AIBU with my friends?

[PhyllisNights]

I'm the first one in my social group to get pregnant. I talk to my friends on a daily basis through WhatsApp and see them all in person at least once a week.

As it's my first pregnancy, I'm very excited. I can't stop talking about it. I'm so lucky, so happy, so fortunate & so privileged. My baby feels so special, like I know my baby will do something incredible in this world - I can feel it!!

And yet, my friends have started to turn on me. They've become very jealous. They make snide remarks, they mimick me & give me side eye. I feel like my pregnancy is the butt of all the jokes.

I can't help that I've been so blessed and so fortunate to get pregnant out of my friends first. I went to college, uni, started a professional career first & got married first. I've just always been up step ahead - I can't help it!!

Would it be unreasonable to sit my friends down and ask them to stop being so negative? I want to ask them to support me better and help me out.

"You sound like you think you're going to give birth to Jesus."

THIS.

This probably comes from having had five pregnancies but only two children, but I don't understand needing to turn pregnancy into an experience which must be perfect or it's all ruined.

It's a physical process. Some bits are wonderful, some bits are awful, but the point is to end up with a baby.

brilliant 😂

Is your name really Mary and not Phyllis?!

Must be me but no one I know has banged on so much about them being pregnant unless they were extremely self absorbed. What's worse, with you, obviously not early in pregnancy but you're whining like a spoiled child as to why your friends won't pay attention to you.

you're going to be an annoying PFB entitled mum I can see it now...

Remember, when your child is old enough to do activities, don't fill their every day up with them. They also need time to just play on their own, to allow their imaginations to flourish, to explore things, to ask questions, to daydream.

Good god you work in HR and are good at reading people?! I don't think so dear.

Reverse or Daily Fail.

Your nephew's quite the over achiever isn't he? I wonder how many interviewers he will impress when they learn how early he started reciting his ABCs?

Life isn't about how much you can achieve, it's about who you are and what you have to offer others. If you're for real you are setting yourself up for huge disappointments and I wouldn't like to be in your child's shoes with the weight of your expectations on my shoulders. Some of the biggest drongos I went to school with have gone on to live abroad, become millionaires, etc and some of the high achievers have disappeared without trace. Such is life. I hope you learn to be a parent OP not just a coach.

Re. the over achieving nephew - please remember that children develop at different rates.

I worried myself sick about ds1, because he had such a small vocabulary at 2 years old - I remember counting up, and I think it was about 35 words, and not all of those were recognisable unless you knew what he was saying.

By the time he was in year 1 at school, he could talk the hind legs off a donkey - especially on his specialist subject - trains, particularly Class 50 diesel locomotives - and I used to yearn for those halcyon days when he said very little (there is only so much any mother needs to know about Class 50 bloody diesels).

Fast forward to today - he has a 2:1 in Law (a subject where you need to be fluent and able to put together a good argument), is working as a quantity surveyor, and flourishing in his career.

The wife of my dh's best friend was like the Op, which is why I think she might be genuine. She had to be the first to do everything in life and always had to be the hostess (everyone had to come to her). She was a complete bitch to boot. She thought she'd just sail through life but life had other ideas and she and her dh went through ten years of hell having a family. I ended up being the first in the group to have a baby and she was quite horrible to me. However once they came out the other side, she actually became quite a nice person and I really admire the way she and her husband stuck together. Instead of thinking she was entitled to everything in life, she became grateful for what she had.

I just feel so positive about my baby. Other than choice parenting, there are so many things that I want to do regarding what the baby watches, the diet, classes, etc. It's so important to get in fast and quick when they're mines are like sponges and take everything in.

You are setting yourself up to fail. Just aim to get through each day and that's more than enough at first.

You never know what baby you will get - and that's one of the wonderful things about babies, and also one of the hardest. I had several ideals (e.g. no co-sleeping) when DS1 was born and the only person who suffered was me when we couldn't do them (cos of my determination not to co-sleep I got up 8 times a night for 2 years before finally cracking - so so stupid!)

Right I'm going to take this seriously for 2 seconds ...

You HAVE to calm down. Your little one won't need language lessons, it doesn't matter when he can count to 20 or when he is potty trained by. They need love, clean bottoms, cuddles and lots of fresh air and when they're older and won't leave you alone a 5min episode of Peppa Pig will buy you enough time to pee and make a cuppa!

All your pre conceived ideas will go out of the window.

Relax!

Oh and baby groups are for mums not babies, babies don't give a shit and normally cry or sleep through them.

This is bonkers. Absolutely bonkers. Fyi, letting a kid watch a bit of Peppa Pig doesn't harm them. DS has always been ahead of his classmates in pretty much every subject. Very intelligent boy. He watched a shit ton bit of cbeebies when he was little. Your posts are ridiculous.

All that working in HR means (if you're any good at it) is that you're awesome at screwing people over for the Greater Good.

Ok phyllis, it's heart to heart time.

