take food so she should be okay with your mum. Plus it might not be fair on other guests to sit near a messy baby eating during the wedding.When is the wedding? Do you have time to do trial run?

If the B&G don’t have children I think it will be a particularly difficult conversation, many women are back at work at 9 months so I don’t think they will understand and will be worried about annoying their other friends. I might be annoyed if I had made childcare arrangements for my younger baby to see a 9 month old baby there (though I would probably prefer a day off!). You should just decline, they might let you bring her but not expect this when you decline. We had a CF except for family wedding but when some friends declined because of babies let them bring them (a 2 week old which obviously couldn’t be left and a 5 month old where the in laws etc all live abroad) - our main reasons for CF were capacity restrictions, cost (had to pay full price for children as venue didn’t really want them) but also that there was an enormous lake right by the marquee and we were worried about an accident (and also safety reasons with a boozy dance floor!). So there might also be valid reasons for CF wedding. I’d have been nervous of a baby that was mobile being at our wedding!

Sorry these responses aren’t what you wanted to hear OP.