For considering leaving my 4 month old and nearly 3 year old with family for the weekend?

[loveroflife]

My friend is getting married in Spain and DH and I have been invited - she has a no children rule, which is fair enough.

By that time I will have a four month old and a nearly three year old - AIBU in leaving them with family while DH and I go to the wedding?

It will be Fri-Monday and my mother and sister will move into our home.

I have never left DS so first time away from both.

My main concern is breastfeeding - I struggled with DS and gave into the bottle after 8 weeks after combination feeding, my concern is that if I ebf the new baby he/she will not take a bottle for that weekend.

I don't want to make it a traumatic experience for mum, so I would have to introduce a bottle at nights at say 3 months, so he/she would be happy to take it when I am away - I am worried that when I return he/she won't want the breast again and I will have to bottle feed (I am determined to stick with breast this time.)

I'm already finding lots of excuses not to go, but DH says we should attend as we don't go anywhere and I will regret not seeing my friend marry.

Has anyone else left their children at similar ages?

Thanks

There is no way I could have done it - I would have spent the whole time missing DS and also would have had to express probably two hourly as everytime I thought about him my boobs would have let down! I left him for about four hours at around that age and was in physical agony from full boobs by the end. However, I think I do make a possibly unusual amount of milk - there were two other BF women there who didn't have the same problem. A weekend would have been a miserable hell for me and probably DS.

Oh, and he's now seven months and I would still feel exactly the same!

Do what you want to do. If you don't feel happy about going - don't go. If you really want to go - go!

Don't worry about baby - he will be fine either way!

I booked me and DH tickets for a mental trance festival when I was pregnant with DS2.

He was 5 months old when we left him with my parents - we went for 5 days. He was taking a bottle by then and I expressed every night so I could carry on BFing when I got back.

I BFd easily when I came back but he self weaned at 6 months (probs due to the early introduction of bottles)

We had a whale of a time!

I was so much more relaxed about BFing/bottles/formula the 2nd time round and it was a doddle.

DS1 was EBF for 13 months and was a PITA to be frank.

Baby will fit around you - make the decision you feel happy with and then work round that - sounds like you have an ace DM and DSis - so if you do decide to go you'll have nothing to worry about

Awww no way I could leave a precious 4 month baby!! The smell of breast milk and your voice will be such a huge comfort at that age. I would find it completely impossible.

Saw this in Threads I'm On after I'd put 7 month old DS to bed, and was so shaken by the idea of leaving him for a weekend that I had to go up and smell his hair to reassure myself. I may be exceptionally wimpy, but I think when the time comes you just won't be able to do it.

Shaken? Really??

Is he your PFB??

Ludicrously so, cat . I never in a million years thought I'd be like this about him before he arrived.

Sorry OP but I don't really think it would be doable. At about 16 weeks, there's usually a big growth spurt, my DD went through it and the mad cluster feeding came back again then for a few days. I think that if you are unlucky enough for this to conincide with your trip, it will mean curtains for the BF and will also distress your LO.

Also it's not that easy to get a BF baby to accept a bottle. Mine was a bottle refuser so that was out of the question really.

Indeed, so much so that I just popped up and smelled him again to be on the safe side .

LoveIn - enjoy it while it lasts

By the time numero 3 comes along you'll be packing him off to MIL at 4 days old and hot-footing it to any old party you've been invited to.

I'm sure you're right, cat. Am loving the utter mutual adoration society for now, though .

AAww Love

That made me teary.

All I've got is a 2.6yo who keeps hitting me with Lego and shouting "I WANNA DADDY HOME NOW. NORTY MUMMY"

And a hideous 13yo who thinks I'm a colossal twat, festering on his X-Box. GOWAYMUMLEAVEMEALONE.

Can I have a little sniff of PFB's head??

Hahahaha, cat, that made me snort my tea out in a very elegant fashion. I'm sure I'll be there soon enough

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but you would get incredibly engorged and uncomfortable going a whole weekend without BFing, risking mastitis. You'd need to express several times each day and probably during the night too. I think your friend is being selfish not making an exception for your baby...

proffers DS1 (13) for a sniff - swap?

Think I'll hang onto my PFB but thanks for the offer.

Read the whole thread and only one person (as far as I noticed) at the end of thread - thezoobmeister - mentioned what I'd been thinking all along, namely, isn't this friend with a wedding being...do i dare to suggest it...selfish?

You're being very considerate about the bride's feelings - the bride who hates children and would not want a baby to take away attention from her big day - however a few provocative thoughts spring to mind:

1. Isn't it interesting how un-child-friendly our culture has become? In a pre-modern society, women would have their babies with them at all times AFAIK. This was considered part and parcel, and even still, most other cultures such as the Mediterranean, and all kinds of 'aboriginal' for lack of better name - kids tag along with their parents to restaurants etc... I understand people don't want mobile monkeys (said with love) at their precious parties but as many people have pointed out here, this is a BABY we're talking about. A baby will be contented sleeping and feeding, and with due consideration (ie taking the baby out if crying) you may call me blind but I really do not see what the problem is here, apart from a 'friend's' narcissistic and egocentric tendencies.

