To think new mums are sometimes misled with the amount of ‘help’ to expect

[SneakyLilNameChange]

Friend recently had a baby and was speaking to me a few weeks later about how no one had ‘helped’ her in the early days. She has a v supportive partner who had 4 weeks off and did at least his fair share and then some but she meant friends and family really. The books she had read said when guests come she should go nap or ask them to do washing etc when in reality she felt cheeky asking them that and no one offered or started doing tasks/chores around the house. Something on social media suggested saying people could visit only if they bought a meal which she apparently suggested to a sibling who came with no meal and thought she was joking. Despite having all their family come, coo and bring gifts and support them emotionally she feels really let down.

It made me think actually that all sounds like normal family behaviour and telling women their visitors will roll their sleeves up and run a hoover around or bring meals is unrealistic. Some family will and it would be lovely to have that obviously but for most people it’s them and their partner who do everything. It certainly was for us!

This is lovely and I hope I can do the same for my DC.

I had the opposite, my mum kicked me out when I was pregnant at 18 and refused to come to the hospital and have no support ever since.

When my SIL gave birth she went to the hospital just to ask my brother to borrow money.

My sister is now soon to give birth and my mum has said she won’t have anything to do with the baby because my sister won’t let her live with her (it’s only a 1 bedroom).
My mum has somewhere to live she just refuses to pay rent so gets kicked out.

I’m not going to lie I do get a bit jealous when I hear about supportive parents but I still enjoy hearing about them as I think it’s just lovely.

It also helps me to see what is ‘normal’ and gives me ideas of what I can do to help other people, as as silly as it sounds, unless you’ve had that support yourself, it’s sometimes difficult to know how to help.

I had a 2020 baby, born on the day our area went back into local lockdown. So no village - although my MIL did the washing that built up during the week DD and I were in hospital, and a neighbour dropped round a lasagne when we got home. I had made sure the freezer was stocked anyway, and used the time stuck in hospital to do an online shop of easy things to eat too.

I did miss having visitors and was very sad to have to hold my baby up to the window to ‘meet’ her grandparents/ my sister at first. On the other hand, I did appreciate not feeling any pressure to get dressed or host any visitors.

The thing about the village that people apparently had in the past - it very much came with strings attached. You had to accept well meaning and not so well meaning advice from aunties and mothers in law etc, deal with everyone knowing your business and the judgement you’d get for not scrubbing your front step or whatever it was. You also had to play your part being the village for other people. Nowadays we’re all about boundaries and ‘our own little families’ and going low contact etc etc - so can’t expect the village to just materialise at the drop of a hat after previously living in such an individualistic way.

I do actually feel like I have a bit of a village these days - but it is the result of some pretty conscious choices. E.g we purposefully moved back and stayed close to family when we were thinking about ttc. I’ve always helped out my own family with childcare amongst other things and make the effort with in laws even when they drive me mad sometimes. I went to local baby groups and toddler groups and built friendships which I put some effort into maintaining rather than just dismissing them all as ‘not my thing’ or ‘too cliquey’. Have continued to support and volunteer where I can at such groups, and generally be as much a part of the local community as we can. We’re still not overflowing with offers of babysitting or anything like that, but I do feel confident that we would have quite a few options in an emergency which is probably as much of a village as anyone can hope for really. Not everyone can do those things or have those options though, I know we’ve been lucky.

Most people who p opped round for a visit were interested in holding the baby. I don't really know where all these books get their ideas from but very few people offered to help beyond washing up their tea cup. Dm did come to stay for a week when dh had to go away and tried to help a bit and when our second dc came along and had to go into hospital my inlaws came and mil did all the washing and ironing for me. Neither my parents or inlaws live nearby though so maybe if they did they would've been round to help more.

What a weird attitude. They have to earn photos of their grandchildren by helping?

I didn't think of nursery from 9.30 to 12.30 four mornings a week as a luxury but as a necessary developmental mechanism. Both children went from 2.5 until they started primary the September after their 4th birthday. But yes we had to pay for it.

There was state nursery provision from the September after the 3rd birthday but not all primary schools provided it and it was only for 2.5 hours (9am to 11.30).

It depends, I see some grandparents helping a lot, running themselves ragged and doing more than should ever be expected. Then some grandparents who don't help at all. A healthier balance would be somewhere in the middle.

Also found older generations were shocked at how little time you spend in hospital after birth now and how little help you get when you are there, but then don't realise how it impacts the first few weeks when you are exhausted before you even begin. They forget that you've not had time to recover before you even come home.

And not just these people - all the neighbours she's run errands for, family that she'd helped, friends that she'd been there for....

If people want hep with a baby in the early days - then they need to pop their bubble of no visitor rule

also sort it out at the baby shower, make tickets of help and let people take a ticket at the abby shower of help they can offer int he first 2/3 weeks for the couple or 4/5 weeks for the new parents after birth.

You don't want to have several guests turn up with a cottage pie or help with the laundry of you want a nap.

I think it’s a shame she was mislead to expect this. Maybe a mum or sister would do this but not a work colleague popping in to see baby. But it’s not realisitic. Unless you’ve had a very traumatic birth four weeks off for dad should be enough of medical recovery for basic day to day life (I don’t mean ironing or spring cleaning, I mean fed and washed) we had no family, you muddle through, nothing has to be perfect

I think she has been misled, those videos are usually targeted at the child free people as an attempt to help them understand what a freshly postpartum Mum needs. Here’s the thing though, the algorithm will not show that to them cause they aren’t looking at pages upon pages about having a baby, things they need and so on and so on.
I remember seeing hundreds of those videos when I was pregnant, mixed in with videos about how we shouldn’t have visitors at all and be in the newborn bubble and then all the demands we should have for them when we do allow them to visit.
Honestly social media is toxic as fuck.

