To think that 2 months is long enough to wait for a thank you for a gift.

[Isla77]

My niece and her partner had a baby girl 2 months ago. Of course I was delighted for them and immediately bought a card and some presents for the baby. Now I live 500 miles away from my family so we do not see one another all that regularly but I keep in touch by phone with my sisters (my parents are deceased) and always send nice birthday and christmas presents to my nieces and nephews and their partners as well as to my sisters and their DH's. I have still not heard a word from my niece about the presents I bought for the baby and feel very disappointed that she has not sent a thank you card or even just sent a text to me to say she received the gifts. I know it is a busy time for her but she finds plenty time for going on Facebook and for meeting up with friends (from what I read on Facebook). I am close to saying something to my sister but feel that might not be appropriate. I feel my family has just written me off because I am a long way away from them. It is me who makes the effort to keep in touch by phoning, never forgetting birthdays etc. I feel very hurt by their treatment. When I had my own two children (now in their teens) my sisters sent gifts and I phoned them on the day the gifts arrived. I am feeling quite hurt about it to be honest.

I could have written your post. My niece is the same way. (only one of them is like this) I always have to ask her if they arrived, before she says yes, and thank-you. I kept sending her and her baby presents anyways, because I am her aunt and she doesn't have many people in her life that give her anything. My son's girlfriend sewed some adorable baby clothes and made a really special baby blanket, and she never told her when it arrived or thanked her. Finally after several months I asked her if they arrived, and she said yes, and I said ds's gf thought maybe she didn't like them, as she had not heard back. She then thanked her.

This still didn't change her ways. After she had her second baby, I sent baby things, but am not sending anything else. There is no excuse if someone is one facebook and has e-mail for them not to type a quick message saying gift arrived, thank-you.
This was last spring, and I decided not to send anymore things. This year I have only sent cards.
She doesn't appreciate it at all. She is an adult and there is no excuse.

I am really happy with an e-mail or facebook message, card or letter not necessary. They were invented before we had computers.
She has time to be on fb and xbox for hours, she just doesn't bother.

Oh, she did manage to e-mail me to ask to borrow money.

It sounds like greater issues are at play here, but I don't think it is worth bringing it up with your sister. If you know she received it I would leave it at that.

I have to admit that I ended up in a mess with my thank you cards. First load of cards were sent out within a month of ds being born. My second list got thrown in the bin by mistake. The result was some people got two cards and I suspect a few got none!

I overlooked my nieces poor manners for many years, it is only this past couple of years that it is bugging me. It isn't a one time thing, where she hasn't gotten around to saying thank-you.

If she ever sent an actual thank-you card, I think I'd be in shock!

YABU. She's probably just starting to get into the swing of things with a 2 month old. She may have ordered printed thank yous with baby's picture. She may be so bloody tired she can't contemplate addressing a lot of thank yous, especially if they are all personalised rather than generic. Cut her some slack.

If after another month there's no thank you, it's maybe time to revisit the 'how rude' line of thought.

Why is it solely the niece's job to write a card? Presumably the baby also has a father, and presumably his thumbs are capable of tapping a few letters into a keypad?

If she can keep up with Facebook, she can send a text saying "thanks for the xx, will try and ring soon"

send her a FB message, hey I sent you a gift! worried it got lost in post, did ul get it OK?

then send her jack shit moving forward!!!

When I had my DD I was absolutely overwhelmed by the stream of presents, cards and good wishes. I never experienced anything like it and I was blown away by how generous people are when a new baby comes along and how even people you are rarely in contact with (and in a couple of cases haven't even met - eg friends of your parents) actually wrap something up for you and put it in the post.

So, I decided that every present and card would be answered with a personalised little note with a picture of the baby. I kept a list of names and it got longer and longer and longer and then I had to draw up an excel sheet and hunt for the addresses and then print labels etc. I had to print and write all the cards and nag encourage DP into doing the same for his family. It all took ages, but everyone got their cards - after a few months in some cases. And then some wrote to me to thank me for the thank you card and I had to be firm and draw a line under the mutual thanks at that point. :)

I'd say, if you are otherwise fond of DN and you would normally expect her to thank you, just give her a bit of time - and maybe call her as others have suggested. Try not to read into it too much - I'm sure your family have not written you off. I know it's hard sometimes hard to be the one that lives far away.

Oh no, it looks like I'm one of those rude new mums . DD is two months old and we haven't sent thank you letters, though I have thanked people in person where possible. Our friends and family all live miles away and as DH and I both have large extended families, DD received dozens of lovely gifts. I was in hospital for the first week and came home on my birthday so there was a gift opening frenzy; as a result, I don't always know who sent her what . And the gifts kept coming - we had something almost every day in her first month (we have v kind friends and family). To be honest, if I knew every new gift meant finding the time to write a new thank you note, I probably would have resented every one of them.

Just wondering if that could be the case here? YANBU to wish for a thank you in some form or other but YABU to get worked up about it - just let it go.

Bloody rude imo.
Also a radical idea - couldn't her husband/partner write a thank you note?

"the joy is in giving the gift"

Yes, but the joy can be spoilt by a rude, ungrateful recipient.

It could be that she's not organised enough to have sent the thank you letters/texts out.

We were very fortunate and had an awful lot of gifts and cards for both our dds, I tried to be organised but they were at least 3 mths before the thank you's went out. In the end we sent a birth announcement with picture and a printed message thanking people for the gifts, cards and kind messages as I'd lost track of who sent what by that stage.

I was like somethingsuitablywitty. Personalised note, recent photo (of baby wearing the clothes if I could)...

So it took me ages.

