Aibu to think this is ungrateful control freakery?

[satine]

Just saw on social media the happy news that someone has had a baby. Lovely.
Then it says "if you would like to make them a meal, ..."
Again, lovely idea. I used to do this when my friends were having their babies.

But then it turns nasty....
"please go to this website to register"
I click on the link in amazement and it's a website where you register and then pick the days you're going to cater, and then you have to say what you're going to make.
Ok - I guess no-one likes lasagne 6 days on the trot BUT then it goes on to say "all meals must be dairy free. Please use xxx brand of lactose free whatever, not Alpro. Please deliver meals in disposable containers and by 7.30pm each day. Please text to confirm your delivery on the day"
These last bits were actually written by or on behalf of the happy couple, not by the Control Your Friends and Famly website.
I mean I'm all for organisation but whatever happened to being bloody grateful for any help whatsoever and appreciating the time and effort that someone has gone to to make you any meal, even if it is the eighth tuna casserole that week.
Anyway, that's my rant over. AM I being unreasonable?!!

So how to people regard wedding lists? Is that against the spirit of friendship? FFS, it's just a couple getting married, they should be fucking grateful if they end up with 7 toasters and a set of cutlery they hate. We managed with a single bowl, plate and spoon between us for months, we didn't need anyone to help us out. Right??
Interesting that all of those who've used one of these think they're a good thing.

How on earth has a wedding list got anything to do with it?! Perhaps you are going to a wedding of a good friend, which is probably costing a hell of a lot per head, you want to wish the couple well and you buy them something, maybe off a list because you don't know what they have already got.

It's a little bit different to a couple who's had a baby and expecting to be catered for, for a few weeks at 7.30pm in disposable containers every night.

Friends just 'do'. They don't need a website to be 'told'.

How are wedding gifts and charity food hand-outs for no good reason, even comparable?

Just replying to your original post. YABU. Either make them a meal or not. It's up to them how they want it done. They obviously have food allergies/preference and the disposal containers is probably because returning lots of containers to different people is a hassle. Plus you would want the meal to come at a time that is suitable for you if you are napping, feeding or whatever.

Yes, it is very organised but that seems fine. To me.

Might be that lots of people offer meals but never end up doing it. So this seems a good idea.

Where's the expectation? Because the op doesn't know the expectant couple we don't know who set the list up, it may well be friends or family.
But the point I was making was that over here it is a cultural norms to give gifts to newly weds and for them to set up a list in order to facilitate this. Probably a lot if cultures think this is horribly grabby and entitled - because friends just do this, don't they? Unless they don't know what the couple have already got? So something on the Internet gets set up. Kind of like this? In a community where it's the norm it's probably very useful. But again, because the op knows nothing about this couple, but just felt like coming in the Internet to bitch about them, we don't know anything.
Like I said, a nasty, spiteful thread, with an uneasant side dish of martyrdom thrown in.

We live in a small expat community so when anyone has a baby I do a big meal, usually chilli or spag Bol and take it to them for their first night home. Complete with ice cream, beer/wine, garlic bread or similar side dishes, ride or pasta and other goodies. It's my welcome home care package - so regardless of whether the couple have loads in the freezer or not, they have something they don't have to worry about. I don't do more than one dish, but generally all of my friends haven't been Greeley ungrateful fuck wits and are all up and living normally in a day or so. I just do the first meal so they don't have to do anything other than sit and stare at their baby. Mum and Dad both!

I am not suprised some people are against this in the UK. I think it is a strongly cultural thing.
My US based family do this sort of thing all the time, sometimes church based sometimes not (their family and friends are not all church goers).
When my cousin had surgery they set up an email amoung their family/friends group and people chimed in with, 'can I drop a lasagne round later?', 'do you need me to bring magazines and sandwiches to the hospital' or 'can I take x's sister out for a meal while you are the hospital with y?' etc.
A lot of their socialising is based on pot luck meals, and checking who needs checking on etc.
I think it is a lack of social care there which means that support is a lot more community based. Sometimes bringing a meal round for a family who have just had a baby is a nice thing to do, sometimes it is really quite necessary for a family who are going through hard times to be fed.
There is a big what goes around comes around mentality. I think we are a little less 'in people's business' in this country tbh. That's not a bad, thing, just a cultural thing.

I haven't read the whole thread yet - need to get the popcorn for that - but this exact thing pissed me off recently. Same website and two bloody weeks worth of meals - pressure applied by others in the friendship group to sign up. I had no issue with the meal but the specifics offended me as the one thing they said they wouldn't eat was part of a meal I'd made for them when they moved - and I bloody asked at the time if anything was not their thing and they said no, they ate everything, so I made a (frankly delicious!) family friendly meal. When I saw 'please don't include X' in the meal I was a tad cross. In fairness said recipient had been behaving unreasonably recently which added to my irritation. But the whole dictatorship of it annoyed me. I batch cooked before mine arrived so I didn't have the stress, and on the nights no 'proper' meal was ready it's not hard to shove a pizza in or go to the chippy. Another friend is due soon and I know the same thing will happen and I'm already feeling irritable about it

That is unbelievable. What's wrong with using your nesting instincts to prepare some batch cooking before baby is born and freezing it to use once baby is here and you don't have the time to cook? That's what I did and I enjoyed preparing in that way.

