What's the worst thing someone did when you had a new baby?

[Cuddlyrottweiler]

Another thread reminded me of this, it's probably tame compared to some of yours though!

MIL called my DH in from another room and told him to take my newborn, crying baby off me and give him to her. After I'd refused several times, because I knew what he needed and couldn't do it. Luckily for our marriage he saw the look and my face and told her no.

First time my nosey, judgemental neighbour met my daughter she asked what we'd had and when I told her girl she said "oh I thought so". No shit, I've been drying her clothes in the garden in preparation. She then said "that's another screaming little girl then. We have one on the other side too".

My baby was a lockdown baby. She was my 6th pregnancy but only surviving child. She was also asleep on me and 4 days old but they hadn't noticed we'd had her until then.

It seems like nothing but that comment haunted me in the months that it was illegal to have a support network (pre December when you could have an under 1 bubble) and when my husband was working 7 days a week on a project he couldn't get out of. Every time she cried I felt like she could hear and was judging me. I don't know how I didn't get PND in the circumstances anyway but that comment rattling around in my head was unbearable.

I hope she reads this although I doubt she would recognise it as herself because she's not that self-aware.

@pretentiousrubberduck

My second DS was in NICU, in Southmead which was 90 minutes away from us, being cooled to prevent brain damage after an incredibly traumatic birth. My lovely younger sister came to look after my elder DS for the week whilst DH and I were travelling back and forth to Southmead. My other sister decided to come and give her a hand, which I thought was lovely, and I was very appreciative to both of them. Day 5, DS2 was being taken off of the cooling treatment and needed clothes for the next day, so we called my younger sister and checked that we were OK to pop to Asda on the way home to do a food shop and grab some sleepsuits and vests (DS1 was a much bigger baby, so all the clothes we already had were far too big for my tiny miracle baby!). She said that was fine, they didn't have plans so not to rush. We got back about an hour after we usually did. My other sister went off on me. I was selfish, inconsiderate, ungrateful. What if they had stuff they wanted to go and do etc etc. I just stood there, 5 days post c-section, absolutely exhausted from the 3 hour drives we were doing every day and a very poorly baby with potential brain damage that was coming off of treatment that evening. She did give me a half hearted apology a few days later, but I've never forgotten it. She also told me, after my first emergency c-section with DS1, that I hadn't given birth properly. I am quite low contact with her now!

I hope that DS2 remained healthy and recovered.

Some of these are absolutely shocking.

asmuchuseas
My friends daughter recently said to her Father in law who was asking for a cup of tea, (She was busy making the children's meal)
" People with a penis can make a cup of tea you know!!"

My mother kept telling me I was struggling to breastfeed and laughing at me. I actually felt very confident about breastfeeding and it was going well.

I was breastfeeding on demand which really upset my mother who I felt I should only breastfeed every 4 hours and have and 8 hour break at night so I could sleep undisturbed. She was getting increasingly angry that I wasn't listening to her advice and trying to recruit supporters to back her up. She ended up contacting my health visitor and asked her to tell me I was over feeding the baby. Luckily the health visitor was very firm in telling her that she was out of date and I was doing the right thing.

My Mother didn't like the name we'd chosen and kept ringing in tears to beg me to change it.

1 - my mum shouting and swearing about what a terrible mother I was and how badly behaved my (1 yo and small baby) children were, as I pushed one in a buggy and had the other strapped to me in a sling
2 - my sister-in-law inviting herself and 2 small unruly nephews over for 7 hours, 3 days after giving birth to my third child, and having had a very traumatic birth ending in surgery.

Had a four day labour of first child, all rather overwhelming and quite scary, exhaustion and very little sleep son was born late afternoon, so DH and I decided to sleep/rest and tell family of son’s birth the following morning. When MIL was told in the morning she was extremely pissed off she wasn’t present at birth, processed to send endless poisonous messages to DH. Roped sister in to do the same, two days of being bombarded and told I am everything under the sun. MIL demanded to come round the moment we got home from the hospital with her entire family and upon arrival she said ‘GIVE ME HIM’ the awful behaviour hasn’t ever stopped, she has now demanded interventions with entire family and DH claiming I am controlling, she has since said she never wants to see me again as she wasn’t told I was in labour….. it’s been 2 years since sons birth…

My DD was born with a facial deformity thts very obvious but has now somewhat been corrected by surgery.

