To think premature birth doesn’t compare to the annoying late stages of pregnancy

[Baloo592]

I had my baby very prematurely - it was traumatic, as these things are, involving immediate separation for the baby to go to NICU, over a month hospital stay and tube feeding, oxygen etc etc. I was also unwell. People who know how early my baby came quite often say a version of “the late stages of pregnancy are pretty horrible though and you got to skip that”. The implication being that I’m …what, lucky (?!) that my baby arrived a couple of months early. The more I hear this, the more it enrages me. I’m sure the late stages of pregnancy are a pain (I may never know at this rate) but, surely, there is just no comparison to the trauma of being immediately separated from your baby and that separation continuing for over a month and seeing your baby unwell. I’m not sure if people aren’t sure what to say, or they think they need to come up with a weird positive OR they just have absolutely no idea what having a very premature baby entails so they think it’s an apt comparison. Anyway I heard it again recently and it’s still annoying me so:

YABU - people are uncomfortable and trying to think of something to say when they say you’re fortunate for skipping the end stages of pregnancy

YANBU - the annoyances of late stage pregnancy are not an apt comparison to the trauma of giving birth very prematurely

People say some pretty stupid things about pregnancy and birth. I didn't have a premature baby but did have one ill in special care and a few people said "oh at least you got good nights sleep for that week". I'd have obviously taken the broken sleep to have my baby with me.

I can't even begin to imagine how annoying it must be to have someone say having all the stress and worry and separation of a premature baby is comparable to being uncomfortable.

People are thoughtless and sometimes downright stupid. As a general rule it’s never appropriate to react to someone’s painful, traumatic or just plain difficult situation with a sentence beginning “Well at least…”.

Yes this is exactly how I feel, and sorry to hear about your LO. I think the first few times it came up, I was a bit nonplussed but I’ve been surprised by how common a statement it is and so the feeling has compounded a bit. I can only assume it’s a combination of clumsiness and people trying to salvage some positive but we should just sit in discomfort sometimes, acknowledge something must have been really hard etc / ask questions. LO doing so well anyway for PP ❤️ And sorry to hear of other people’s experiences in similar and different situations.

As others have said, people aren't genuinely comparing the two, they're trying to think of something positive/reassuring. Like you said we've all been there and done it - your feelings are definitely valid and I would feel the same as you, but I would just keep in mind that they're probably not trying to minimise, they're just trying to say something positive.

No one has said that to me but someone did once say “ah but then they stay tiny babies for longer so that’s nice” and I just stared at them with no idea how to reply.
Actually someone did once say to me that I’d gone back to pre pregnancy size quick and maybe it was because I had my baby early; it may have been true but it was a poor consolation prize for the trauma.

People say weird things to people with babies in hospital. I got a lot of "Wait til he's out; you'll be wishing he was back in the hospital!" Funnily enough, I never did...

I was 8 weeks early and weighed 3lb.
I have so many diagnosis now compared to my siblings. Probably isn't all down to being premature but funny how they are "ok".

It's uncomfortable for the mum yes but at least there baby has a better chance.

As someone who has twins and was lucky enough to get them to full term I am disgusted by the comments people have made to you. Late stage pregnancy is very uncomfortable and in some cases painful.

Early birth and a NICU stay I can only imagine to be the scariest time in any parents life, and highly traumatic to the parents.

I would take discomfort and pain for myself any day over fear for the life of my child.

ignore the idiots. I hope all is well now and baby is safely with you at home

Every day I am shocked by the stupidity of some people. The general irritation of the late stages of pregnancy in no way compare to the trauma and stress of a premature birth.

I’ve never had a premature baby and fully understand that.

I'm stunned that people say that. Horrified in fact.

@HoppingPavlova wow, you seriously consider yourself really lucky that your baby had multiple surgeries because it meant you got more sleep. One of those things you shouldn’t say out loud!

and I hope you weren’t trying to compare this to the NiCU situation - all the NiCU mums I met including myself were up pumping every 3 hours and worrying about our babies not enjoying lovely relaxing nights of sleep 🙄🙄

It is a silly and thoughtless thing to say, however your voting option weren't fair and I did vote YABU.
As you say yourself, they are not actually saying that "you got lucky" or that it compares to premature birth in any way. You're interpreting that way as an implied meaning.

It's quite a jump for what I would think is primarily a clumsy way to say something comforting in a difficult situation. People says stupid things when they are uncomfortable, and try to relate using their experience.