I think it's a lovely gesture for someone to offer to help by for example cooking a meal for a family who have just had a baby but for a family to post a link asking people to do it and making all those dietary demands really is quite unbelievable.

Aaarrgghh! Because not everyone has a big freezer!! I could get maybe a couple of meals in mine, three at a push. God, people really have no imagination, or ability to think outside their own set of circumstances, do they??

Worra, it is not shameless to accept meals from friends. And it is not accepting charity either....it is accepting friendship.

It is perfectly possible to offer and receive help in times other than those of dire need. People do all kinds of generous acts for their friends all the time and put themselves out for other people. No one needs to be embarrassed to receive kindness, not be in desperate straits to feel they deserve it.

I have cooked for friends who have had new babies. Yes, they could have done it or their husband could have done it, but I happily did it instead, to save them one job. I have also done shopping for people who have been a bit poorly - they. Old have dragged themselves out or had a supermarket delivery, but I was happy to do it for them.

I think there are loads of opportunities out there to help our friends, not because we want something in return or because it makes us do-good ears, but just because that's what friends do. And I think its good to learn to receive help graciously too.

This whole website thing seems to lack graciousness, but friends offering and receiving meals when new babies are there, seems a great example of friendship in practice to me.

Wait a minute, I agree that it is a lovely thing to do, to cook for someone with a new baby, heck to cook for anyone. And I agree that it is a nice thing to help others even though they are not in dire circumstances. But what the OP is describing is people putting in an order for food from friends. That is what is unbelievable.

Do you know this couple's personal circumstances? No, nor do I. Unlike others on this thread, however, I don't feel the need to judge them or slag them off or make a fucking martyr of the fact that no-one did anything like this for me.

Nobody's begrudging them a few home cooked meals, RiverTam. It's the way they've gone about it that leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

I'm in the uk and we do cook meals for each other to support. However, it's organised in a less American way!

"all meals must be dairy free. Please use xxx brand of lactose free whatever, not Alpro. Please deliver meals in disposable containers and by 7.30pm each day. Please text to confirm your delivery on the day"

RiverTam If the couple in question were able to word their 'requirements' like this, I would imagine they weren't exactly on their knees with exhaustion! It takes some confidence and brass neckedness to be so brazen! If you are in desperate need, you're incapable of functioning enough to have 'requirements'.

Sod all that for a game of skittles, I wouldn't be doing anything with a request like that except for the cheesy wotsits and jar of pickled onions on Tuesday mentioned earlier. They're in disposable containers!

what's wrong with Alpro?

From what I've read in the thread that wording is part of the website, not personal to anyone. And, yet again, how do YOU know who set this up? Again, I'm going to compare with wedding lists - I bet a lot of cultures think insisting that gifts come from one specific shop and have to exactly match what has been stated, is going about things in an offensive way. But we don't. Because we're used to it.
Anyway. I'll leave you all to your bitching and competitive martyrdom over how you all squeezed triplets out and were back in the kitchen within hours and anyone who struggles is a pathetic loser. Because that's how a lot of these posts read.

The demand about disposable containers baffles me.
I'd happily tootle along with a covered dish and patiently await the return. I don't have any disposable containers and where I shop doesn't sell them.
How hard is it wash up a dish or a Tupperware box?
If the couple are going to demand disposable containers, then the least they could do is to supply them!
The whole set up comes across as very demanding, ungracious and with such high degree of expectation that it just rubs people up the wrong way.

"the disposal containers is probably because returning lots of containers to different people is a hassle. Plus you would want the meal to come at a time that is suitable for you if you are napping, feeding or whatever."

Errm. Someone's doing you a favour by cooking a meal. The least you can do is wash the container up and give it back. I agree that late meals are a pain but the website, if not the actual couple, come across as very demanding.

Using a website doesn't mean they're "demanding" meals from their friends. It just means that a roster can be organised without double ups.

I have been on the receiving end of meals from friends (I was pregnant with 2 children and a seriously ill husband) and it's really helpful to have text confirmation on the day that someone's bringing dinner, because people can sign up and then forget.

I still don't see what the vitriol from people is about, using a website and naming any dietary requirements is just practical. If I was their friends and saw those requests I'd think "great, now I know how I can be most helpful".

Having a new baby is a stressful time and it's nice to have nutritious home cooked meals that you haven't had to cook! I love doing this for others, and first time parents are often totally shell shocked in those first few weeks (I know I was).

RiverTam you do have a point about the wedding lists as people used to think them rude but now they are pretty much standard. However, I think this is different because weddings are not an everyday event.

Now, of course, neither is having a baby, but what this is really about is feeding yourself which of course is an everyday event. We all have to feed ourselves and our families daily and it is something we all have to learn to prioritise. We all have our own ways of going about that and that's fair enough.

The chaos of the first few weeks of having a new baby can make that difficult but there are ways of managing it as people have outlined. I don't think this is martyrdom in the slightest, it's just what we do. That's not to say that Sometimes we need a little help and having a new baby is highly likely to be one of those times and it is ver common for friends and family to help out at such a time. That I think is a lovely thing and maybe we have lost some of the sense of community that allows that to happen naturally.

If this couple (or anyone else) genuinely need help around feeding themselves then perhaps they should be speaking to their friends and family about it instead of listing it on a website.

Many people are indeed very ill in the days after childbirth, be it mentally or physically.