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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To not want DF to bring her baby everywhere?

999 replies

DijfunvKd · 11/02/2022 12:19

My friend lives a few hours away from me, and visits the area I live in fairly often. She had her first baby last year. When she visits, it's always with her DH.

Now she's had the baby, she will contact me asking if I want to meet her and the baby for coffee or lunch, and I always go. She will also ask if I want to go for a drink or nice meal one evening, and so I find a date on which I'm available. However, I then get messages to say she'll have to bring the baby because she'll need breastfeeding, or there is no one else to look after her etc. So we end up having a quick coke in a child friendly pub, or they both come to my house.

I don't mind the lunches with the baby, and do the expected 'isn't she cute?' (she is), 'is she eating/sleeping well?' small talk, but I find it extremely boring and do it to be polite and supportive. I don't want to repeat the same conversation on the evening.

DF will always say 'baby will be no trouble while we're out, she's very placid', but it inevitably becomes DF talking to the baby while I sit and make the expected cooing noises, and then she needs to leave early to get the baby to bed. If she had no option but to bring the baby to socialise then that would be one thing, but her DH goes off for hours with his friends, child free, well into the night, and I can't understand why she can't do that. If it was because she simply didn't want to leave the baby, then why ask if I'd like to go for a drink or nice meal in the evening?

During her pregnancy she was claiming nothing would change, that she'd still be going on holiday with friends and leaving the baby with her dad, and I thought she was deluding herself with that, but now that the baby has arrived she's swung hard the other way, which is her prerogative, but AIBU to think that her expectation that she brings the baby every time we see each other is ridiculous?

For information, the same happens when I visit her too, although that is less often because she visits friends and family where I live and stays with her parents.

OP posts:
Latecomer131 · 12/02/2022 12:43

@Ishouldreallybeonholiday , but OP's friend does know what having a baby entails and needs to stop messing OP about by constantly committing to child free evenings that she can't follow through on.

The OP is being more than a good friend by being happy to endure beyond boring baby-focused lunches with no real reciprocal conversation from her friend. She just doesn't want to also have her evenings sabotaged too, by the bait and switch thing, where drinks with her friend in a nice venue morphs into staring and talking to/about a child in a crap pub.

I scaled back meeting up with friends who did this, and now that I have a baby of my own I am very conscious not to bore my friends in this way or overpromise on the kind of socialising that I can do at the moment.

Ishouldreallybeonholiday · 12/02/2022 12:48

@Latecomer131 I don't agree with you. In my friendships I cut people more slack. I think the friend is trying (and perhaps yes failing) to still try with OP. I think OP is being really harsh. OP could gently steer the friend toward day time stuff instead of moaning about her friend behind her back on MN.

ToykotoLosAngeles · 12/02/2022 13:13

OP could gently steer the friend toward day time stuff instead of moaning about her friend behind her back on MN.

For the fifty billionth time, she has done this and friend either says "Aw, I was looking forward to it" or says she is busy during the day. I feel like people are missing that friend doesn't live locally and so if she's got lunch plans on say a Saturday lunchtime then that's it, she's off back to her house several hours away on a Sunday.

PickAndChooseMe · 12/02/2022 13:21

[quote Ishouldreallybeonholiday]@Latecomer131 I don't agree with you. In my friendships I cut people more slack. I think the friend is trying (and perhaps yes failing) to still try with OP. I think OP is being really harsh. OP could gently steer the friend toward day time stuff instead of moaning about her friend behind her back on MN. [/quote]
The OP has gently steered the friend towards day time stuff. The friend keeps rejecting the suggestions!

PickAndChooseMe · 12/02/2022 13:22

And then she guilt trips by saying baby wants to see Aunty Djif

Katya213 · 12/02/2022 13:26

@LuckySantangelo35. Got it done on me many a time when I was single from lifetime friends, once husband and baby came along, it was goodbye. I’m a single parent since the day my child was born, I had no time to entertain the idea of lunches and dinners, couldn’t have afforded them anyway. Quick text or phone call would’ve been the height of it and the friends I do have completely understood. OPs friend should not be arranging dates if she knows they aren’t doable!

Original poster
DijfunvKd · 12/02/2022 13:30

I did not go out with DF last night, I met someone else.

I replied to DF’s last message about the baby wanting to see me with ‘ah bless her! I was really looking forward to going to X, so I think I’m still going to go. Let me know if your mum can look after the baby for an hour.’

OP posts:
PickAndChooseMe · 12/02/2022 13:35

@DijfunvKd

I did not go out with DF last night, I met someone else.

I replied to DF’s last message about the baby wanting to see me with ‘ah bless her! I was really looking forward to going to X, so I think I’m still going to go. Let me know if your mum can look after the baby for an hour.’

That’s great! Hope you had a lovely time Smile
T00Ts · 12/02/2022 13:49

This thread would be such a good example for the other thread about some posters being ‘hard of comprehension’.

The OP so clearly said that her issue is not with her friend having a baby/not wanting to leave said baby, but with her friend consistently making adult plans with her that don’t involve the baby, only for them to always change into a shit-for-OP, convenient-for-friend amended version of plans that always include the baby.

Do people deliberately misread so they can be cunts to an OP, though, that’s what I’d like to ask some posters on here? Or perhaps they’re just dopey.

