What's the worst thing someone did when you had a baby?

[JustBiscoff]

Currently 37 weeks pregnant with DC2, and really starting to feel the wear and tear of juggling opportunities to rest, with working part-time and looking after a very active two year old.

The birth of DC1 had been a fairly traumatic forceps delivery, in which I lost almost 2.5 litres of blood and the baby was quite badly jaundiced, therefore requiring a prolonged stay in hospital. DC was the first grandchild/great nephew for both sides of the family, so received a constant flow of visitors in the first fortnight at home. PIL visited on day 3, and expected to be waited on hand and foot. I was still bleeding, barely able to stand up, and having a nightmare establishing breastfeeding...cue MIL clicking her fingers at DH, to 'collect the baby from his wife' so she could have a turn holding him. FIL asked me to leave the room twice whenever I needed to breastfeed, and following an hour long photo shoot of MIL holding DC (it later transpired they hadn't taken a single photo of me holding him), she demanded to know when dinner would be ready, 'because we've had such a tiring car journey'. At that point, DH almost saw red, and firmly cut the visit short, sending PIL on their way. I hope they are more considerate this time round!

Don't see an issue there tbh. Would you rather she got the sack?

My DD had a stillborn baby. A few weeks later the doctors surgery were sending letters and texts saying " Congratulations on birth of Baby X. Please make appointment for 6 week checks". She rang them and did her nut at them Then later got a call from surgery manager saying about how the person who had sent the letter was in floods of tears

Well, you would think someone would book annual leave or arrange a visit for a day off before having people travel hours, even without a newborn!

So sorry for your loss though

Visited me at home, overstayed their welcome and expected a lift home. I was exhausted!

I don’t see the issue here either.

In the hospital after having my first child (first grandchild on both sides) who was born weighing less than the first percentile.

I was trying to establish breastfeeding and visiting time was approaching. My husband's parents were due to come and visit but DD had just settled for a feed so I asked my husband if he could call and ask his parents if they could hold off for 10 minutes so that the feed was over - I am not particularly close to his parents and didn't feel comfortable feeding in front of them as, at the point, I had no idea what I was doing.

They had a total strop and refused to come and visit. Drove home from the hospital without seeing DD. Over the next few months we're constantly over an hour late for visits which. Had been prearranged, which was hard to manage with a breastfed baby who didn't sleep.

Keighley to Newcastle is over two hours! Would you seriously be OK with a four hour round journey with a newborn to see someone for an hour, or would you not think organising a time when she had a day off might have been more sensible?

FIL announced the birth of our second DD on Facebook - including spelling her name wrong and without her middle name which we hadn't decided on when we'd let him know!
We hadn't put anything on there yet or finished telling my family due to some being in US so waiting until their morning to send a message.
I was discharged from hospital just a few hours after birth and the first thing I had to do when I got home was stress about making sure everyone knew about the baby before they woke up and saw a second hand post on facebook 😡

No way as bad as some of these.

With DS1 the entirety of my husband's family (parents, siblings, aunties, uncles, cousins) arrived very shortly after I'd given birth. I was expecting PILs but not that many people. I felt totally overwhelmed 😪.

The day I was kept in hospital after my waters had broken my MIL was under clear instructions I didn't want any visitors in the run up to / during labour. Just wanted my husband there. She insisted on coming anyway. I was fuming and so was my husband and thankfully she got the hint so didn't stick around long.

With DS2, I was THREE days postpartum and MIL commented that I'd not lost the baby weight as quickly as I had with DS1! What a thing to say!

My newborn was in hospital with a bacterial infection and sepsis. My in laws visited when he came out of NICU but was still in special care. One of the first things my MIL did was stick her finger in his mouth. Husband immediately told her to get her bloody hand out of our sick son’s mouth. She got all indignant and said she was just testing his bite reflex, and that’s what the nurses would do. Yes, but with gloves on.

She really couldn’t understand why we were so bothered about it and I caught her doing it again on their next visit.

PIL arrived about 2 hours after baby born (I had a spinal block & forceps delivery) - I was fine with this bit - pleased even, it was how they behaved that was the issue.

