to have left a wedding early to get back to my baby

[horchatatresleches]

One of DH’s friends had a childfree wedding last weekend which was childfree. We have a 6 month old and left him with MIL for the wedding. We’ve started doing first tastes of food but he’s mostly breastfed. I left him with a stash of expressed breastmilk, and some foods he likes. We’d tested him with the bottle in the weeks before the wedding and did a trial with DS and MIL before the wedding for a couple of hours which was fine. I planned to leave after the meal and DH was going to stay late into the night with his friends.

Anyway, the day of the wedding for whatever reason DS wasn’t having it. MIL tried everything and he wouldn’t settle, wouldn’t feed either with milk or food and was getting more and more upset so she called me back. This was during the drinks reception so the couple were having their photos taken so I couldn’t say goodbye. DH stayed until the end and apologised on my behalf I had to leave early.

Now we’ve found out they were annoyed I left because they’d paid for my meal and could have used my spot for someone else. I know having a wedding is expensive but I don’t really know what I could have done differently. I do feel bad that they paid for a meal that I didn’t eat, but that’s how weddings go sometimes. I had a couple of people pull out on the day of my wedding who were sick and it’s just one of those things. Obviously DS is my priority and we RSVPed yes for me in good faith and it just didn’t work out.

To be fair, the op only got this second hand. For all we know it could have been said jokingly off the top of the head.

Congratulations to your LO on the acquisition of a tooth and I hope he feels better soon. My top wisdom teeth came through when I was a teenager, the bottom two when I was 20 and I was fussy and difficult too ;-) I can understand your LO wanting his Mum, because I certainly appreciated mine and the TLC she gave me - and I was an adult, more or less.

I don't get that. They've paid for her meal.whether she ate it or not. It's a sunk cost. It makes no difference whatsoever to them whether it went in her belly or the bin!

Imagine caring about one guest leaving early because their baby needed them, on your wedding day? If that's what you're thinking about, how shit was your wedding?

Some mils are also very intelligent and know that the dil has milk in her breasts and is therefore of more use to the hungry baby than her son who has none.

Don’t stress about it. It’s ok for them to be a bit rueful that a meal and spot went to waste but you didn’t do anything wrong. You might ask DH to mentally review how he told them - it’s possible that in the moment he phrased it in a way that didn’t make it clear that you had to leave unexpectedly. Saying just “she needed to get back to the baby” would be open for interpretation. If he thinks that might be the case he could find a chance to mention it and apologize again with a better explanation.

Unsolicited baby tip: at 6 months if they’re eating solids then babies can actually use a straw, and some exclusively breastfed babies take to those with far more enthusiasm than bottles at that stage. Straws are also infinitely better for oral development than sippy cups so it’s a good skill to start working on anyways. The First Years makes a good one called the Squeeze & Sip that’s specifically for that age.

Interestingly the op has determinedly avoided clarifying his many guests were present, only just saying it was a “small venue”.

Is you DH very close to the couple?

I’m really petty. I would buy them an M&S meal deal for 2 (you know, the posh one) and get it delivered to them with a card saying “sorry I upset you both for putting my baby before eating food, I hope this makes up for it”.

No you wouldn’t

There's lots of things you could have done differently or tried but you didn't.

Own your actions.

You said the couple haven't fell out with DH so stopped worrying over it. You could always offer to take them out for dinner in a few weeks to make up for it.

Unpopular opinion maybe but I think MIL was in the wrong. Panicked and pressed the red alarm button too early. Babies cry, that’s what they do. If I had been her I’d have coped and felt very pleased with myself afterwards that I’d managed to let my DS and DIL have a day out.

I had someone arrive and leave within an hour of our wedding. We were briefly, genuinely concerned for why she left. (We understood the why). Then forgot about it to focus on the big day. No once did we think about the money wasted.

Sorry but you have no idea what went on with Mil and the baby.
Unfair to suggest she should have left the baby crying. Mil was probably upset and getting stressed and baby would react to that too.

The only thing Op can be criticised for is not returning to the wedding after she'd fed and settled the baby.

What things ? What actions should OP own ? Why does she have to make it up to them ?

Why would she return ? Her DH was there, and it seems the bridal couple’s only concern was that she left before she ate. If the baby was as upset as OP says l certainly wouldn’t have left him to go back.

To enjoy the rest of the night?
She left before the meal. So probably no later than 5pm. The wedding probably didn't finish until 12pm.

It was his friend’s wedding and presumably he can’t breastfeed. The plan was always for him to stay on.

@Needspaceforlego

Sorry but YOU don’t know what was really going on either and nor, actually, does OP.

We only have the MIL’s account of it - baby crying, I can’t cope, come back.

Anyone who knows anything about babies (and this one was six months old so not a new born) knows they cry sometimes and eventually they do stop, and the heavens do not fall in.

Mil definitely wasn't wrong to ask her to come back. And Op wasn't wrong to respond.

If MIL had left baby crying and not called that's neglect
If Op hadn't respond thats also neglect.

I would agree, of course if the baby was inconsolable she would need to call but I would have waited as long as possible, given the event. I assume nurseries and childminders wouldn't phone the mum in the same circumstances.

Yeah they’d call if a baby were inconsolable.

They could have left the child for a bit longer (until after the meal)
The MIL could have taken the child to near the venue for bf
The OP could have returned after the wedding.
The OP could have declined the invite after the baby was born when they knew how old the DC would be and still bf.

The OP needs to own her decision to leave.
She can't change that now. If people are pissed off she can't change that.

Offer of taking friends out for dinners feels the right thing to do after waking out on their wedding. These people spent hundreds of pounds on guests and presumably are people they like and will spend time with in the future.

The OP made the right decision for her/Her DC on the day. I'm just saying acknowledge it and be nice/appreciative to your friends.

And if she called her son she would be in the wrong for not calling the DIL i pressume? 🤦🏻‍♀️

Babies, eventually, are always consolable. It all depends on what your tolerance for crying is. I suspect MILs was low. Nurseries are more used to it.

No one’s saying “leave a baby crying”.
You keep doing what you can to help them to stop. Eventually they do.

I was once on a 4.5 hour night flight where the woman behind me had a baby who started crying before takeoff and didn’t stop the whole flight. Nothing she tried to pacify it worked. That’s not “neglect”, it just is what babies do sometimes. It’s not a reason to do an emergency landing and call the cops on the mother.

(Saw it later in baggage reclaim and it was fast asleep, of course.)

Emergency landing a plane and calling the cops for a crying baby is not really the same scale of response as leaving a wedding early to go and feed it though is it? If a baby hadn't eaten all day and it stopped crying you might worry about it even more!