'Ooh it's going to be so hard, you have no idea!'

[spatchcock]

Any new parents-to-be fed up to the back teeth of hearing this?

My in laws came to stay over the weekend and all I heard was 'been out with friends? oooh, make the most of it, your freedom is going to disappear!' 'Slept in? ooh, you'll be in for a shock soon!' 'long day? oooh, you don't know what long days are!' Accompanied by lots of smug 'you'll see' looks.

Also getting this from a few friends/colleagues who don't even have children!

Yes thanks, it's going to be difficult but there's no point crying and wringing my hands about it now!

Am tempted to come up with a witty (bitter) reply.

for in laws - "Oooh, you're getting on a bit now - you're going to struggle getting up the stairs soon! And death is just around the corner!"

friends - "Oooh, you'd better think about procreating yourself otherwise it'll be too late!"

(Don't worry, will keep the bitter comments to myself...)

OP, I agree that its annoying. Some people cant wait to start with the negatives...they dont even state the positives first! And generally their opinions are completely uninvited...its not like one announces pregnancy and immediately asks everyone for advice on how to cope, or opinions about how it will be (in which case an honest account of THEIR experience would be welcomed!)
Most sensible people know that babies are demanding, but it isnt always a nightmare, and if you are having a baby, you are kind of expecting to devote yourself to them...those who think the baby will fit in around them are unlikely to change their mind until they have the baby anyway!

Also, not sure what use there is in telling people 'you wont know what its like until you have your own'..a bit of a redundant statement then, and people without children have imaginations...although you wont experience it, until you do, its not a massive leap of imagination to understand that parents can be overwhelmed by their love for their children.

I can be pretty touchy about stuff like this due to years of infertility, and was recently in a situation where a (well meaning) person was giving it all the 'you dont know love until you have a child' to me when he met my baby. I was with my infertile friend who will never have children when he said it, and i was happy to report that, though that might have been the case for him, it was a load of bollocks as far as I was concerned!

Sorry for post hijack!

You can still go out, have a lie-in and whatever else. We take it in turn with DH (he has lie-in on Saturday mornings, mine is on Sundays) and we also go out albeit generally not together.
DS has not been a bad sleeper so sleep has been short occasionally but only occasionally. I find time to do the housework and go out with DS and always have.
I agree that people saying that sort of stuff is bloody annoying, yes having a baby changes your life but it does not have to take it over.....

The things that people say are 1)True and 2)Patronising. To get replies saying ' but they are right' is equally as patronising! The fact that the sky is blue, is true - but we don't need to be told. I think that people are inherently programmed to recite a script whenever someone is pregnant.
My wife was never keen on the idea of breastfeeding in public. The number of times we heard "you'll feel differently soon" was astonishing.
I would love to release a brand of T-Shirts with these common phrases on the front, and on the back - the words "I KNOW".

But there we are...

Rich (yes - a man). . .

Thanks for all the heartfelt, funny and positive replies everyone. Feeling much more positive after reading. Maybe I'll update this thread in a year's time with my own voice of experience ...

Winky - that's a whole other thread! Don't get me started on the 'you don't know what love is' brigade. Sorry to hear about your infertility problems x

i've been keeping up to date with all the posts on here and trying to focus on all the postive ones, i know things are going to be tough, i'm just glad most people seem to be saying its worth it. feeling a bit more positive now :D

I think it depends on so many things.

I, for example, had reached a point where a social life no longer seemed important so having a baby made very little difference to my life. True, I get less sleep but I get more naps in the day. Also I think I have quite a 'good' baby. Yes he could sleep better at night but he is generally a very chilled baby.

I remember starting a thread on here a couple of years ago saying that surely a baby isn't that much extra work. People laughed at me but when I think about it, overall it's been ok. Definitely no where near as bad a I was to;d it would be. Mind you, this may change when I go back to work!

Don't want to come across as smug but my reality with DC1 was that it was lovely. Straightforward. Slept loads because I caught up whenever DS was napping - we'd snooze on the sofa together. Watched more TV than I can ever remember doing beforehand, ate by bodyweight in cake every day. My social life was brilliant. Got out loads - particularly when he was tiny and would happily snooze through train journeys with a quick feed along the way, magazine in the other hand.

The only tough bit was the witching hour at about 5pm every day. But I could generally solve it with a bit more food.

It never lived down to all the misery stories people delighted in telling me. I'm sure you will have a lovely lovely time.

oh this all rings so true. It doesn't stop when they're born, either. My first baby was a dream child: slept well, fed well, utterly charming...the main thing that made my life miserable for the first few weeks was worrying about all the awful things people told me were going to happen ("oh, it'll be worse when she's teething" etc etc. It never did get worse, in fact, only better.)

Now I'm pg with no. 2, it has started all over again ("oh, you have NO IDEA how much harder it is with more than one!" Well, yes I do, actually, because people like you have been drumming it into me pretty much since the first one was born). But I have learned to ignore it, and I am much happier for that...

actually I have mostly come to the conclusion that a large part of being a happy parent involves an ability to completely ignore what other people want to tell you a large percentage of the time