Stayed for hours. Gave me no privacy when nurse nurse arrived - I asked for the curtains to be drawn and they came INSIDE them (did not know them well - me now would let them know they were on the wrong side but it blindsided me and I didn't say anything). Took photos of me looking awful even when asked not to several times. Then my DH had to leave when they did as it turned out they had brought our dog (DH dropped the dog off with them before bringing me to the hospital) with them and wanted to swap him over in the car park. We live 5 mins from them but 45 mins from the hospital. It was summer (thankfully late afternoon/evening but even so). Dog does not enjoy car journeys and we never leave him in the car. No idea what was going through their head - they had a key to our house so could've dropped him off there on the way over.

There was a lot more but that is what happened on the actual day of the birth. I now know (many years later) that I had a DH issue. He knew what they were like but did anything to keep the peace. He isn't like that now. Needless to say we managed things much better when DC2 arrived.

Ah my mother.

She was my birth partner for my eldest. Sneered at me immediately after the birth (hadn't even had my tea and toast) that I had no dignity left now she'd seen everything I'd got and then complained (loudly to the nurse) that she wasn't also offered tea and toast.

I'd had to move back in with her at 7months pregnant because my partner had an affair and ended the relationship. She had contacted a social services run nursing home (mother and baby) while I was pregnant/in hospital, lied about being concerned that I was a risk to the baby and I spent 10 months living there - the staff admitted to me that they had no idea why I was there. She told her friends that she'd set me up in a nice flat on the other side of the city (I know because one told me how lucky I was that she'd done that for me). She went to the GP the day after and got signed off work for 6 weeks due to the stress of having her daughter and newborn grandchild living at home with her. We didn't even step foot in her house for that 6 weeks.

She also spent that 10 months trying to get SS involved and used the fact I was in a mother and baby home as her reasoning. It failed. But it was all because she'd created a narrative around me being a 'problem child' and me having a social worker because I was unsafe to my child would have been a bit of a 'gotcha' for her.

My second was born prematurely by EMCS due to risk of her not surviving. She was nearly 6 weeks early weighing 3lb 9oz

She came to visit at the hospital and told my baby that one of her colleagues had had a baby as small as her the week before but she'd died. All with a smile on her face in a 'motherese'.

After my eldest was born, she'd allowed us to store the baby things in her loft but then refused to let us have them back for the second because she hadn't been the first person we told about the second being born when we were in the midst of the chaos and fear around the EMCS and trying to arrange emergency childcare for the eldest.

We told my dad because he stepped in to have the eldest and my husband's parents because they cared and offered us both support. She was only having supervised contact with the eldest by that point due to her behaviours.

When my husband did tell her (the day of her birth) she berated him and launched into a tirade of abuse about how she'd been denied the opportunity to support us too. Not once did she ask about me, the baby, him or offer any support.

Yeah, I think that was the worst.

We've been nc for nearly 13 years now because she actually managed to get worse!

Ironically, SS did end up being briefly involved but because of her behaviour and that is why we are nc.

@GreyCarpet christ that's awful, as are so many of the stories here. Did you correct the friend about the fancy apartment? I hate to think that her friends still think of her as a saint when she was so horrible in reality.

I'm glad it’s not just me that thinks they were all (ex included) completely fucked up. They all got progressively worse over the years glad to be rid of the lot of them. Current in-laws can be annoying at times but they’re not nasty and have never done anything like that with my youngest (they’re only biological grandchild) and treat my older one’s like their own.

I did but I wasn't confident doing so. She'd spent my whole life constructing a narrative around how awful I was and a liar (won't be a surprise that this was a continuation of childhood abuse).

My mother was a nice, respectable middle class woman with an adult daughter she'd characterised as being off the rails, a problem and who she'd sabotaged her whole life.

I could hear the words coming out of my mouth and I just sounded like everything my mother had ever said I was - a lying fantasist with severe MH problems. So I didn't push it. Because no one would believe that a decent person could do that to their child.

No bad experiences really, but people wanting to visit a baby straight after Mum had given birth can jog on, quite frankly. Mum needs time to heal!!

