To think my cousin's baby might have died?

[AsIfIWish]

I'll try and make this short. I feel like this is both a very minor yet possibly a very major question! My family/extended family members are all very friendly with each other, but my parents moved a long way away from the rest of the family when I was young, so I've never been close to my aunts, uncles and cousins and don't see them much now that I'm grown/married myself. We see them at weddings, funerals and the occasional big birthday family gathering, but that's it. Just due to covid and lack of family events etc, it's probably 6 years since I saw the cousin in question as they live the furthest away.

I always send Christmas cards to these family members to show I'm thinking of them, but most of the time I don't know much about their lives, save for the couple of people who include letters with their news. This is especially the case on my dad's side of the family, because relatives sometimes tell him things on the phone and he forgets to tell my mum, or any of us!

So, I'm about to write a card to my cousin on my dad's side, when I suddenly remember that last year in her card to my parents (and possibly her card to us too, I can't remember), she wrote that they were expecting a baby, due in March this year. The only trouble is, neither I nor my mum or dad have any recollection of being told about this baby actually being born...

I feel awful not putting anything about it in the card, in case the baby WAS born and my dad forgot to tell us, but likewise I don't want to assume that everything was fine and dandy and include the (nameless!) baby in the card, just in case something awful happened.

I can't ask the cousin myself and nor will my mum (I asked her), but my dad won't get round to asking anyone about it for weeks either - if at all. I also need to send my Christmas cards asap.

Help. What do I do?!

Agree with this. If you haven’t got the relationship where you feel comfortable asking, or know so little, it’s probably time for them to drop off the list.

Why do people do that 🤷‍♀️

Seems a bit of a stretch to go from not hearing if a cousin has given birth, to thinking the baby has died 🤔

"Good news travels fast, bad news travels faster" so I am sure you would have been told such sad news

Why are you even sending a card? If you know so little about their life and don’t spend any time with them I doubt they will care if you send one.

@mumofbun

I wouldn't send a card if I knew that little about them or be able to ask someone about them

@Springbaby2023 · Yesterday 23:18

I mean I just probably wouldn’t bother sending a card to people I don’t know well enough to know if they had a baby nine months ago or not!

Yeah - like they said, I don't understand why people send cards to people they clearly aren't that close to/don't have fairly regular contact with...

@AsIfIWish If you do feel the need to send a Christmas card, just 'Merry Christmas to <cousin's name> and family' will suffice.

Thinking about this more - if you don’t have a relationship where they would message you to tell you the baby was born and therefore have not sent a Congratulations on the New Baby card (and obviously didn’t have a burning desire to be told so you could send a new baby card), why have you got a need to send a Christmas card now and are tying yourself up in knots about it? Personally I don’t keep or really care about Christmas cards from peripheral people, I have however kept every single “congrats on the birth of your baby” cards.

Due to my own health reasons and memory issues/brain fog, it's quite likely that I could have sent a gift and card in the post and completely forgotten about it. I've had the year from hell so not much has stuck in my mind. I write everything down to combat this, and if an event somehow got missed (I have nothing written down about this one), then it can be like it never happened! 😔

As other people have said, I would hope that we'd have heard if the baby had died, but my Dad's side of the family are utterly terrible about sharing news of any kind, so I honestly don't know if it would have made it to me, should that have been the case. (I do hope that I would have remembered that, though!!)

Apparently my mum spoke to my auntie not that long ago (I think she phones her once or twice a year) and forgot to ask about the baby, and then later on thought it was strange that the baby had never been mentioned by my aunt – for whom it would be her first grandchild! – which is another reason why we have both been pondering this a little! You'd think most people would gush about a new grandchild even if the child were poorly in hospital or something...

Just write the card to the couple.

In the unlikely event that something happened to the baby, you'll have avoided upsetting them by mentioning it.

In the more likely event that they've had healthy child and haven't told you about it, they really aren't going to be offended if you just put to To Cousin and Partner and don't mention the baby. They're aware you're not mind-readers. If they were the sort of people who would care about their baby's name being missed off a Christmas card, they would have announced its birth.

In short, you're overthinking this on a grand scale.

"To the Jones family, wishing you a lovely christmas and a happy 2025, with love from You."

What a horrible thing to take great pleasure in.

Not everyone is attached to their living room window anyway.

I think maintaining contact with people is important. In our 30s/40s life can be busy and we only have time to think on our immediate family, but as you get older, and the generation above you dies off and children move away, it’s nice to still have that contact with cousins. Even if it’s just the odd email/Whatsapp. I think in the position of only having a postal address I would probably add my other contact details to the end of my card and hope the other person did the same.

Do you really there’s a possibility that you heard of the birth of this baby; sent a gift and then completely forgotten both events?

Just write happy Christmas from you and your family. I do that anyway.

Why are you sending Christmas cards to people you barely know, not even enough to know if their baby has been born? How close can you all be if your mum forgot to ask about the baby? This is all a little odd tbh.

they actually don't - they stopped going out 'cos of covid' (which I don't respect)

Why are you even bothered writing to people you don’t even know.

Why are you even bothering to still send cards to people when you don’t know something as basic as whether their baby was firstly born and secondly, may have died? 🙄

But even if you have memory issues - surely your mum/dad would have also sent a card and gift when the baby was born - the whole lot of you wouldn’t have forgotten something as significant as that.

If you really haven’t been told any of this information, your Auntie isn’t talking about her family on the phone and you haven’t received a card from them yourself with their names on (it’s the 18th December!! - a bit late for cards to be sent to each other) then I think they might have faded you all out.

But even if you have memory issues - surely your mum/dad would have also sent a card and gift when the baby was born - the whole lot of you wouldn’t have forgotten something as significant as that

This. I am finding this: maybe we just all forgot, a little bit strange.

I think you are making this into a mountain when it's a mole hill. It's a card. Thats it. Just address it to cousin and family if you arent sure. This is a lot of handwringing about someone you clearly arent close to at all and was so unimportant your entire family forgot.

So what? I dont sit in my living room staring out of the window all day long. If they were in the bathroom or kitchen or in bed it's perfectly possible they didn't see the bloody hearse.

Good grief.

yeah it wasn’t funny you taking pleasure in being really nasty to those neighbours. two wrongs don’t make a right 🤷🏽‍♀️@QuickPeachPoet

Exactly! Someone in the OP's family (who she still speaks to/has in her life currently) would know if the cousin had the baby or not! I have cousins and second and third cousins of all ages, all over the country, (and some overseas!) and I know if and when they have had a baby!

It does seem daft to send cards to people when you kind of don't know them enough to know whether or not they had a baby.

please update us when you find out