To feel sad seeing a 7 week old baby at DC's nursery today

[comfysketchers]

Dropping my 15 month old off at nursery today before work and there was another woman there at the same time handing over a 7 week old sleeping baby.

He was absolutely tiny and I just felt so sad looking at him thinking that he barely even knows he is out of the womb and his mum is dropping him off to spend all day with strangers in a noisy nursery environment.

I should also add that I live in a country that has excellent parental leave from the government plus most private companies pay at least 10 weeks of full pay on top of that, with many paying much more than that.

YABU - It’s perfectly normal for a 7 week old baby to spend 8 hours per day in a nursery.

YANBU - A 7 week old baby should be at home with its mum.

But they have said its best for the children to have a SAHM and if you won't do that you shouldn't have children. So, how do you stay at home AND have a career? Without having to sacrifice any of your career, and yet still being a SAHM? Can't do both things. So they are indeed suggesting that.

YABU for being a horrible, judgemental A-hole. You have no idea of the circumstances so keep your smug beak out.

So what? You don’t love parenting. So bloody what. It is a minuscule amount of time doing something you don’t ‘love’ for the benefit of the baby YOU, as an adult, brought into the world.

If you have PND or severe mental or physical health issues that is different, but if you are a mother that just cba to look after your baby because it’s hard work - then let me save my empathy and compassion for the baby that is rejected and discarded because they are tiny and dependent and require actual parenting!

Can you say that was the best choice for your baby without reverting to "happy mum, happy baby" rhetoric?

I really wouldn't be jealous

Me too. I will tell my mentally unwell female patients that they cannot see a women hospital consultant, however bad their history of sexual abuse. They should only see male consultants because women should not be doctors and should be at home when they have babies, not completing their medical training.

Except you don't know, do you? Because you might have
had a far closer bond if you'd brought them up yourself.

Other people have different ideas about what is best for their baby. Why do you find this concept so difficult to understand.

I firmly believe it will be more beneficial to my daughter to grow up watching me have a successful career than it would have been to stay at home with me for a period of her life she won't even remember clearly when she is older.

.

I don't think I even knew what day of the week it was when my DC were 8 weeks.

I find that quite odd, if you are presenting it as a normal part of early parenthood.

Sure the first few days were overwhelming. And many individual days & moments thereafter. But by 8 weeks I was functioning reasonably ok with my first baby & by the time of my 2nd was working, albeit mostly from home (an academic role) bar the day I delivered my lectures.

It’s up to the nursery to decide what age they want to take babies from, all nurseries will have different rules.
Just because your nursery says 3 months doesn’t mean people sending their babies to other settings that accept younger children is abuse

But why are you so judgemental? You say they don't affect anyone else, which is true. But other people's choices don't affect you and you feel the need to comment on them. Do you feel superior?

@BellaCriesAndThatsAlright I'm commenting on them because this is an anonymous Mumsnet thread which invites comment. You are presumably commenting for the same reason.

I wouldn't comment, and have never commented, on anyone's parenting in real life. I wouldn't dream of it. Real lives are far more complicated than Mumsnet threads, and I'm guessing that all of us would support our real life friends in whatever decisions they make, because we'd know the whole person, rather than seeing them as abstract (and possibly imaginary, given that the OP has vanished) online entities.

So fucking true. Some people seem to be stuck in the 50s

Holy fuck. What a thing to say to a working parent.

I assume your children’s father doesn’t have a good bond with his children?

Most posters have said it's best for the child to have a stay at home PARENT. That's certainly what I said. I did not once say "mother". I see no reason why a man can't do the stay at home part.

I was a SAHM when my DC were tiny and went back to my career after, I don't know why people always make out it's totally impossible to do and you're making this massive sacrifice. Yes you might be a couple of years behind where you would have been otherwise but you've got, what, another 30 working years ahead of you? Is it really such a massive ask to take 2 or 3 years out? I work in HR consultancy now and I work with clients who are always welcoming parents back to the workplace after career breaks and they're no worse off for it.

Utter fucking shite.

A bit late after the event though.

How would you suggest that a woman gets rid of her children if she finds she doesn't enjoy looking after them? Adoption? Would that be better than leaving them in daycare while she works?

There are a lot of people projecting guilt about their own parenting choices via their anger at the OP. If I had to send my OWN child to nursery at 7 weeks I'd find it very sad! Of course it's sad and not where a newborn baby should be.

DH and I brought up our DT’s. Nurseries don’t bring them up. How do you determine the level of bond between parents and child?
Are you a SAHM?

Then women shouldn't be SAHM's either.

Clearly if women only work because they can't be arsed to look after their baby, the same must apply to men.

Exactly!

I can remember being left at nursery when I was a tiny child and also not having my mum around after school because she was working. This is no shade whatsoever to my lovely mum, she had to work because my father was a feckless fuckwit, I adore her, but I DID miss her when she wasn't there.

Are the "it's child abuse to put your child in nursery if they are younger than 3 years old" not projecting their insecurity about their own life choices onto others then?

Neither DH or I have careers which could be put on hold for a couple of years and neither did we want to. Both DH and I grew up with both parents working so not unusual for us to do the same.

But how is going to work the same as "cba to look after my child"? You've been saying that if you can't do what's best for your children (which in your opinion is staying home), don't have them. I have to work. Financially, and for my own sanity, I have to go to work. I would go stir crazy at home 100% of the time. So i work part time. That's me doing what's best for my child. We have more money, I do not feel like I'm 2 seconds away from falling off the edge. Child has an excellent mother.

Take the financial side out of it. Before I actually had a child, how would I have known whether I would love being a SAHM? I do absolutely adore my days with DC. Wouldn't trade them for all the money in the world. But I couldn't have known that I couldn't spend every day doing that until I actually did it. Had that felt like the right thing for my child, I would have stayed home (again, taking financial away from it for a second). But if I disliked being home all the time, is that right for them? Or, because I THOUGHT I would be able to do it, is that tough shit now? I stay home or go back in time and don't have a baby?

The way you think is not how the world or people work. That's just a fact.

I actually believe most men don't really care whether they have kids or not. It's an occupational hazard of being married for a lot of them.

For most women it's a more active, conscious choice. But if a woman doesn't enjoy looking after children and prefers being at work, then that is fine. I don't really see what benefit there is to having children though if that's your preference.