I can’t actually believe my mother sometimes.
I was chatting on Skype to her the other day, and she told me that her neighbour was adopting a 15 month old and was bringing them home that day, which is obviously hugely exciting news (I don’t actually know the neighbour, but I’m really happy for them regardless!).
Then DM said she was going round later with a present to meet the new baby.
I said, “But mum you can’t do that. I’m pretty sure —have read on Mumsnet— that adoptive families aren’t supposed to have visitors for 6 weeks.”
Anyway Skype started playing up, and all I could hear in the background was her going over and over ‘Why can’t I go and see them? What’s wrong with me visiting? I don’t understand why I can’t see them? What’s the reasoning behind not having visitors?”
When we got the call working again, she had moved on to something else, but I was so completely flummoxed by her not understanding that most new parents do not want visitors on their first day home with a new baby, that I said again, “Mum, you cannot go and see them, please don’t go round there, do you not understand that they need time to bond with the baby without anyone else being around?”
She said fine, I’ll just leave it on the doorstep then, I only wanted to meet the new baby.
Thing is, she totally would have gone around there anyway as she never listens to a word I say.
For some reason it’s really wound me up that she could be so utterly thoughtless and not able to understand why her presence might be best left for a few weeks.
So who IBU, me or her? Maybe I’ve got it completely wrong - I’d actually quite like to know if I have, so she can stop getting to me so much!