As I said upthread, I'm the baby of 10 siblings. I was also the last to have a baby. Imagine how many perfect nieces and nephews to set a high bar I had by the time I had DD. I have a couple who went to worlds for Irish dancing, few who've played sport to a high standard, talented musicians, all of the kids speak two languages, some of them speak another language. One of them has an important role in our religious community. Most of them had very fixed ideas about birthing plans, parenting etc and pretty much of all of that worked out according to plan. Not all of it, most of it. Most of them are still happily married, one is divorced and remarried.

Ex left me long before I knew I was pregnant, I had an undetected pregnancy and my best friend delivered DD in a foreign country. I was expressing/breastfeeding until we finally got home, couple of days later I ended up back in hospital and had to abandon breastfeeding because I was on so many drugs.

I am not telling you this to make you feel you have it all sorted. I am telling you this to make you realise that sometimes shit happens with pregnancy and babies and you just have to deal with it. I'm still a single mother, I didn't get to take DD to all the baby classes and her life was not as "perfect" as my nieces as nephews were by a long shot. But she's happy, she's now healthy, I am more or less healthy although my health is not what it was before ex. Life isn't a competition and it isn't always controllable, and sometimes you just have to accept that and go wirh the flow.

Oh op.

I really do feel you are setting yourself up for heartbreak. I know I was poking fun earlier but on a very serious note, what happens if you have a child who is special but not in the way you mean? You are already going to come back to reality with a bang once the baby is here and you don't get you picture perfect/hallmark parenting experience.

What are you going to do if your child has special needs?(I hate that phrase but I digress). How would cope with the colossal difference between what you have in your head and what your life may become?

Don't take the above the wrong way, I am Not wishing anything like that on you. The point I'm trying to make is YOU CAN NOT KNOW how your baby will turn out, at any stage throughout their life.

We all hope for happy healthy baby when they arrive. Just go with that and take it one day at a time from there.

Disclaimer: I have 2 kids with ASD (the eldest of whom was so borderline for dx it wasn't discovered until he was 15 and only after he tried to kill himself. He still suffers with his MH now even though he ASD is well handled; and a 3rd who was a premmie so have been through various baby/child health related gauntlets.

I'm getting quite sad now. OP putting so much pressure on yourself is putting you at higher risk of PND. Please be careful and just chill. Honestly. 💐

He doesn't watch Peppa Pig, anything he does watch is high in educational content.

Hey now, you leave the pig out of this.

Phyllis
You will learn that babies do not need stimulated 24/7 its not actually good for them.
All kids need down time and some free play time each day to use their imaginations. Prescriptive continual activities stifles imagination and enthusiasm.

When you have gone with 2 hours sleep a night for a few weeks and can barely get dressed by tea time cos you have a baby hanging off your boob constantly you might want to rethink your 'perfect parenting/baby'. Hey you might even look back on this thread and laugh (and laugh and laugh then cry hysterically)

You can plan all you like, you can map out your babies future all you like but you cannot guarantee anything. You cannot live vicariously through your child its unfair, pressurising them and not allowing them to be who THEY are not who you want them to be not to mention bloody selfish.

Help them be all THEY want to be and sod the rest.

@PhyllisNights you sound horrible, it was the "not prepared to put the effort in" to get pregnant where you lost me.

My advice, shut up and realise that your friends worlds do not revolve around you and your pfb.

They get it, you're pregnant. In other news, water is wet.

OP, one part of me wants to smile indulgently at you and just say 'Well, you'll learn the hard way that paretnhood isn't like that'

The other part of my wants to cry for your poor poor baby.

You are so determined he/she will be special. But how about just lettign them be themselves?
No child is the same as any other. Stop comparing with your nephew before the poor thing is even born.

My ds was an early everything - crawling, walking, talking, but he didn't draw/write at all until he was over 4, just scribble, and then at school, he really wasn't reading until he was 7 plus. I was distraught with worry about him. Then at 7 and half the penny dropped, his reading took off.
That is what parenting is like. Ups and downs, worries and successes.

Serious question, what would you do if you baby isn't very bright, is a late crawler and talker? Not super exciting super baby? Because you know the amount of Peppa Pig he/she watches won't make a blind bit of difference to that. babies arrive with their OWN personality, and their OWN brain. They aren't actually blank songes to soak stuff up, that idea was thrown out years ago as we realise that who they already are is highly significant in their development.

I hate SIL. I think she's the root of the problem. She's all Gwenething all over the place with her perfect child and there you are idolising the pants off her. I reckon you'd froenda are just watching you slip further and further into this crazy fan girl thing and are fed up with it all/worried.

Not all of them want to have a baby right now, but the ones who do are very care free and think it will happen when it happens. They basically don't want to give up their lifestyle and put the work in.

I missed this in all the pages.

Op you do realise people who "put the work in" don't always get pregnant? How the bloody hell do you know whether your friends are seriously trying or not? It's a classic defence mechanism to pretend you're not that bothered or just letting it happen without trying.

Your judgement of your friends is absolutely horrible.

I've started to feel quite sorry for Phyllis. I have that same perfection complex, I've just channelled it differently. Hopefully less annoyingly. Underneath all the obnoxiousness I think there's somebody not as happy and confident as she makes out.