To be rather horrified with what my friend has just said re premature babies?

[EweHaveGoatToBeKiddin]

She's one of my customers actually, but we do get along.

Anyway, she has just came to my house to pick up her ironing. She's just had a baby, and i was asking the usual "How are you?" "How's baby?" "You look exhausted very well" etc etc.

Then we got chatting about how there seems to be a wee 'baby boom' in our town at the moment. She said she's knows of three premature babies born in the past month and she's so jealous of their mothers.

'They don't have to do night feeds'
'They get to skip the horrible new born first weeks'
'They get to sleep'
'They get to carry on as normal with their lives'
'They can choose how often they want to visit their baby'
'They have 24/7 nannies (nurses, i presume she meant!)'

Now, one of the women she was talking about is actually a mutual acquaintance. And i know that she is torn to pieces about her premature son being in the hospital. She was diagnosed with some sort of heart condition around 30 weeks andd her son had to be delivered asap.

Yesterday she posted on FB that she's absolutely gutted she can't visit her baby today because she's feeling a bit queasy and doesn't want to risk infecting her son.

My customer friend commented on this tonight, "I wish i had someone to just hand my baby over to when i was feeling a bit sick."

I'm pretty gobsmacked and angry that I couldn't say anything more. I just said things like 'I'm sure these parents would much rather their babies healthy and home with them' etc, but i tried to keep my voice reasonable/civil - not snapping at her.

She seemed very causal throughout her wee rant, and said it in a half-jokey way. I'm aware of the fact she could possibly have PND or is just genuinely sleep-deprived, but am i right to be a bit taken aback? The world's gone mad if people are genuinely envious of parent with premature babies.

Sounds like PND to me. I felt exactly the same at my very lowest ebb and no, I haven't been in an NICU before anyone asks. That is probably precisely why, in my very dark place, it seemed like an unfair 'alternative' that other people got and I didn't.

PND is an awful illness, and it can make a person say/do some utterly horrible things, things which they will be ashamed of for years afterward. I'd say cut her some slack, she doesn't sound like a happy, well adjusted woman at the moment.

why did i click on this thread?

i'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt that she could be having a really rough time of it but actually i just want to give her a slap. sorry not nice but i wish i could have done all of those above things

instead i got to:

• express every three hours 24 hours a day whilst sobbing that my baby wasn't with me
• spend the first newborn weeks of my sons life looking at him in a box and wondering if he was going to live
• i got to sleep in 2 hour slots and would wake to an alarm to express having dreamt i was still pregnant
• i got to spend my every waking hour in intensive care staring at my son surrounded by the most heart breaking experiences i've ever witnessed
• i got kicked out of hte ward several times a day for rounds or other procedures, i had to ask someone else if i could hold my own baby, i couldn't hold him for a week after he was born, i definitely didn't get to choose when i saw my own baby
• 24/7 nannies??? really??? ffs

four years ago next week i gave birth to my lovely ginger haired little boy who is bloody marvellous and miraculously healthy after four months in intensive care. i will never get over what happened to him and me. for someone to be so dismissive of that experience is incredibly upsetting.

perhaps she does have issues - there are still limits to common decency though

I sort of hope it's PND, because it's so upsetting that someone could have that little compassion.
When I had DD, the second night in hospital I couldn't sleep at all and the woman opposite snoring her head off made me irrationally murderous. However, in the morning, they bought her baby up from ICU. He'd been kept there because of jaundice and the joy in her voice when she saw him, it was magic. I was so sorry that she'd not had a first night with her baby and so glad that she had him safe and healthy now, and grateful that I was blessed enough to have DD with me that night.

I'm so sorry everyone. I can see my rant has actually upset a lot of people.

I can ask to have it pulled if I'm able to?

I'm even more angry now after reading all of your replies/experiences. TBH, she did seem to be saying it half jokingly as if totally unaware of the reality of life with a premature baby. I've a right mind to show her this thread (but can't because she'd surely sack me as would her friend most likely).

I think I may comment on the subject with her again tomorrow. Such as bringing up the lady we both know, wondering aloud how she's doing etc. If she still has the same attitude tomorrow as she did last night, I might have to educate her a little.

You see- i see it more as a cry for sympathy. You're 'friend' is trying to use extreme circumstances to explain how hellish she felt about those early days. It's very sad really as it sounds that she doesn't understand what it is to bond and love a newborn. She has said a dicky thing and she should be embarrassed.

It sounds like a cry for help to me. I bet she's really struggling with her baby.

Because it is a really wierd thing to say.

I have no idea how parents separated form their premature babies don't go insane.