When I had my 4th baby MIL (completely healthy and only in her 50’s) had agreed to watch our other 3 while we were in the hospital as we had zero other support system. I unexpectedly went into labour at 35 weeks and ended up with an extremely traumatic cat1 emergency C-section (my first C-section, which i’d always been terrified of having) then baby was taken straight to NICU without me being able to hold or see her because they suspected she had sepsis. Anyway I was due to be in hospital for 3 days and the midwife care at my hospital was absolutely shocking and she and my partner knew that my mental health had considerably been affected by the birth and being stuck in hospital. MIL arrived at ours on the Thurs evening and was supposed to stay until Sunday evening when I would be out of hospital, so my partner could be with me as much as possible given how vulnerable I was. Yeah she didn’t. 8am Saturday morning she got in a taxi and left because she couldn’t cope with looking after our kids even though she knew we had no one else in the world to help us and my OH was begging her to stay. I ended up sat alone, crying in my hospital bed all day Saturday and all day Sunday while everyone else on the ward had family coming in and out to check on them. I didn’t sleep for days and by the time I got home my mental health was just awful. Still struggling with the PND and PTSD of the situation nearly 2 years later!

To make it worse though, she kept messaging me on her way home complaining about the trains being delayed and when she did get home she put up a picture of her with a glass of wine with her feet up… celebrating… her new job. That didn’t actually start for weeks. No mention of her new granddaughter or anything 🤷🏻‍♀️ She didn’t care that if she had stayed until Sunday she would have met baby, but instead didn’t meet her until she was 3 months old. Never quite felt the same about her after that! We have never asked for any childcare from her or favours so this was the first time and we were let down so badly that it was also the very last time we asked!

Well exactly, surely the parents are capable of arranging it at a time which works for everyone rather than assuming everyone can get the day off.

Unless there’s a huge drop feed coming that Grandma told them she could get the day off and then didn’t.

My twins were born premature and were in NICU for the first few weeks. I delivered by emergency c section and then 2 days later had to have emergency surgery. As a result of this, and the meds I was given for my surgery, my milk never seemed to come through properly.

Whilst sat in NICU on the most uncomfortable chair known to man, I was desperately trying to get one of the twins to latch on to feed, I was given no privacy and other parents (Dads) were sitting in the same space. One of the NICU nurses grabbed my breast and kept forcing it into my tiny babies mouth. I started to get upset and she told me "stop being selfish, this is not about you it's about feeding your baby". I felt dreadful.

When a much kinder nurse was on shift I finally made the decision that my babies would be formula fed. It was the best thing all round, but the nasty nurse gave me daggers whenever she saw me after that.

I had to stay in hospital for two days after giving birth. The hospital was ancient and has since been pulled down. The showers were grim, so I'd only had a quick wash all the time I was in there and my hair felt dirty.

I was discharged and looking forward to going home to have a decent wash. OH said he'd keep an eye on the baby so I could take my time and wash my hair. He'd even been out and bought some fancy shower gel and body lotion for me. I was looking forward to that.

I'd barely had time to take my shoes off, when his grandparents turned up unannounced. Ended up making them cups of tea and sitting chatting while I felt like a right skank!

If they'd rang in advance, I would have said come later in the day to give me time to freshen up and feel ready for visitors.

Pretty mild compared to others but my MIL:

Came to visit after birth of DS and the first thing she said was not "congratulations" or even "hello" but "when are you giving me a granddaughter then".

Made a comment about how my stomach was still big after the birth.

Spent the entire visit (a number of days as we live about 400 miles away from them) expecting to be waited on. Wouldn't even make herself a cup of tea etc. When I made a comment about how my parents had been up the week before with my brother and that my lovely DB had done all my housework for us without being asked she responded with "oh I don't do that. I hold the baby so you can do that sort of thing".

We were waiting to move to our new home so had 2 weeks staying with my parents and new baby. My mum was a narcissistic horrible person. Whilst I was still in hospital after a pretty horrific birth she had a massive row with me because I hadn't made a huge fuss of the christening mum she'd brought to the hospital when she came to see her new granddaughter. When I got to their house after being discharged my came into the lounge and very deliberately lit up a cigarette and smoked with my 3 day old baby still in her car seat.
We left and stayed in a hotel for the 8 days before we could move to our new house.

christening mug*

Shortly after we got home with first DC, tired but happy and calm, MIL came over. Flat was a bit untidy but not dirty, no crusty plates of food around or overflowing bins or anything. MIL looks around at the place like it's filled with vats of toxic waste and complains about the state of it and when DH get a bit indignant about that claims that we're 'obviously not coping'. Well we were fine and relaxed until she turned up! DH ushered her out at that point.

Erm, people who have jobs?