New mum clubbing

[MrsG841]

A friend of mine has just become a first time mum and her LO is 6 days old.

She messaged a few us to organise going clubbing at weekend.

AIBU to think that she shouldnt think about this at such an early stage?

Who says she needs a break? Maybe she just wants a night out. I didn't need a break, I just wanted to go out and celebrate my birthday in a way I wanted to. Apparently that's selfish mummying. Whatever the fuck mummying is...

I'm of the it's up to her camp. I went on night out 5 days after birth. I lasted about 3hrs before I nearly fell asleep and went home.

jenna

I dont know what you think i am saying, I appreciate it may not have been clear

I meant that this is the first time she has gone out since having a baby, just because she drank shedloads before she was a mum does not mean that she will drink shedloads in the few months since becoming a mum

In my experience of my friends going out after children two glasses of wine and they were asleep

Out of curiosity what did you think i was saying you were saying

And yes i know the baby is 6 days old...i just mean that she may not get tanked for a few months yet

"is she going to need this sort of 'break' every weekend?"

Well, how would you feel if she spent every Saturday afternoon learning watercolour painting ? Or me and my concerts? I didn't need a break-I had just worked hard at the music and wanted to perform it.

Not aimed at jenna but i really feel i need to over explain

Or to be fair to readers of my cryptic posts

Explain

I am absolutely fine with it, largely because it is none of my business if a woman (who is not just a mum) decides to have a weekly night out. Big deal.

Would you say the sake about a man (who is not just a dad) deciding to have a weekly night out?

Hideous thread. So much projection about how everyone must have leaky boobs and need to sit on a rubber ring, and how newborns don't even know they were out of the womb and would be traumatised by being away from their mums. I went out when my eldest was ten days old. Had a meal, watched a band, even danced a little! She slept 20 hours out of 24, she also didn't appear to care who was cuddling her and was happy to be passed around. I doubt she noticed I was gone.

I was also breastfeeding but DH and I introduced a bottle from the first day and I expressed from the word go. Not a popular strategy but it worked for us and I've done it with all four.

Well, how would you feel if she spent every Saturday afternoon learning watercolour painting ? Or me and my concerts?

Well I don't know what sort of water colouring you do but the type of thing I am familiar with doesn't tend to have you out until the early hours and likely to be incapacitated for at least some.of the following day.

If it were a father we were talking about i bet you wouldn't be comparing 'clubbing' to an afternoon of watercolour painting!

The only way we got through the stress, boredom and misery of the small baby stage with no family support was by giving one another a night/day off as often as we could. They weren't necessarily all rollicking though. DH used to go to football matches, I used to drink and complain about the horrors of it all with friends, or fall asleep in arthouse films. Once I booked a hotel room.

Exactly Penggwyn. It's to make it sound as dramatic and selfish as possible.

Who said anything about being incapacitated? I love how on MN 'a hangover' gets blown up to lying on the sofa for 8 hours with your head in a bucket

Well if you are not alert enough to be looking after a small human being properly then yes you are to all intents and purposes 'incapacitated' in that sense at least.

I can't help but wonder what I would wear to go clubbing at 6 days post-partum when I had a 2nd degree tear. And what if a breast pad escaped during a hands-in-the-air moment? The shame!

Good on her if she's got the stamina and can squeeze back into her clubbing gear but personally I think she's crackers!

What if you're not alert because you stayed in and the baby kept you up? Are you incapacitated then or does it only count if you've been out doing something you enjoy?

Haha I knew it. People falling over themselves to claim it's totally normal and find to leave a 6 day old baby for a night out on the tiles

Yes

She must be quite young is my guess?

Or has her baby at the Portland and has a night nurse

Loads of celebs so this looking at you Tamara beckwith

Would you say the sake about a man (who is not just a dad) deciding to have a weekly night out?

yes because its none of our fucking business!

I had a bastard of a cold after #1. I didn't realise that this made me a shit parent due to be "incapacitated".

So. Much. Hyperbole.

How dare she need a break she needs to up her super mum skills eh! Newborn for some is the shittiest age. She might need a break now someone else might need a break from the terrible two's.
This thread is horrible no wonder mums get so depressed and heped up about being judged it's disgusting

Also, the stuff about 'needing' to nest is bullshit. It's the sort of thing that gets very conveniently forgotten about when society needs women to direct their energies elsewhere - then you get 24 hour nurseries and a lot of male HCPs prounouncing that it's 'healthier' for women to leave their babies with someone else because the War Effort needs their energy.

Thing is, for many people, looking after small children is fucking tedious. For centuries, any woman who could arrange it would leave her kids in the care of someone else as much as possible - think of all those wetnurses and nannies and live-in governesses of all the rest. Yes, there were all sorts of ways in which attitudes to parenting have changed over the years (before antibiotics, contraception and sanitation people had lots of babies but were not supposed to obsess over them too much because many of them weren't going to make it out of infancy). A lot of the propaganda about babies 'needing' their mothers 24/7 has more to do with putting women in their place than biology. 'Proper' behaviour for mothers is mainly about what benefits men in the culture/society the mother and baby happen to be living in.

When the midwife offered to take dd away for the night I virtually threw the child at her

well, if she already needs a break from a 6 days old newborn, good luck for the years to come. Poor baby, how dare he be in the way of clubbing, drinking and having fun.