Need to know if I’m being over-sensitive or if I’m right to be annoyed by a comment made at a recent mums’ night out.
Met up this week with four mum friends - we were all in the same mum and baby yoga class when we were all new first time mums and have kept in touch since, mostly by WhatsApp but we try and catch up a few times a year. Our first kids have all recently turned 4. They have all had at least one more since then, and two of them are pregnant with third babies. I only have one, despite our best efforts (it took us a while to conceive DD and we’re 18 months into trying for a second, and probably going to have to stop soon because age isn’t on our side and we don’t have money for IVF).
During our meal there was a lot of chat about sibling dynamics, pregnancy with a toddler, the challenges of managing the needs of two kids at once etc etc, and also about the activities they’ve been up to together whilst on their overlapping second maternity leaves, all of which is understandable although left me feeling pretty left out.
However, one of them (the one with the youngest second child in the group) made a passing comment which really stuck with me, which was that ‘You aren’t really a proper mum until you have two’. Her point was that if you haven’t had to manage two kids simultaneously and deal with their competing needs and personalities, then you haven’t done the hardest part of parenting and so you’re not a legitimate parent. The others didn’t really seem to disagree with her on this.
I was too caught out in the moment to say anything (and to be honest I already felt pretty isolated by the discussion) but the comment has stuck with me over the past few days and I can’t help but dwell on the idea that this is what everyone thinks and that I’ll never be a proper mum because we’ll only ever have one kid, and it’s really left me feeling low (my period rocking up as scheduled probably hasn’t helped matters). Part of me just want to fade away from the group as I’ll never meet their threshold of being a ‘real’ mum and it’ll only get worse as they all have more kids.
YANBU - it was an insensitive thing to say and you’re right to want to distance yourself
YABU - stop being so sensitive, they’re only being honest