Ewe, there is no need for you to apologise on your friends' behalf, or your own.

If you could use the responses here to educate your "friend", that would be a good outcome.

However, I think you may feel very differently about your friendship with her from now on.

PND, nasty or vacant space between the ears. Most people don't think like this.

find someone more intelligent with whom to spend time.

leaving my tiny pfb daughter at scbu whilst watching other parents take their babies home, being told she had an infection, having a tube put in her lung at three days old, etc. Without a doubt having her at 31 weeks was the worst experience of my life. having my son at 41 weeks three years later, yes i was tired but i know which i would prefer.

Honestly sounds like she isn't coping very well and I've had a prem baby that we still face issues with 5years on which may or may not be down to his prematurity.

Spot on hinky it's an awful awful rollercoaster, stupid insensitive woman.

To the OP - YANBU - your friend is obviously extremely ignorant about what prematurity entails. Our twins (DDs) were born 11 weeks early and we had a toddler to contend with too. It was an absolute nightmare as they were extremely ill and literally fighting for their lives. One had added complications which involved life-saving surgery. They were attached to so many machines, drip-fed cocktails of drugs, attached to breathing machines and we lurched from one day to the next not knowing if they would survive. Quite a few on the same ward died and it was heartbreaking. For a long time I expressed breast milk and stored it in the hospital freezer so that they could be fed through a tube. My milk dried up in the end and they were then bottle fed - no choice. I would have done anything to have been with them every night. It was horrendous to leave them in the care of strangers and not be able to get to know them.

Whilst in hospital they contracted all sorts of life-threatening bugs and one had to have a lumbar puncture. The first time I ever held one of my DD's she almost died from blood loss as a line accidentally became detached without anybody realising. She had to have 2 blood transfusions after that and it was all very traumatic. All this coupled with the guilt of not being there for them every day and having to drag our DS with us to the hospital for a couple of hours every day for 3 months.

I really do think that a lot of people think having a premature baby is just having a 'little' baby. Couldn't be further from the truth. They are often on the brink of life and every day is a struggle. The problems didn't end when we finally our twins home... Unfortunately many premmies are very prone to lung infections for the first couple of years of their lives. Ours had a total of 8 hospitalisations AFTER they'd left Special Care and we almost lost one of them to bronchiolitis when she was about 9 months old.

Sorry for my long post but this sort of ignorance makes me really angry. Having a premature baby is heartbreaking and terrifying and I guess no one can really understand that until they've been there. However, most people can have empathy and I do think your friend is extremely insensitive. If she wants to understand more about prematurity I suggest that she has a look at the BLISS website.

Glad to say that our daughters are about to turn 10 and are fine; happy, bubbly gorgeous girls! They didn't pull through totally unscathed though and we still have medical issues to deal with on a daily basis... I still shudder at the thought that we could have so easily lost them.

Ewe - don't feel you have to apologise on your friends behalf, or have this pulled But this thread has upset me, I posted briefly yesterday and it stayed with me.
Please show her this thread if you can. Helping to inform and educate people about the realities of premature birth is one positive thing that could come out of having everyone's experiences on here.
My ds1 was born at 26 weeks following a car crash, his bowel hadnt formed, he was bleeding internally and had 3 operations before he was 6 months old, he became sceptic, his lung collapsed he was tube fed until over a year old. Twice they resuscitated him. My ds2 was born at 24 weeks I had been hospitalised before and he was lucky enough to receive new treatment so has had far less health issues than ds1 (who is now a healthy 5 year old) but he was still in hospital for 6 months, even with the meds his chances of survival at 24 weeks were given to me as 20%. resuscitated, sedated and ventilated to start with I didn't even see him for two weeks as I was in intensive care myself. I woke to be told my tiny baby hadn't been breathing when he was born, that they pounded on his tiny chest, pushed plastic down his throat to inflate his lungs.... He is now 8 months old and healthy but to write this down even now Causes me actual physical pain, you learn to live with it. It was your worst nightmare.

She might be an idiot all the time but it may be a temporary brain malfunction due to shock of a new baby and massive sleep deprivation. I would be genuinely worried about her if there was no previous form for fuckwittery.

Hi Op, please be
respectful when you next talk to your client. I understand she has made you and many people angry, rightly so, but Having a small baby can be so difficult whether full term / prem, breast fed / BF , CS / vag birth.

I get the impression (I may be wrong) that you have not had a baby OP?
Nothing prepares you forhow hard Iit is and how desperate you can be for support.

I certainly think your client is not coping for whatever reason. PND seems very likely. Could you ask her what support she has? What her DP is like? Where is her family? Your response to her could tipher one way or the other x