To have told NDN that dh won’t be helping her anymore?

[Babycarrierdilemma]

NDN has a young baby. We live on the second floor and she has been knocking or messaging every day wanting dh to help her up and down the stairs with the pram.

She has asked twice for a lift to an appointment next week as said she couldn’t manage the train alone. I told her that he can’t take her and she should sort out a taxi to which she said she cant manage car seat / pram and baby alone.

I had 2 carriers from when dc were little so I took them round and gave them to her said I didn’t have instructions but I was happy to show her or could send her the link to YouTube for each one. I said to her that we can’t help her anymore as it’s really getting too much. It literally is as I’m fed up of the daily requests and it’s almost like learned helplessness?

She messaged dh that evening upset and he’s told me I’ve been really unkind ??? It’s caused an argument and I’ve had to say it’s now a deal breaker if he continues to let her disrupt our lives this way?

You dh can always say no

he doesn’t want to and she knows that

your problem is your husband wanting to help out so much if he didn’t she wouldn’t be asking

I was imagining a tiny newborn, what a CF texting your partner you'd been unkind!!!

Why does she even have his number

Agree! Except for the bit about going round there. You both need to stop responding to her texts.

Just pretend she didn’t send them and ignore for a day. Don’t suppose there’s any way you can physically leave and stay with family for a couple of days or something to get away from her?

A bit extreme but it might help, then you can blithely ignore her and in two or three days when you’re back just tell her sorry you didn’t see her messages, you were away.

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Clearly the issue impacting on OP’s life isn’t the literal cumulative amount of time her DH helps this woman, it’s the dynamic that is being set up.

Sweet, pretty, lovely, helpless, grateful neighbour who needs his help and makes him feel good vs nagging, critical, unkind wife who makes him feel bad for just trying to be nice. Unfortunately OP has massively played into this narrative by going to the neighbour behind her DH’s back, resulting in this escalation.

OP what I think you should do at this point is have a “cards on table” talk with your husband about how you’re feeling about all of this, and ask him to support you and be on your side by setting some boundaries for the neighbour. If he won’t you’ve got big problems.

Exactly, his own family should be his priority and so should his employment. He’s WFH not lazing about. I would hate to have my train of thought broken when working and having to step away to collect someone’s groceries or take them to appointments.
Your DH is being far too accommodating and some people will take advantage of this…I speak from experience.

A pram (rather than a cheap fold up buggy) is absolutely fine for going up and down stairs. You just have to walk up backwards. Maybe send her a YouTube link of how to do it because she is an absolute piss taker.

She sounds a little needy and lonely and possibly pnd esp as a new single mum

lovely he wants to help but not all the time and if he is in a meeting to him to ask you is cheeky and you need to say no

going behind your back moaning to him about you is also very wrong and I would pull her up on it

unless it is council , why on earth did she move to a 2nd floor flat

guessing no lift

Whenever a woman acts badly there is always a million excused why she is not held responsible for her actions ie maybe it is PND, maybe she has OCD, maybe it is anxiety, maybe she is on her period, maybe it is IVF, maybe he is cheating, maybe she is jealous

Are women ever accountable for their behaviour?

Either she is having issues and isn't coping with the baby. Or she has a thing for your husband. Sorry!
I had a baby and lived in a block of flats. I would put the baby in the sling. Or leave the pram at the bottom the stairs. Sometimes i carried baby in one arm and pram in the other down the stairs! I'd have felt embarrassed asking the neighbours daily! What happens if you aren't at home or on holiday, she would have to cope then.

New mum. On her own

i see many mums with pnd in my job - it’s not an excuse

Your husband is happy to hrlp. You’re mot happy to help, and you’re not happy for your husband to help. You’re irritated. Your husband isn’t irritated. He thinks she needs help. You think she’s a cheeky fucker.

All these problems would go away if your husband would do as he’s told. You don’t have a CF NDN problem. You have a disobedient DH problem.

Sure, but to be fair it can be quite difficult to find room for those on some trains and pretty much impossible to take them on the bus.

It's such a shame when people start taking the mickey with help. It's nice to help out neighbours with the odd thing - carrying a few shopping bags once a week, the occasional lift, etc. But this woman is clearly overstepping. She absolutely cannot rely on others every time she leaves her flat or comes home, that's a ridiculous level of ingrained helplessness. Maybe your DH could help her source a more suitable buggy that she can carry herself?

Her problems aren't your or dh problems
Both of you are neighbours not the hired help.

As a woman with a disability, you saying "you can't abide helpless women" makes wish I lived in a different society

This. I had to do this with twins!

She sounds very immature but I will say that her situation can't be easy and she probably has PND if she's crying all day.

I would have cut her some slack and helped her but now she's gone behind your back and complained to your DH which is just bad behaviour, PND or not. Also the shopping thing is just CF behaviour unless she has a birth injury or something. If the baby is over 4 months old a C section should be healed by this point.

I take the ''helpless women'' part an act some women play ''I am just a poor little woman I am so helpless and need a big strong man to give me attention"

Not anyone living with an actual disability - not even close to be being the same

I voted YABU because you made a unilateral decision about your DHs time and behaviour without discussing it with him first.

I’d be fucking fuming with my DH if he was this controlling and it it would take a lot for me to move on from that. I’d also help whoever I wanted following this and tell him to block her number if it bothered him that much.

You can be bothered by this as much as you like but you don’t get to make decisions for someone else and take action on those.

Red flags 🚩 here. You set a boundary and expectation and your DH sides with NDN. WTF? Nothing might be going on but he clearly gets a kick out of being needed by ‘young pretty’ helpless NDN. Risk that will only grow stronger over time. Be vigilant OP as damsel in distress may well be after your man and/or is using her attractiveness to hook your man (and it’s working!) into thinking she’s the bees knees.
I’d be cross that she already seems to have a hold over him given his reaction.

Why does this sound like those responses people do about a puppy when they put on ''that voice'' and talk about the puppy like it is not in the room

Alll these = ''well what he needs to do is" or "he needs to tell the neigbour''

Does he have his own brain or was in superimposed into the OPs?

Why won't you say that?

Being deliberately helpless and manipulating people to help you do things you're capable of doing yourself isn't remotely similar to having a disability and needing support for that reason

From what OP's described, I'd want to be that cat pissing to mark its territory. The fact that the NDN would go crying to OP's DH about how "unkind" his DW is, indicates to me a certain degree of familiarity (if not intimacy) between them. And instead of defending his DW to NDN, he defends NDN to DW and now he's "sulking"?.
It was only a few months ago I was reading a thread on here where the OP's DH was "helping" the single NDN. Long story short, he finally admitted he'd been intimate with her (Oh, but it was OK because it was just oral, not penetrative - FFS some men! 🙄 )
Yup, just show me where to lift my tail and spray. 🐈

Dh sounds like a chronic people pleaser but you should have asked him if all this help bothers him, not decided to tell her off yourself without him knowing.