to be really upset by what this 'friend' just said?

[emeraldgirl1]

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:

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.

[aderynlas]

Dont worry too much op, your little girl will be fine sharing your room. Your friend probably didnt mean to upset you. My first child started life sleeping in a borrowed cot in a room that my dear mil was letting us use. No matching mothercare stuff in sight. Enjoy your first months with your little girl and congratulations.

[emeraldgirl1]

SarrahWarrah - I know I'm being over-sensitive. Sodding hormones and can't sleep at the moment.
I also know a lot of this is 'my' stuff...
But I'd have taken it completely fine coming from a different source.
Off to eat Milky Bar now.
Thanks for posts everyone.

[Booyhoo]

yet you have been able to let us know further down the thread that there is back story and a basic idea of what that entails? why not just say so in the OP if you're going to say it later on anyway?

[ChippingInLovesChristmasLights]

YANBU

I was going to say she was 'thoughless and insensitive' until I read your last post. Now I think she's more bullying, unkind and up her own backside.

What do you get out of this friendship??

As for the baby's room... lots of us dream of the perfect baby's room with all of the lovely bits and pieces and cooing over cots & whatnot in the shops - the reality of that is that it's for US. It's not for the baby! The baby doesn't give a shiney shit as long as it's fed, dry & warm! Which it has far more chance of being if you don't stretch yourself beyond what you can afford mortgage/rent wise!

[PumpkinPositive]

You're over reacting. It's not abnormal to expect that eventually parents will want to provide their child with their own bedroom.

[emeraldgirl1]

everlong - yes, backstory would have made it make more sense

I just didn't want to ramble on with endless info about this pretty difficult friend.

[ChippingInLovesChristmasLights]

When I say 'last post' I mean the one at 16.22, when I started typing this!

[Booyhoo]

and i agree with others. you dont like this woman. stop giving her opportunities to get a dig in. end the friendship.

[lolaflores]

Competitive. Both of you.
NEXT

[perceptionreality]

YANBU - true friends don't try to rub your nose in the fact that you have less than they do. Definitely insensitive of her to ask why you aren't spending thousands on a room you don't actually have in the first place.

[DonkeysDontRideBicycles]

Old family friend? past her best by date if she's always this bossy, judgmental and insensitive.

HTH.

[emeraldgirl1]

OK, lesson learned: provide more backstory in future!

booyhoo I rushed the OP partly because I thought I was going to have to take a work call and partly because I didn't want to bore people with unnecc detail.

[Booyhoo]

that was a rushed OP?

[emeraldgirl1]

I type fast... :)

[perceptionreality]

Ah, just read your second post. You know, life is easier when you don't spend time with 'friends' who make you pissed off and/or miserable.

'she has no clue about real people's finances but she has persisted and got very bossy and aggressive about it'

There are a breed of people like this, who genuinely cannot understand other people's circumstances or see past the end of their nose. They are best avoided. Just cut her off.

[LondonMother]

emeraldgirl1, I think you've hit a bad afternoon starting this thread when lots of people like me are feeling disgruntled at being back at work/low after Christmas/desperate for the children to go back to school, etc etc. I think it's perfectly understandable why you felt she was getting at you, even without the back story, and you are doing the right thing to see as little of her as possible. She doesn't sound like a nice person to me. You'll do better to see more of friends who don't judge you by how much money you have.

Good luck with the rest of the pregnancy!

[bluebiscuit]

No baby needs a nursery. Baby needs to be close to the mum s/he has just come out of and whose boobs s/he needs for comfort and food. A nursery is pretty for adults to look at and the things people do in nurseries such as change nappies etc can easily be done elsewhere.

I have a 4 bedroom house and never did a nursery for either of my children. They absolutely love being in our room. I had a room for each of them and didn't do them until they were about 3 and then put stuff in that they were interested in.

[Startail]

She sounds a grade A judgmental Cow made 100x worse by no doubt knowing she's making upsetting her DCs getting divorced.

She's jealous and wishes she could go back to happier times when her DCs were babies I suspect.

Don't let her wind you up.

DD1 only had a "nursery" for about a month. Then only because we wanted to sell the house and had to remove the lathe and the milling machine that had lived there and give the room a lick of paint.

[ChippingInLovesChristmasLights]

Pumpkin - eventually maybe, but right now, where exactly is Emerald going to magically get A Nursery from? Or should she just turn her (much needed) office into a (not needed) nursery 'just because'. It's madness.

[emeraldgirl1]

Thank you LondonMother - hope the disgruntlement wears off very soon... x

[LightTheLampNotTheRat]

YANBU. I get you totally, OP. We too had a two-bed flat with second bedroom used as study when DC1 was born. Then we moved to a slightly bigger two-bed flat, and when DC2 was born they had to share a room. Both times we had questions from friends/family with big houses about how we would 'manage'. Where would the baby sleep? Where is the nursery? Isn't it unfair on older child to have to share a room with a baby? And so on and bloody on. People who made it perfectly clear that they thought it was actually impossible to bring up children in a flat, and that the correct way of proceeding is to buy a 'family house' before you even think of TTC. People with no clue about life with limited finances. I always laughed them off, but they made me cross. I never saw the point of a 'nursery' (for all the reasons others have said here), but I'd have liked to be able to afford more space. It doesn't matter in the slightest - raising happy, well-adjusted children is nothing to do with pink fluffy nurseries. Tell yourself that! And then tell yourself again. People are insensitive. (And some of them are just mean.)

[3smellysocks]

It doesn't matter about the room a baby sleeps in. What matters is that it's loved and cared for

[namechangerforaday]

I had a nursery for my first - it was a giant wardrobe - in other words a waste of space - now I have a clear plastic box and a baby in my bed.

I much prefer "now"

[emeraldgirl1]

In answer to the questions about why we haven't thought about giving the child its own bedroom eventually - obviously, we have! Hence my current sleepless nights! We're saving everything we have so that we can move to a 3 bedroom place within the next 6 months or so. Obviously it's not at all an unreasonable question for my friend to ask if it's just that she (reasonably) thinks a child will need its own bedroom one day... but she knows we are getting everything together to try to move, and that we'd have loved to have afforded it months or years ago.