I’m going a little against the grain here, but I work with new mums and see the vulnerability very regularly.

Before I had a baby, I would never have thought to do any of those things or really understood their value. As it was, I had a Velcro baby who I struggled to feed, no family close by and hadn’t met many other mums yet. None of my good friends lived close to us.

These days, if a friend has a baby, or a subsequent child, I’m all over it. I never have expectations of baby cuddles (mine never went to anyone) and I 100% offer to do chores, and either bring food or book a COOK delivery or vouchers. I also talk to new mums both personally and at work about managing expectations of themselves. Something we are in my opinion often misled with is how hard it is to adjust to things being very different once the baby arrives, especially once the adrenaline has worn off.

This! She sounds like an entitled idiot to me (sorry to be so harsh!)

We are now in the position of new parents being encouraged to actively push away the very people who should be their main source of support in the early days.

Yep. All the way through this thread I've been thinking of the many many threads on Mumsnet about keeping visitors away in the first weeks.

If you or your friend qre taking all parenting advice from social media sites i would be very concerned for all parties reasons being is the adults obviously have zero common sense and cannot think for themselves at all and will not do anything unless social media tells them to therefore raising concerns for the childs welfare

Hmm rose coloured glasses and the passing of time soften things somewhat

Plus everyone’s different. A week long maternity admission is quite different to 24 hours or less. Some people’s birth injuries make walking different.

Yes emotional support, which might just be someone popping in and having a cuppa and a chat, is really valuable. You can leave the dishes, at least for a while, but when you feel so alone you need someone.

My mum, MIL, DH aunt and my aunt all bought food, did the dishwasher, took washing home with them to wash and dry etc....i didn't ask but they just did it

Perhaps new parents don't want visitors precisely because visitors are an imposition, rather than a help?
If people only want to come and hold the baby, be served a cup of tea, tell me how tired I look - why would I want that?

Shakeyourbaublesandsmile · Today 08:17
You may have had a terrible experience but unless you felt unsafe and in a life threatening situation you did not have ptsd fgs…..ptsd is a really debilitating condition.

Oh yea, it's only MEN in wars that can claim the PTSD status cos they had it so bad.

Meanwhile it is men that are the cause of a lot of PTSD in women - domestic violence in around 25 percent of marriages

The symptoms of PTSD are very similar in women - being abandoned with a new baby while believing that a deadly virus is all around does feel life threatening.

I believe that PTSD is rife in mothers. Overstimulation from kids for at least a decade can wreck the nervous system, the feeling of being trapped too and left to get on with it by the world...

Bcs no one is entitled to photos of my children? 🤷🏼‍♀️
My parents are quite hands on and offered a lot of help. If they visited once, did shit and never showed any interest appart from social media updates I would sure as hell not act as a supplier of cute baby photos.
Relationships go two ways

Not just the time in hospital but seems very little support from midwives when you get home. I had a week in hospital with my first, then the midwife came in twice a day for two days and was then happy to do once a day for the next five days when I was handed over to the health visitor who visited me two or three times and then I would see her at clinic, I think she'd have visited more if I hadn't gone to clinic regularly. Similar set up with second except I was having trouble establishing breastfeeding so health visitor was coming in on her way into work, lunch time and on her way home. She did that for 2 days until she was happy all was well. That sort of support doesn't seem to happen now.

I didn't expect any help and didn't get any. Family all lived miles away so only saw baby a handful of times during the first year. I was fine with that.

I guess if you're expecting help and don't get it you're bound to be disappointed. But 'It takes a village' is long gone. Everyone is run ragged with juggling full-time work, school pick ups and drop offs, extra curricular activities and their own housework to have the time to support a new mum.

I guess the questions are: why did this new mum expect help? How many new mums had she helped in the past? Had she spoken to her family before her baby arrived to agree levels of support? What help have other new mums in her family and friendship group had? Why does she believe everything she sees on social media?

It's a shame she feels she didn't get the help she was expecting but her expectations were completely unrealistic.

When I had my 4th , my MIL cleaned my house from top to toe and left dinner in the fridge and 3 vases of roses on the kitchen bench, cuddled bub, and said I'm sure you are tired I'll get out of your hair, (20 minutes after I got home from hospital) unless you need anything. I'm just standing there flabbergasted saying thank you so much, you don't have to leave. She said DH can look after the older kids and you go have a rest.
Total saint that day!
Not always. 😂but mostly. Nobody gets it right all the time. Even new mums!
My mum was the one who would come and stay when my DH worked away so I wasn't alone.
Both fantastic grandmas.
My dad was more the step up the minute something needed doing/fixing/ driven somewhere or taking on outings or to the movies,
Other Grandpa not super interested.

After the first big clean by the MIL I would have been embarassed if she did it again, so it's a fine line. Us poor mums , it's so hard to get it all right.

I honestly can’t imagine going to visit someone ( close friend or family) with their newborn and not saying “Right, what can I do?” Just sitting there and letting them ‘host’ is pretty crappy behaviour in my opinion.

I didn’t expect much help because my family appear to believe that if you have more than 2 then you obviously have your shit together and they wouldn’t think about helping to make lunch during a visit.
But they do have a point - I would feel daft if someone offered to do a household chore for me if I was physically capable of doing it but I would love them for offering!