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.

My estranged mother finally came to visit after I had my third child. My children are mixed race. My Nigerian sister in law who at the time was desperately trying for a baby was holding my newborn and my mother cried out to her, Oh how wonderful you’ve had a baby!” My Sil calmly handed her the baby and said, “ No dear, this is your third grandchild!”

My exDH told me he didn’t want to be married anymore- on car ride home from hospital 12hrs after having had DC no3 - in a foreign country.

when my last two boys were born, my Aunt said to me "Ohhhhh...I prayed every night that you would have a girl. Those boys will leave you, you know!"

One of the worse things was the nurse thrusting my breast into my baby’s face to encourage her to feed , I felt traumatised by the pressure to breathe feed , I did everything I could and in the end had mastitis and was developing post natal depression , I felt so guilty when I stopped trying and gave formula milk but my baby THRIVED and that’s why I tell new mums try if you want to but if it doesn’t work stop and just enjoy your baby .

@BobVance

A health visitor literally laughed in my face when I told her I was worried about my daughter’s diarrhoea and blistering nappy rash at 3 weeks old. She brushed it off explaining that EBF babies “do poo a lot”. I ignored her and went to the GP. She had CMPA.

I had similar experiences with dreadful health visitors, though DD did not have CMPA. She was mainly breast-fed for nine months, with tiny tastes of food when she was in the mood. They told me that they didn't believe she was solely breast fed because she was "overweight" and I must be feeding her "too many rusks". She was never even in the top quartile for weight and was actually almost perfect for her length and age.

Took my baby away and wheeled me on my bed into a side room. Put my feet up in stirrups and left me baring my all for about an hour to wait for my episiotomy to be stitched up. Bloody Hell it was awful!

I needed a drip to progress my labour and it meant my son came out in a rush and tore my perineum. The doctor stitched me up and prescribed me Voltarol for the pain.
Next day I tried to breast feed my son but he kept falling asleep. I thought this was normal. I went home and continued to breastfeed but had same issue of son being very sleepy. Community midwife came to check us over and weighed my son and was shocked at how much weight he had lost. She checked the meds I had brought home and one was Kapake - a codeine based medication. The midwife on the ward had changed my prescription ( I didn't know this was allowed) so instead of taking voltarol I was taking this medication which was drugging my baby, hence the sleepiness and weight loss. I can't describe how upset and angry I was! I continued to breasfeed but was instructed by community midwife to top up with formula so my son would gain weight - which he did, thank goodness!

That’s totally shitty, well done you. Some people really are absolute cunts, there is no other word for it.

I phoned my DM to let her know she had a new GC (my 1st child at the time). It took a while to get through but when I did, she just said 'that's nice but you've woken me up and I'm tired'.
It was only 8pm. It crushed me and has profoundly affected me to the extent that I don't think I'll ever recover.
When she finally came to see my DS all she said was 'look at his hands, he's got massive hands!' In fact, they were in proportion, he was a 8lb 12oz baby which I had no pain relief for with my 5ft 4in frame.

@piratehugs

I feel so angry on behalf of you all, getting kicked in the teeth when you were at your most vulnerable.

I'm lucky that our families and friends are not batshit or cruel. But there is one comment that sticks with me.

With DC1 I had an EMCS and for far too long I struggled to BF with excruciating (undiagnosed) thrush and DC's (undiagnosed) tongue tie. Every single feed was torture and I shrieked and sobbed through each one and spent all the time between feeds crying and trying to pump. There was no way I could attempt BFing with anyone else watching, it was too traumatic.

When DC was 8 weeks old, we decided to go out to see some friends who were meeting in a park. We had to go by bus and it was the first time I had ventured out of easy reach of our flat. I was scared of being unable to control the situation and had a meltdown before we left.

When we got there, a friend gave the baby a cuddle and he started crying. "Awww," she said, "Isn't Mummy feeding you?" I felt utterly crushed.

I know it was just something to say and there was no malice - she had no idea what we were going through - but I still secretly hate her a bit.

I had thrush when I had ed. Trying to explain to the midwives when they came round that it was like passing needles through my nipple, and I cried before every feed, was almost impossible. They just said it's because she isn't latching on correctly. Only when they saw white patches in her mouth they then realised what was going on. Thankfully the meds worked quickly and I fed her fine afterwards, but I'll never forget that feeling.

@Boysgrownbutstillathome thats awful i hope you made a complaint

My sister and mum being complete cf's by turning up at the hospital a few hours after the births of both my sons despite me having made it blatantly clear no-one was welcome at the hospital but my husband and that they would be invited to visit a few days after we'd been allowed home.
I'd told the hospital staff that I didn't want visitors but they overrode my instructions telling my sister that I didn't know what I was saying/didn't mean what I'd said!
When my sister had her babies, she said no visitors, mum turned up at the hospital and was thrown out.
If my instructions re visitors were good enough for her to copy, why couldn't she have adhered to mine? She's always been a "one rule for her, different one for everyone else".

@Hardbackwriter

I've never fully forgiven the friend who looked at my gorgeous, three day old baby son and said 'I hope I have a girl when I have a baby, I really wouldn't want a boy'.