2. IMO the friend is not being narcissistic and egocentric if she understands your choice to stay at home, unless you're allowed to bring baby along. (I still think it's weird she wouldn't allow the baby, but I get it, it is her wedding.)However, if she forbids you from bringing the baby and yet expects you to come along, with the consequences of disturbing BF but more importantly disturbing the baby him/herself with a 4-day absence, then, again, isn't this completely U from your friend's part? Yes, I get it, it's her big day, BUT if she seriously thinks that anyone's friend's wedding is more important than a newborn baby's mental (separation trauma) and physical (risking BF complications) health, isn't this a weird priority? I would never ever personally expect any of my friends to put their baby's health at risk over MY big event, whatever it was not wedding, not frigging Oscar speech... I would've thought common sense dictates that babies and their health comes first, not a big spend-- party... I would feel totally ashamed of myself to even suggest that - are you really sure your friend hates kids this much? I'd be terrified if someone was going through this much mental torment over me as you're going thru over your friend. Seems like you love her very much and want to do the right thing for everyone, but IMO if she doesn't get that your baby matters, she may not exactly be the best kind of friend worth having...
   Sorry I have a feeling this is gonna provocate! But I had a friend who "hated children" and we were great friends until I fell pregnant and she distanced herself from me - even erased me from Facebook during DS's infancy because (as a mutual friend told me) she found it hard to handle finding baby-related statuses popping up in her FB feed (NB I barely posted FB statuses more than once a fortnight anyway, so this was no 'baby spamming'). I do not miss her one bit BTW. (Also, why do people hate children? What's it got to do with them? Like, we are supposed to be all PC about ethnicity etc - BTW I'm not British - and sexual minorities - but these otherwise liberal women who love everybody proclaim they hate children? I am genuinely curious. Especially as my ex-friend was vegan, because she couldn't stand animal abuse ie farming. -> hating children????? Puzzled.

3. As a final note, does not anyone else find it ironic that this 'problem' exists only because someone 1) hates kids and 2) has a wedding - an institution which is only based on the tradition of starting a procreation unit! (NB not saying this judgementally - me & DP are not married but even I know that procreation is the whole point of the marriage tradition! I have barely found enough reason to get married with a kid, but what I do not get is why child-haters want to get married) Sorry if this was off-topic! Just finding this world oh so curious even still...!

All the best in any case, you do seem like an extremely considerate person. I don't mean to come across harsh - I'm just surprised if your friend is really the way you describe - actually I'm not surprised as I have known not one but two of these types - but I'm surprised that if she is this way inclined, you really are spending an awful lot of time on trying to consider her as she doesn't come across as particularly considerate herself.

I will be very interested in knowing what y'all think (please do not kill me!!!) :)

Mummy you may well get jumped on, but you are right about marriage being traditionally the start to a family. For a very long time in history, the engaged couple had to promise that they intended to have children and would not avoid conception before the priest would marry them!

Mummy, while I would always support anyone's decision for a wedding, if they don't want kids there than that is fine - in this situation I would agree that it is at the very least blinkered of the OP's friend to have a child-free wedding abroad when her friend has a few month-old baby.

But then again I think anyone who has a wedding abroad shouldn't expect all their guests to turn up!

What Mummy said.

MintTeaForMe - I don't think it's actively bad for a baby to be separated from mum at 16 weeks but I don't think it's good for baby. My son needed me at 4 months, for comfort and I would never have wanted to put him under any stress or discomfort by not being there for a long period of time.

i have a six month old breast fed baby. he will take a bottle so i can go out for an evening but no way would i leave him for four days. a baby of that age doesnt really understand himself as a separate person to his mother, he would be very upset without you. not the same at all as returning to work or going out for one day. i would just decline the invitation, indeed this is exactly what i recently did for a no-kids wedding.

You need to chose whether you think breastfeeding your baby or going on holiday is more important. I'm pretty sure the baby would reject any attempts at bf when you got back, plus it would be difficult to express enough milk for a 4 month old to last on for 4 days and nights in those first few weeks when you are establishing feeding anyway. All seems a bit unrealistic. The suggestion of taking your mum along too is a good one.

Seriously, I think its outstandingly rude to rock up to any kind of function with a child of any age when it has been made perfectly clear that children/ babies aren't invited. Its an invitation, not an order don't go. Its one of those things - you don't get to do everything you want when you have children.

I have 3 and I didn't go to a wedding last year because my youngest was a baby and I couldn't be arsed. The wedding was abroad, my husband went alone - it wasn't even an issue.

I got married because I love my husband - children had feck all to do with it.