AIBU to never talk to this friend again?

[applesarethebest]

I'm having a tough time recently with my nine week old DS (premature and unwell at first, he's OK now thank goodness, but still on hourly YES HOURLY night wakings and very little napping during the day ).

I try to stay positive and I enjoy chatting to and seeing this friend when I'm able to. But this eve I've had a complete breakdown and I told him I was really finding things hard at the moment, and he said "how hard did you think it was going to be going into this?" - what would you think of this response??

To me it reads like, what did you expect. Well, my DS is my whole world and I was ready for things to be tough, but I didn't expect a preemie + everything that that can entail, a natural birth (I was booked for an ELCS for mental health reasons at 39 weeks but didn't make it that far) or quite so little sleep...more fool me I guess.

Thank you for reading x

I wouldn't end the friendship but it was insensitive. Its a tough ride being a new mum to a newborn and all you want to hear are noises echoing how hard it must be so I understand why you'd be upset. I'd forget it and move on x

I would not end a friendship over this.

Also, having had both a natural spontaneous birth and an elcs, the c section was far, far harder to recover from.

I haven’t had experience with premies, but although they may need to feed more often I don’t think they should be that unsettled.
It could be that he has reflux or silent reflux & is in pain? It might be worth speaking to your GP.

I would be quite pissed off with friend, maybe just cool things a bit, but agree don’t cut them off completely.

I’m guessing he doesn’t have children as his comment is quite ignorant

I can't see anything wrong with what he said. It's was a simple question to and I see no judgement at all. If it was a message then I think you've read it in a tone other than what was intended.

If you are with him in person, none of us knows how it was said. But now is not the time to dump a friend.

I think, and I mean this sensitively, tha,t new borns aren't easy, and they don't sleep and many do wake hourly untill around three months old. It's normal, your hormones are still adjusting and won't be back to feeling more your self untill around three months pp either. Perhaps he could have said what he said a with bit more tact but he's not a woman and he doesn't know what it's like to have just given birth and all that comes with it.
A little advice, I felt so much better when I realised that I wasn't going to be able to put baby down much, she was going to be waking every hour, she wasn't going to nap more than 30 mins and if I tried to put her down she's wake up and I'd have to start the process again, I wasn't doing anything wrong, my baby just wanted to be held and feel safe. It does get easier. So hang in there.

Forgetting your friend, is there someone who can help you? If the baby's dad or grandparent or friend can take the baby for a walk so you can get a couple of hours solid sleep, you'll feel better. Ditto if one night (or even day) someone else does all the wakings and settles him to sleep, bringing him in every two hours to feed while you stay in bed. Obviously within the boundaries of what your tiny preemie baby needs- check with the health visitor or midwife, I'd think two hours would be ok. I fostered preemies and had a two hourly alarm to feed them at night.

Seems like he was being totally insensitive and failing to appreciate the differences between his 6yo and your preemie baby.

Don't think it's enough to end the friendship over though - but equally I wouldn't bother expecting support from this one in future either.

Tbh, if he is a heterosexual dad, it is quite likely that he hasn't had to care for a newborn at all, preemie or otherwise. I would ignore, he very obviously does not know what it is like.

"How hard did you think it was going to be?" sounds like a clumsy way of asking what you had expected it to be like. Perhaps trying to understand which aspect of it is causing most difficulty

Don't be too hasty to bin a friendship over this

Without hearing the tone, I would give him the benefit of the doubt that he was trying to engage in the discussion you started over dealing with a newborn and didn’t know what else to say.

I don’t have children, I find it slightly annoying that I therefore cannot have any idea how hard a new baby is, it is actually really well documented out there. What I definitely can’t do though, is offer any meaningful or useful advice, on that no I don’t have a clue. I suspect your friend does not either as unlikely he did the hard hours with his now 6 year old. I think I would be the wrong person to go to, I suspect he was too. I wouldn’t throw a friendship away because essentially they have not had the same life experience as you have,

I suspect he didn’t quite know what to say, and said the wrong thing- as we all do sometimes, whether or not we have children. Perhaps talk to him about it or move on rather than severing friendship- assuming you usually value the friendship?