Anyway, I hope you had fun @DijfunvKd in the end. Wine

Somethingsnappy · 12/02/2022 13:54

@T00Ts, the same poster started that other thread! Smile

Theroughoperator · 12/02/2022 13:57

Do people deliberately misread so they can be cunts to an OP, though, that’s what I’d like to ask some posters on here? Or perhaps they’re just dopey.

They’re just typical cowardly keyboard warriors. In real life they don’t have the balls to speak up and probably lead pathetic lives but on here they can be as nasty and verbally abusive as they like without anyone knowing.

T00Ts · 12/02/2022 13:58

[quote Somethingsnappy]@T00Ts, the same poster started that other thread! Smile[/quote]
Oh! I never look at OP’s usernames, it seems!

MarceyMc · 12/02/2022 14:16

@Ishouldreallybeonholiday

It's ducking hard having a baby and not that easy to just leave them even with the father (especially if breastfeeding). I'm afraid you've got no idea of what having a baby involves and so you lack understanding in this situation and are not being a great friend at all.
Did you read the OP's posts or are you just here to be ignorant and outraged Smile
DonnyBurrito · 12/02/2022 14:43

Not a stretch, she literally said "I might like the child, I might not, I don't really care". That's just a weird thing to say about a friends child. Unless she's childfree, which makes it understandable. It also makes it clearer why she is finding the whole situation so impossibly grating. I think most mums that aren't up their own arses would cut the new mum (who is/was a good enough friend to make frequent plans with) some slack, there's plenty of commenters here that feel they would in this situation. OP doesn't seem to have the social skills necessary to navigate a simple conversation with her friend detailing her boundaries on plans changing, and so needs to bitch about how boring and dull said friend and baby are online.

TurquoiseDragon · 12/02/2022 14:52

@Ishouldreallybeonholiday

It's ducking hard having a baby and not that easy to just leave them even with the father (especially if breastfeeding). I'm afraid you've got no idea of what having a baby involves and so you lack understanding in this situation and are not being a great friend at all.
Well, I have two children and clearly you haven't read the thread, or even the OP's posts.

I have no problem in including a baby in some plans, however I would not include a baby in an adult event, especially if it's in the evening. And especially if, as OP says, that event ends up with OP's friend spending most of her time focusing on the baby and not enough time actually socialising with OP.

And in this case, it looks like the baby is never left with it's dad. Which doesn't sit right with me, because Dads need to learn to look after their own children too.

Ishouldreallybeonholiday · 12/02/2022 14:56

Wooooh went away and came back to so many people jumping on my views. It's just my view that's all 👍 Maybe OP should just leave the friendship then.

phishy · 12/02/2022 15:21

@Ishouldreallybeonholiday it’s an irrelevant and nasty view though

Mindthegaps · 12/02/2022 15:31

Maybe OP should just leave the friendship then

Definitely. The friend isn’t interested in OP and her life. She has other priorities now and and uses OP for brief moments of ‘adult’ time.

Ishouldreallybeonholiday · 12/02/2022 15:59

@phishy I'm not sure what I have said that is irrelevant or nasty?

Ishouldreallybeonholiday · 12/02/2022 16:01

@MarceyMc I'm not outraged. I'm feeling really calm actually and having a great day. I'm just giving a view 🙂

gogohm · 12/02/2022 16:05

You are delusional basically. Breastfed babies cannot really be left more than 2 hours, and even if they take bottles (mine didn't) not many mums want to leave their babies, even formula fed ones until at least a while, maybe 6 months + it's a bit easier but I certainly didn't until mine were school age - we ate out a lot but they came too (we didn't go to family friendly places I might add, mine liked proper food from young, took dd1 to a Michelin starred restaurant at 10 months (for lunch and they made such a fuss of her, chef cooked her special French baby food and every waiter was cooing over her, they were not busy)

anotherheadache · 12/02/2022 16:24

@DijfunvKd I'm so glad you stood your ground and went anyway. Have you heard from her since you said that? Hopefully it'll be the wake up call she needs. Or at least the opportunity to have a conversation with her where you can say "look I know baby is your world at the minute and I totally understand that, but it's frustrating when you ask me to go out to adult places, which I then look forward to, and then changing the plans last minute. Let's just do lunches with baby for a few months as that works for both of us, and then in 6 months we'll have a proper girls night out."

Movingonup22 · 12/02/2022 16:24

I can’t believe you wouldn’t pay for the baby’s manicure at the spa day OP. The issue would never have come up if you hadn’t worn that dress to the wedding. You knew what you were doing.

anotherheadache · 12/02/2022 16:26

@gogohm OP is not delusional, she's not the o Ed making plans then breaking them. The friend is delusional and selfish by repeatedly making plans then breaking them last minute.

ToykotoLosAngeles · 12/02/2022 16:41

@gogohm

You are delusional basically. Breastfed babies cannot really be left more than 2 hours, and even if they take bottles (mine didn't) not many mums want to leave their babies, even formula fed ones until at least a while, maybe 6 months + it's a bit easier but I certainly didn't until mine were school age - we ate out a lot but they came too (we didn't go to family friendly places I might add, mine liked proper food from young, took dd1 to a Michelin starred restaurant at 10 months (for lunch and they made such a fuss of her, chef cooked her special French baby food and every waiter was cooing over her, they were not busy)
You're right, as after all it is the OP who keeps asking the friend to go on nights out with her then deciding to change the venue and time as the friend can't possibly leave the baby at home... OH WAIT NO IT'S NOT