The worst thing was walking around a supermarket and a woman walked past then said to her friend plain as day ‘oh my god have you seen that babies face?’ They then both walked past us a number of times to gawk at my poor little baby. I burst into tears and wanted to leave. Luckily DP was there to set me straight

@ToughLoveLDN

My DD was born with a facial deformity thts very obvious but has now somewhat been corrected by surgery.

The worst thing was walking around a supermarket and a woman walked past then said to her friend plain as day ‘oh my god have you seen that babies face?’ They then both walked past us a number of times to gawk at my poor little baby. I burst into tears and wanted to leave. Luckily DP was there to set me straight

Oh my god, that's awful.

Poor you, DH and your darling baby,

Midwife, six hours after DS was born (during which I was pretty much abandoned, didn’t get toast, never mind a meal), says I’ve starved my baby, gropes my breasts and says “oh, you’ll never get any milk out of those”.

I still hate her and arranged subsequent births so that I wouldn’t have to meet her again.

Also, lady, these breasts have provided gallons of milk for six of the last ten years so wtf do you know.

My mum announced birth of one of my children on fb when they were less than an hour old. I hadn’t even said I was pregnant on fb, and then was deluged with messages in fb from her friends/mutual contacts. Then apparently i was being over sensitive and hormonal when I asked her to remove it.

When dd was born we were kept in as she picked up an infection. After my third night of no sleep the mw offered to put her in the nursery for a few hours so I could sleep. She was brought back to me by a different mw who woke me up to tell me that sleepless nights are part of being a parent and they aren't baby sitters. The first mw walks by, notices me crying and says "Look, you won't get any rest if you don't let us help you when you need it most..." and went to wheel dd away again. She was visibly very angry and stormed off. She came back about 20 minutes later and said firmly "She's in with us till the morning." The other mw didn't come near me again.

Had my 2 month old baby boy visiting best friend / husbands cousin. Friend had just had a newborn too so her mother was there. The mother looked at my child and said “ I’m not being cheeky but he looks like you”.
She was a nasty woman.

@Mamibaer

I can’t believe how many nasty so-called health professionals there are out there! HVs, midwives, jeez!

When dear friends of ours had a baby that died within seconds of birth a breezy Health Professional cheerfully said Don't worry you're young enough to try again soon!

A random older lady made me feel very uncomfortable when I wouldn’t let her “have a cuddle” of my newborn in M&S.
I had only been home 2 days with newborn and Balfour Beatty started digging up my road and the central heating went off! It was winter and bitterly cold, freezing and also no hot water so me and baby moved in with my mum and dad for a bit then out of the blue an auntie and uncle of my showed up “to see the baby” and turned up when I was on my own in the house in my maternity nightie and breastfeeding the baby! Last thing you want with a newborn is unexpected visitors!

Sadiecow

Thankyou. My DS2 is 49 now and a grandfather. Those words are still with me after all those years.

@nildesparandum

Sadiecow

Thankyou. My DS2 is 49 now and a grandfather. Those words are still with me after all those years.

As another mother of two boys, one is a father. I couldn't be happier with my sons.

Much like you.

When I was in hospital after having my second baby, a health visitor (or someone along those lines), called me to discuss breastfeeding. I told her I knew what I was doing after having breastfed my first baby for 2 years (I wasn’t being rude), and she told me very sharply that ‘every baby is different’ so I wasn’t to be confident about my ability to do it. I had established breastfeeding with my second by that point. I don’t see why she had to take what I said personally and have a little go at me for it?

