I have been often accused as being a deliberate martyr since I had my DC, twins, boy and girl.
This has been the consensus of my old friends who had children earlier than I did and who are parents of NT healthy singletons.
I’m a bit perplexed where it came from as I didn’t have any opportunities to be ‘that’ mother who constantly bemoans that two is far more difficult than one or any other such cliches - I was phased out of my friendship group when my twins were born and shipped off to a hospital miles away to spend 4 months in NICU. The hospital they were taken to were very kind and offered me one of their transitional care rooms as a place to stay indefinitely whilst DD and DS were staying there.
Because of this I didn’t do what my then friends considered the norm, I didn’t invite them to ‘come and meet the babies’. I was constantly having to turn down invitations to meet up for a coffee because I was away from the county my friends were based in. I stopped hearing from them after a while but didn’t think much of it at the time because my headspace was completely overtaken by the NICU experience and the daily worry that I would get a knock on the door to my room, to tell me that one, or both hadn’t made it through the night.
Thankfully this never came to pass and I know how extremely lucky I am to have them both at home and they’ve just celebrated their 2 year birthday.
The people I had lost have completely removed me from and and all forms of contact until recently.
I received a message two days ago from one of the group, saying that they didn’t feel I was putting in enough effort to continue the friendship so they had decided to call it a day. But now my twins are older, we could try to reconnect if I was over being a “mummy martyr”.
I haven’t responded, but it has left me wondering, is that how parents in my position are viewed as a general experience? I am limited to where I can go or when as I am a SAHM to the twins (financial reasons rather than personal preference choice). They are quite delayed in development due to having been so premature and low weight at birth, so aren’t able to do what most of their peers are capable of, so we have to stick to more appropriate activities for them. DD was on home oxygen and CPAP equipment for the first year of her life which meant going out was only done when it was completely necessary.
I am trying to see how I may have come across as a martyr as part of me is desperate to have some of my old social circle back - I miss them. But I can’t help but feel they’re being rather harsh with me.
I’ve enabled voting (I think!) so:
YABU - Your friends were probably fed up of you not making time for them and right to carry on without you for a while, take the olive branch.
YANBU - Circumstances considered I think they were harsh and I would question the relevance of the friendship as it’s been two years since they phased you out.