Got to be honest I have never ever heard that being said to anybody ever. So I don’t think the comments made to you are the norm.

As you have only recently had your baby, thoughtless things that people say will hit you hard, but when you've got a few years under your belt hopefully it will fade away and not hurt anymore.

As a comparison, my dd (first and only) was born by cs at 30 weeks, was in NICU for 60ish days, went through all the problems early babys have; ventilator, blue light, central line, bleed on brain, that gut rot thing etc and obviously I was in a bad place with the stress and worry, but I also saw the bright side.

I didn't have to look after her 24/7 while she was in hospital, I could rest and recover myself while she has attention from nurses whenever she needed it.

When she started taking milk, I expressed and the NICU nurses would feed to schedule round the clock, so when dd could finally go home she was kinda sleep trained already and slept through the night. I think this also contributed to her being a calm contented baby who didn't scream very much.

Dd was so small she was easily carried in a sling and went from sling to walking so never needed a buggy, so there were positives in my case.

It was 10 years ago now, no one but us knows or cares the circumstances that happened to get here, those times are not raw anymore thankfully.

I voted YANBU because, clearly, YANBU. However, YABU is also true.

Sorry to hear you’ve had such a difficult time recently OP.

People make mistakes and it’s rarely deliberate when they say the wrong thing and often just say the first thing that comes to mind when taking turns to chat or to fill up the silence. 🤐

I’m a chatty sod so I find any silent periods very unnerving. Jeez, I would probably be top of the leaderboard for the number of times I’ve unwittingly said the wrong thing to someone and only realised my mistake afterwards, if then…?

I have a friend who was clearly traumatised by her birthing experience but I only met her when her LO was at school. I probably didn’t appreciate initially how stressful her experience was until years later when I realised how often she re-told some of her stories about the NICU stay, as she’s generally a very together sort of woman. It might be that your friends had fairly average birth experiences and see you as a capable person getting on with stuff and don’t realise how upsetting this has truly been for you?

DS2 was born at 27 weeks, a few days before Christmas, and I was too stunned to respond when someone suggested it was a nice Christmas present.

But people just say things without thinking through what it actually means.

Both of your options are true, but people need to get better at either not saying anything, or just saying the obvious thing, instead of saying something daft to ease their discomfort.

I hope you and your baby are doing well now.

People who haven't experienced nicu have no idea and even those who have but it's a short, uneventful stay can't imagine the full horror of a long stay, watching your baby be resuscitated, alarms beeping, surgeries, lifelong disabilities. They don't know what to say to people who have experienced it and often there is no right thing to say as anything could be upsetting but not saying anything also leaves parents feeling isolated. It's a no win situation.

@Baloo592 people said this to me twenty-five years ago.

No, having an unexpected labour and premature baby, and having to leave her in the NICU and go home without her is most definitely not better than missing the final few, uncomfortable weeks of pregnancy. As you can tell, it still annoys me now.

I'm so sorry that you are experiencing this, too 💐

I had a hellish end to my pregnancies, ended up in crutches and almost a wheelchair with my last. Constant pain and nausea, plus rapidly declining mental health. I'd happily deal with that again then have a premature baby and the rollercoaster that is NICU.

People say things without thinking and it's pretty hurtful.

I would be upset at that op, I don't think you can compare the two but I do think when someone comes up against someone else's challenging situation they try and put a positive spin on things. I don't think it's done out of any malice but I can see why you would be upset

When I was pregnant, I refused to go along with the plan to deliver my baby early, so I had to meet with the head of maternal fetal medicine. He explained that my baby would be just fine in the nicu. I asked him if there was any risk to my baby waiting until closer to my due date and doing an emergency csection of if I went into labor early. He said none, but we are trying to give you a pleasant birth experience. My child dealing with the trauma of the nicu vs my own birth experience. This was supposedly the highest expert in the region. I won. My baby got to stay in utero.

YANBU, that’s a really insensitive thing to say. The end stage of pregnancy is uncomfortable, but nobody would choose an option that was much more dangerous for their baby just to avoid it.

I think that when people try to put a positive thing on something like this it invalidates your trauma. And it was traumatic! I was as big as a house in the late stages of my pregnancies but, ffs, I wouldn’t have swapped it for them coming 10 weeks early.

Sometimes all people need to say is “that must have been fucking hard”