Expartner was leaving, it was so inevitable that I'd asked him to leave before I hit third trimester but he was enjoying living rent free in my flat too much so he didn't. He was being unbearable and I was really struggling, so went to stay with my sister for a few days when ds was two weeks old. He couldn't bear that I had removed myself from his control - it wasn't enough that he was seeing lots of other women, he wanted me to know about it even when I wasn't there. So he left music on really loudly all night, went out and didn't come back. I didn't have my phone on but the following morning I realised lots of neighbours had been ringing me all night to complain. I couldn't reach him to ask him wtf. So had to drive 200 miles back with tiny baby, just to turn music off and apologise to neighbours. All so I would know that he was out all night having fun. He claimed of course it was so the flat wouldn't be burgled if he was out. 20 years later I still hate him for this.
There was so much kindness from random strangers though and I remember those too.

I woke up from a nap in hospital to find my annoying creepy colleague sitting next to me, holding my baby. She was creepy because I hadn’t invited her or told her I was in hospital and only there for 1 day. She was always competing with me about everything and tried to potty train her 1 year old before anyone else did and I had been to her child’s 1st birthday party she spent the whole time shouting at her to sit on the potty (she was 1). I made her leave as not even my own mum had seen the baby, anyway she turned up a few weeks later at my house and despite my protesting and getting cross fed my baby 4 ounces of milk with no burp break and baby had bad reflux, threw the whole lot up violently all over her. A few weeks after that she rang me and told me she was trying to adopt a baby and would I help her application. I said no and avoided her wherever possible

My dh had bought me loads of size 10 clothes as a welcome home present when ds 1 was born. We were in hospital for ages, then as I came home he wanted me to try on all the clothes to see “how long I’d have left to get me back”. And I did!!! I stood there deeply traumatised from the birth with the net hospital knickers and pads and was trying to squeeze myself into the clothes. I then burst into tears and he just didn’t get it. I’m surprised we survived it. What an absolute fool

I had severe pnd. My sil said she’d always be there for me. I trusted her snd loved her as the sister I never had. Then Her dad died a d there was a massive family fallout over money and she turned on me literally after the funeral.
She called me mental, said the whole village was laughing at me and she’d turn everyone against me. She managed to break me…..for a while.
Still sorting myself out and getting better. I’ve never been so betrayed and I’m quite guarded now

I was asked if I will love my new baby more because "they aren't a test tube baby" like our first DS was. Tbf, the person who said it was in their 80s and I genuinely don't think they meant harm.

MIL and Step FIL offered to mind our then baby DS when I was miscarrying and had to go to hospital, we were there 2 hours and confirmed I was miscarrying and was sent home to continue the process. Step FIL immediately said "you packed so much stuff I wondered how long we'd be having him for, it's my weekend off I was worried I wouldn't be able to go for a drink" I was 2 hours and this was in the early afternoon.

The same step FIL asked me if I could hurry up and give birth because he wanted MIL to go camping, he didn't think it's right she should miss it. I constantly told him it's nothing to do with me if she doesn't go or not. (MIL wanted to stay home) he kept mentioning how I should get moving, get the baby out of me quicker.

He's such an arse

@StrictlyAFemaleFemale

for everyone on this thread. It's frankly heartbreaking.

Mum asked me hows your discharge dear? I looked back at her for a few seconds with a wtf face, then gave my Dad a hard stare. He very quickly piped up I dont think she wishes to discuss that with you dear 😁

Reading a lot of these makes me even more grateful that I was living abroad for both births, no family 'help', family visits or arguments etc, we just had a few close friends round to coo and the Sixth Formers I'd been teaching a few weeks earlier! Bliss.

The two midwives who told me my son had a temper when he was only a few days old. One occasion was because he was crying for milk (he was in NICU and I had to rush there to feed him whenever they called). The second time they had just stuck a needle in his foot. What makes them saying this even worse is that I left his father in the first trimester as he turned violent. Being told your newborn son has a temper is the last thing a victim of domestic violence needs to hear and i hated these midwifes for saying it.