To think getting quite drunk with a baby is odd??

[Choccywoccydoo10]

NC as could be outing.

So we are suppose to be visiting friends this weekend. They have a 6 month old we have a toddler. They want to go out for dinner and drink then go back to theirs and pop open the champagne. Apparently they have quite a few bottles. My DP friend then said he's going to guzzle the wine and his wife will be drinking too.

Obviously most of the drinking will be when the kids are in bed but AIBU to think you wouldn't do this?? What if something happened like an emergency and you needed to go out or the baby needed something. I wouldn't want to get really drunk while caring for my D'S.

I'm all for having fun and a laugh but a glass or 2 not 3 bottles of champagne and guzzling wine!

AIBU or would other people do this?

Just wondering if you're accusing me of being a troll, Downstairs, as you've said I'm not real?

That's against the terms of Mumsnet, is it not?

DP and I are friends with a couple who drink to excess while their children are asleep, 3 times when we have been there of an evening they have 'had' to call an ambulance for really minor things that definitely do not require paramedics because out of the four of us I'm the only one who doesn't drink, but I also can't drive. It's so irresponsible and such a waste of the paramedics time, not to mention the cost of calling out emergency services unnecessarily, they are my friends but I do judge.

but as soon as I decided to have a child, I put my desire for "fun" way down the list and have fun in other ways so I can always respond in case there is an emergency.

This might be one of the saddest things I have read.

I know plenty of people like this and it goes against all advice I have ever been given about living a balanced and stable life.

Why does a balanced and stable life, or indeed fun NEED to include alcohol though? If it does, fine, if it doesn’t, fine. I find the assumption that you can’t have fun, or feel human or have a balanced life without alcohol far sadder.

@notreallyarsed it really is sad that people interpret this that "fun" can only mean alcohol. What has this world come too. Like you I very rarely drink, the odd glass of wine with dinner if I fancy. My life is certainly fun, and I do not feel I miss out in any way.

Infact, I wouldn't describe having a hangover as fun, and therefore would say I have more "fun" days than those in bed nursing a pathetic hangover because they don't know their own limits.

@Mumsiemummy1 exactly! Why does fun have to involve drinking? If half the people on here lived where I live I’m fairly sure they’d change their opinions on alcohol. It has destroyed this area, and it’s not fun to see a half cut Mum dragging her kids to school. It’s also quite enlightening to see all the “fun” people when you're stone cold sober!
Hangovers are shit, I can’t tolerate them and don’t think it’s fair for my kids to have to put up with it. My stomach problems mean I can’t drink anymore, but to be honest, post uni I never really bothered anyway. Mostly because my liver hated me

Goodness me professor you're very report happy with any post you don't like aren't you? It must be the teacher in you.

I'm actually pretty shocked at people in here saying it's fine to drink more than a glass while looking after your children! I thought everyone would agree with OP

If you have children you owe it to them to keep them feeling safe and secure for the whole of their childhood and put them above you getting drunk!

Children and babies shouldn't be in the same house as a grown man planning to be off his tits on lots of alcohol and weed. Poor kids.

Actually I think you're right notreallyarsed there is something inherently depressing about a poor chaotic mother dragging her kids to school half cut and vomming in the bushes.

But a stable, loving, wealthy family taking their children to Sunday lunch at their equally wealthy loving ambitious and screwed on friends house and everyone enjoying a bottle of wine with their Sunday roast seems very different doesn't it? I suppose one indicates a lifestyle and one indicates socialising?

But a stable, loving, wealthy family taking their children to Sunday lunch at their equally wealthy loving ambitious and screwed on friends house and everyone enjoying a bottle of wine with their Sunday roast seems very different doesn't it? I suppose one indicates a lifestyle and one indicates socialising?

Right so if you’re skint it’s scummy and if you’re wealthy it’s socialising? Good grief. The worst alcoholic I know is my aunt, lives in the west end of Edinburgh, has everything she’s ever wanted and never has to worry about money. The fact she’s wearing Chanel while vomiting up Dom Perignon or Bushmills doesn’t make a blind bit of difference.
The assumption that only poor people are problem drinkers is not only offensive, it’s snobbery on an epic scale.

I’m a single mum and have been for most of the last 14 years. So if by most standards there always needed to be a sober parent around that would mean no drinking for me! Well there have been occasions where I have gone out got smashed and suffered horrible hangovers, trips to park and lots of fresh air helped there, I have had friends over several bottles of wine drunk and baby / small child was fine. I’ve gone to weddings and parties taking baby / child with me - only option as no family around locally to help. Lots of drunk people around again nothing happened.

The only times a and e visits have been required no alcohol was involved! Ambulance got us there on 1 occasion and friends/ taxi on the others. I needed to be comforting my child not driving a car.

