Smug friends?

[BIBIBOO]

Anyone else have smug parent friends who NEVER say anything negative to or about baby? I have one friend who I love dearly, but either she has 2 PERFECT babies who sleep all night, never cry or demand anything and make all their developmental milestones without any problems, or she is simply not telling me the whole truth?

I would love to believe for her sake (and my future sanity) that it is possible to have children/babies like that, but I just shedding tears of frustration some days but my friend seems to breeze through, never a complaint passing her lips. I'd love her to admit to me just once that she couldn't get baby to sleep, or toddler threw her food all over the kitchen, just to prove she's not a superhuman mummy after all. I'm afraid that I won't be able to tell her things like this when my baby arrives in case she thinks of me as (or I start thinking I am) a total failure as a mother.

Sorry about the rant, can't rant to her though!

BIBIBOO.... you have no idea of what being a parent will be like for you because it's so individual. However, it is tiring in a way that nobody can prepare you for so it really isn't worth telling pregnant women how tiring it can be, because it's like speaking in Cantonese (to a non-Cantonese speaker obv!).
She probably doesn't want to put you off or tell you stuff she knows you won't understand until you experience it. Also, I also don't moan much about my son - because it doesn't lift my spirits to do so. Some people find it cathartic and cheering, I don't particularly. Though I do still remember the sleepless nights with a shudder.

I felt terribly guilty about not enjoying spending every moment with DD, even though I had always known I wouldn't be the perfect earth mother - but I felt I couldn't tell anyone. Until I met this great girl who admitted she too felt trapped - we became best friends. I really needed/need to vent now and again (sometimes several times a day).

However another friend of mine doesn't and I know for a fact her children are not angels - but like Oliveoil said her tolerance levels are much higher than mine. She can make me feel inadequte at times and I don't spend time with her when I feel vulnerable.

I'm sure you'll find another mother with same age children (I trailed lots of play groups) who you will hit it off with - someone with whom you can rant in unison! Good luck.

I was thinking along Nimme's lines. I'm always suspicious of people who present an idealized picture of their marriage, their kids, their job--anything. Someone who spends a lot of time convincing people how great everything is, is probably trying to convince themselves too. And there's an unappealing vanity in presenting a rosy picture; they want to be seen as perfect. I just don't have time for that. I want friends who are real.

This is a longshot--but another possibility. Could your friend be trying to protect you? The one time I try not to complain about the difficulties of motherhood is when I'm talking to a woman in her first pregnancy. Though in general I'm pretty honest and direct, it seems to me that to her rain on her parade would just be rude, and might even be seen as aggressive. Could that be part of her thinking? Or is she clearly in some kind of "I'm so perfect lah-di-dah" mode?

I can clearly remember what some friends of mine said to me early on....'angel baby = nightmare toddler'....and that always made me laugh and keep me sane when various friends were describing their 'angels'.

So, I too have friends whose babies were supposedly angelic...but the reality when you visit their houses is somewhat different. It's also easy to forget the difficult times. I would say I'm lucky at the moment because dd (now 8 months)is very good - but I only have to remember back to when she was 6 weeks old and screamed the place down between the hours of 4 and 8pm every single night. Drove me to tears many a time...but it's a dim and distant memory now!

I saw a friend recently - not a smug parent but a celibate RC priest (what do they know?!)who said something along the lines of "Oh look at you, once the ardent feminist, now just staying at home looking after the children....." - I'm going to send my children to him for a day to see if he could hack it!!!

I tend not to complain too much about ds1. If someone is complaining that their child doesn't sleep until 8pm I would feel like "Competitive Mother" if I said that my 2 boys (age 1yr and 3yrs) are regularly still awake at 11pm or even midnight. Instead I just tend to offer genuine sympathy because I know how cr*p it feels to have very little child-free time. If I need to rant about ds1 driving me mad I tend to do it on Mumsnet.

My sister is pregnant with her first baby. I deliberately avoid telling her about my first labour (all 40 hours of it!) and certainly wouldn't want to scare her with stories about my day-to-day nightmares with my two little terrors. Mind you, she's seen my house so she knows I'm a long way from being perfect!

I agree with those who say that you friend is more likely to be unable to explain many of her problems because she feel that you won't truly understand rather than being smug in any way.

When I was pregnant, I got so many mixed messages about what parenting would be like and none of it helped me so I tend not to discuss the difficulties of it with non-parents.

BBB don't know whether this describes your friend or your situaltion, but I had a HUGE row with a good friend last week, who is pg with her 1st child as I am pg with my second. Basically, she accused me of shutting her out of my life since I had ds, and not sharing things with her any more. I've thought about it a lot, and basically I think my life as a full time mum just isn't as interesting as hers, with her spontaneous nights out, holidays abroad, even her job, so I don't want to bore her with the trivia of mine. It hadn't occurred to me that she wanted to share the mundanity of my life (mostly I wipe things - noses, bums, dishes, floors - and the rest of the time I do laundry) and as my ds is pretty good, or at least pretty normal, most of the time, I never really felt I had much to contribute. Don't get me wrong, it's my choice to be a full time mum and I love it. Among the trivia, most days ds does something really great (if completely ordinary) and I'm happy beyond words that I was there to witness it. Eg yesterday he was stroking the cat really gently and naming the different bits of him (nose, eyes, ears) then as the cat was sniffing ds, ds started sniffing the cat and laughing as the fur got up his nose - awww!

Maybe your friend, like me, doesn't realise you want the sordid details?

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Reading all this I agree with the others- she probably just doesn't tell you the truth. I've been thinking about this- I only tell the truth to my autism friends about autism- just because the experience is so far removed from that of normal friends. Normal friends I just say " yeah school's fine, bit of a probelm with the statement, bit of a pain to sort out". Or I might mention ds1 waking at night- as that is within their experience, but I wouldn't say much more. Autism friends I say "f hell - it's disgusting, it's in part 2 and they're not bloody providing it and they don't give a sh** about our kids and it's awful. And like I've got time to chase these people anyway. And he's going ape about rain falling on his shoes, and becuase someone's sat outside in their car and what the hell am I meant to do" (those are just some excerpts from conversations this week) You may find that once your baby arrives you hear the other side of her life- all the gory details.

I think I'm starting to understand this a bit more now - any maybe will fully undeerstand when my baby is here. I suppose, giving it a bit more thought, I wouldn't want friends to think I had a devil-child, so would paint a rosier picture of life with baby, and maybe not want to burden friends with things they don't "understand" because they're not parents. Hmmmm, thanks everyone. Lots f good advice, as ususal