The other thing that I got which was really well meant but upset me at the time was lots of people commenting on how early I was out and about after DS1 - I took him into town for a walk when he was a few days old and a few different strangers told me that I should still be in bed, and I took him to a baby group when he was two weeks and it was made very clear that I 'should' still be at home in my PJs. I think people were worried that I was pushing myself to do too much too soon but I've always hated sitting in the house all day and found the early days with a newborn like being under house arrest and was desperate to get out, and it made me feel like I was doing it 'wrong'. I felt the same with DS2 but second time round no one commented because it's more normal to be out and about straight away with baby 2!

When I was childminding, one of the mums rang me at 7am to say she'd had her 3rd baby at 5am. I asked her if she wanted to keep her little boy at home or if she would like me to collect him for her. She said "No, we're both home today, little boy will be dropped off at 7.30 am as usual" I was amazed when she turned up with little boy and baby, having driven herself to my house!

[quote THATmamaofMANY]@Boysgrownbutstillathome thats awful i hope you made a complaint[/quote]
I don't think we did - I was concentrating all my energy on being a new mum. The community midwife may have done.

Taking my newborn crying baby out of my arms because I needed a break. Proceeding to then attempt to put my newborn baby in a sling (on them, not on me) so I could "have a break". I lifted the baby out of the sling and walked off.

About 5 days after I had DD4 I had to take DD3 into school for her first reception settling session. We only lived a short walk from the school and DH was on paternity leave so I left the baby at home with DH and took DD3 down the road to the school. When I got to the classroom with DD3 the head teacher was there overseeing and fussing at the new cute reception class. She then turned to me and asked when I was due….I had to tell her that my “bump” was in fact the aftermath and that she was 5 days old! Her face fell and she was immediately apologetic and mortified. Not as mortified as me I might add. I laugh about it now though 🤣

MIL and SIL called to say they were coming over, I said it wasn’t ideal as we’d just been discharged after a week in nicu. They were sat on the doorstep waiting for us when we got home and then DS needing feeding and I wasn’t comfortable feeding in front of them as we were still getting to grips with it so they said it’s ok you we can wait while you sit on the stairs or something. A week after my cat 1 section.
Our relationship never recovered

My own mother tried to have my son taken off me because she was jealous and wanted custody of him herself. She went to court and instructed a solicitor and everything.
I was reported to social services who came and basically investigated me and my whole life but they found that I am an excellent mother and her claims were unfounded.
My son is 20 next month.

In case nobody has said it yet
FUCK OFF WHICH EVER NEWSPAPER....
When my baby was 3 or 4 weeks old, we took a stroll to the local shops.
Outside the pub was my babies fathers vehicle.
Inside the pub I found him chatting up the barmaid......
I thought he was at work, which turned out to be yet another lie.

@Noideaatall Did your DP actually take them up on the offer then?! That's insane.

MIL. Always, ALWAYS my MIL.

Some background. First person in the family to breastfeed, gentle parent etc. First of friends to have a baby, my own parents several hundred miles away so I was a bit isolated.

Hated DS1 & DS2 names because we refused to go with the "family tradition" of permitting the paternal grandmother to pick the name (her taste is awful).

DS1 was 9 days old. Requires both boobs every 3 hours takes him an hour to finish a feed, cluster feeds from 7-10pm. DH and I exhausted. Day 9 he fed ALL night and then cried most of the day. MIL suggests we buy a swing chair thing. We refuse because we don't have room in our tiny living room. Next morning, 8am, we've finally all fallen asleep having had about 45 minutes sleep the night before, MIL arrives with FIL and the enormous swing we told her not to buy and instructs FIL to set it up so we cannot return it. Then she places DS1 in chair and when it made him scream more, told me my milk was clearly not enough for him and he was so clever he knew he wasn't getting enough nutrients from me so I should just give up the breastfeeding.

That night, I was flicking through the jokey Haynes baby manual a friend had bought us, only to find out about growth spurts.

With DS2, I got less mean stuff, or perhaps I paid less attention. The day after he was born a registrar sang the theme tune of a children's TV programme as he discharged me because DS2's (moderately) unusual first name is one of the characters. Had I not just had an unexpected breech birth, I probably would have clocked him one.

Upon visiting me in hospital the day after my emergency c-section, my mum pointed at my swollen postpartum tummy and asked when the next one was due!

My worst experience was when I had my twins. At 4 weeks old they couldn't keep anything down at all. Took them to the doctors to be told it was natural. I already had a four year old and knew it wasn't. Babies continued to deteriorate and I phoned for doctor's visits every day. One gave me hell and said I had my mother's instincts and should know better. My mum was with me and she got hell for not listing to GM instincts. Next day I got the health visitor - I had read about pyloric stenosis, a condition that needs an operation. She wasn't sure but the next day I phoned the doctor again and he sent them straight to hospital. It was indeed what I though it was and they were operated on. They were second born boys, non identical children and apparently the chances were one in a million - so what I knew something was wrong and if I had listened to the doctors and not persevered they would have ended up a whole worse.

My worst thing didn't happen to me but to my darling mother. She was told by her sister that she wasn't allowed to tell anybody that I was pregnant with first grandchild as it would take the shine off her own daughter who had just passed an exam....... My aunt has always been a bully and My poor mother was devastated