If being drunk in charge of a child is illegal then I have been doing that regularly since I had her. In my circle of family and friends children have always been at the parties with us - it’s rare that we do adult only nights out. So shock horror our children were exposed to drunkenness but they all grew up unscathed.

Totally understand some people don’t want to drink round children but to criticise and attack those that do makes me feel like offering them a large drink and telling them to chill.

I understand your anxiety. My eldest is 26 and I still don't drink anything more than a little wine at mealtimes in front of him, or when he stays over!

But I think we are both in the minority.

What are you on about, Bubble?

I've responded to any posts addressing me. You are incredibly bitter. Do you enjoy being a bully?

You reporting the posts you don't like and getting them deleted.

You haven't responded to my posts at all- you can't show me all the places I have called you obsessed, as you accused me of continuously doing.

That's exactly my point notreallyarsed. I was agreeing with you

I'm not bitter at all btw professor. You do throw around a lot of strange insults about people you don't know.

That's exactly my point notreallyarsed. I was agreeing with you

I misread then, I’m sorry.

Swap alcohol for any other drug and everyone would be shouting call SS. Regular drinkers don't like to think of alcohol as a drug or toxin hence all the defensive posts. All the wine o'clock parents would be surprised how much their children notice their drinking. My 9 year olds friends are all too eager to tell me all about their parents drinking habits, his best friend was telling me just last week how he waits til his mum's had a few drinks before asking for something he wouldn't usually be allowed because then 'she says yes to anything'. Don't think your kids don't notice, they do. Getting drunk when you're kids are around is no better than getting high and you're kidding yourself if you think it is. And no I don't really drink as I'm a lone parent and have had to deal with life threatening emergencies in the middle of the night on more than one occasion, the type that required immediate action and a cool head. All this nothing will happen, yeah if you're lucky.

No they wouldn't scrabble, actually. Lots of people are addicted to diazepam, for example. It's very common. And that's an actual addiction, not just wine now and then.

Swap alcohol for any other drug and everyone would be shouting call SS

I tried that upthread and I’m still trying to put out the fire from the flaming I got! “But alcohol is LEGAL!” Well yes but so was raping your wife until 1994 but it doesn’t mean it’s ok!

Of course alcohol is a drug.

Ha, parents definitely don't realise what their children tell us about them at school. They'd wish the ground would open up and swallow them if they knew what we know

Each to their own, but we never drunk at home when the kids were little.
Maybe be a glass at christmas. We'd rather spend the money on the kids than drink., but that was just us.
So part financial, and the fact that, if anything happened, we could just jump in the car and rush them straight off to hospital.
Never did though thank goodness.
Now we do drink at home, being better off, and the baby is 22 and at Uni.
My DD 26 yrs, said to me abit back: 'Mum thank you for not drinking around us when we were little........'
Still not sure why she said this, because she loves to party......but for me it was just an instinctive thing.....part of mother hood, and I wouldn't change a thing :-)

good grief comparing drinking with kids about to raping one's wife? I must be seriously drunk cos surely I didn't just read that?

I actually haven't had a drink in a good 10 months but in the last 11 years I have never EVER been vomiting in the bushes while dragging my poor kiddies 2 school in a chaotic manner. That would actually be a really thick thing to do as there are easily ways to avoid anything more than a mild hangover.

So can some1 actually give vaild reasons why it's not ok to drink with a child asleep upstairs (and by valid reasons I do of course mean 1s that aren't clouded in fantasy land drama that certain mummies obvs watch too much of).

Also just like 2 clarify that I was not alone in charge of my dd on the example I gave my hubby was just before any1 decides 2 phone ss or summary
x

good grief comparing drinking with kids about to raping one's wife? I must be seriously drunk cos surely I didn't just read that?

Well you must be, because I didn’t. I commented the screeching “but alcohol is LEGAL” to anyone who compared the impairment levels of drugs and alcohol was ridiculous, since things we would never consider acceptable in the past were once legal as well.

My eldest is 26 and I still don't drink anything more than a little wine at mealtimes in front of him, or when he stays over!

But WHY? The mind boggles.

The sanctimony on this thread is epic. The droning on about how awful it is that people need alcohol. YAWN. Who said anything about needing it? The "when you have a child you put fun at the bottom of the list" bores. That is just tragic.
Some of you seriously need to just get a life.

If you apply the logic that you need to always be sober for middle of the night emergencies then that would mean that nobody, ever, in the world should drink alcohol at all because there could be an emergency any night, not just with children.

If you feel uncomfortable drinking while you have a child in the house, that's fine. But it doesn't mean that just because you enjoy 2 or 3 glasses of wine on a Sat night that you are putting your child's life in danger.

Anyway, what are these life-threatening emergencies that occur from nowhere in the night? I'd love to know. I can understand some worry if you have a child with a medical condition such as epilepsy etc. but not for parents of healthy children.