With DS2 I had learnt my lesson, and got "Thank you" cards printed up at the same time as the birth announcement, and sent them off as soon as the presents arrived.

Maybe she's waiting to do a "proper" thank you and is embarrassed to send a text or an email after 2 months.

Unless she has form for not thanking you YAB a bit U.

I did as above, hand wrote a proper note on the back of some lovely birth announcement cards we had printed and it took me WEEKS. I had a really long labour and EMCS and I remember crying as the very first chunk of time I had where I could have had a bath or something I spent at my kitchen table writing thank you cards! DP did the ones to his family but mine is apprx 100 times the size. I think baby was about 9 or 10 weeks old when I got the last ones posted off.

I've learned my lesson though, this time I'm going to put a nice photo of baby and type thanks underneath then print off! This can also be delegated to DP. A friend of my mum's got a bit funny that their mutual friends' daughter took 6 weeks to do a card after her first baby, my mum put her straight!

I understand your upset, but surely you dont give gifts for the sole purpose of attracting attention and thanks towards yourself?

It smacks a bit of "notice ME, I am far away, but I still care!"
It is easy to fall into that trap when living far away. But ultimately, when you moved, that was a choice you made.

She may just have a hard time coping with motherhood.

My mother often phoned me to ask why my 24-year-old-not-living-at-home-son hadn't thanked her for the birthday cheque (or whatever).... what did she expect me to do? It was utterly bizzarre.

And I remember being pressurised into writing thank you cards when I physically couldn't do it by the same mother just after the birth of DS2. He still screamed if I tried putting him down, I wasn't sleeping and finding a spare hand to write with seemed an insurmountable problem. Impossible to believe now.... but then I was a wreck, writing thankyou cards for well-meaning but unwanted gifts from her friends who I didin't personally know nearly pushed me over the edge.

And I like any excuse to send a card, because I enjoy making them, so it must have been really, really bad.

I don't really understand the must have a thank you response. The only time I really would look for one is when I'm not sure they'd received it. I couldn't tell you which presents I'd had thank yous for and which haven't. The joy to me is in choosing an appropriate (and occasionally inappropriate) present, not in being thanked afterwards.

Dh remembers sending a small bookmark as a thank you to a family that had put him up for the weekend. He received a thank you letter from one of the children aged about 6-7yo. "Dear Mr. DeWe, Thank you for the bookmark. It will be very useful for finding my place in a book. Love B" He didn't feel better for the thank you letter. He felt guilty, remembering struggling over thank you letters as a child...

I didn't manage to write baby thankyous for several weeks, due to an unusually difficult birth and recovery, very painful breastfeeding with mastitis, and the usual no sleep etc. I did get around to the many thank-yous for the thoughtful presents as soon as I possibly could, although by then one person had "chased me up" to find out if I'd received their gift.

I think with new babies it's easy to forget or to "put off till later" and then forget.

my DB and SIL though have just sent us a thank you letter for their wedding present. 7 months after the wedding!

oikopolis - how did you get the impression I was "stalking" her on Facebook? I go on Facebook as one way of keeping in touch with friends and family. Why? Because it is free and is instant messaging and a very easy way to keep in touch as most people do not write letters much nowadays and phone calls cost money even at cheap rate times. I accept that you think I am being unreasonable but using the word "stalking" is going too far. Also, maybe I am just tired of being the one who is ?gracious? and putting up with my family?s selfish behaviour.
Thank you to everyone else who has posted. I may not agree with absolutely everything that has been said but thanks for taking the time to reply and help me put things in perspective a bit. Just to clarify one point ? yes I think a thank you card would be nice and not impossible to organise (DH bought them after our babies arrived and he also signed them on behalf of us both and posted them off). However, a text would have been acceptable as I said in my OP.

YANBU. If she has received the gift,she's being rude not to thank you. I never leave it more than 2 weeks to send a thanks for anything and if I can manage it with 5 children....always astounds me though how many people seem to think it ok not to thank for a gift, or thank three or four months later. It takes less than a minute to bang out a thank you text or email if time's the issue.

YANBU, its rude. I think up to two months would be acceptable in the case of a newborn in the house, but any longer is just plain rude. I get it that hand written personalised notes arent done by everone, but it seems the OP would be happy with a text and sorry, but no-one is too busy to send a text. Its basic good manners.

I waited up to a month for a thank you note after Christmas but it did come in the end. I began to think that the gift was not liked or was disappointing or I had not spent enough or something.

It is unmannerly not to write a note of thanks but unfortunately these days it's becoming normal to telephone or e-mail or text. It's even worse not to at least acknowledge a gift even if you don't like it.

If people are like that, I stop sending anything to them because I can pretend that I thought it must have been lost in the post and I didn't want that to happen again.

Surely it depends on circumstances? Someone might have had problems they didn't tell others about, such as PND, a 4th degree tear, blood transfusions etc. or they might just be finding it hard to fit even the daily essential, and everything else just has to give for a while.

I had planned to send individual notes to everyone, with a paragraph or two handwritten, on nice cards, etc. etc. For a few good reasons this did not happen for about 3 months in the end. I am so glad my family and friends were kind and patient and gave me the benefit of the doubt rather than labelling me rude. Usually I send out thank you cards ASAP, I'd never dream of not thanking someone for a present.

I don't think 2 months is that long when you have a new baby to contend with. I think we sent out thank yous out after about 2 months as I did personalised notes for everyone that sent a gift. And agree with somethingsuitablywitty that I was overwhelmed by the amount of presents we received when DD was born. I had to write in the region of 60 thank you cards, it was a mammoth task.

On another point, my DB got married last summer and has still not sent any thank you cards out for all the presents and money they got - now that is rude!