Fell out with long term friend after keeping pregnancy quiet

[M231OTW]

Will keep it as short as I can without missing out important details.

Been "best friends" with Sally for 20 years, spoke almost daily but only when Sally was alone so if we were on a call and her partner was arriving home/arrived home the call would instantly be ended mid conversation.

I had 3 kids Sally had 1, but we very rarely done anything with the kids if we met up it would be to grab few bits while kids were at school same goes for the weekend, Sally liked to drink and had a babysitter every weekend. I dont drink and don't like anyone having my kids.

Sally is due to be married March 2027, I had been asked to be bridsemaid I agreed. Hen do is booked for January 2027, I paid deposit and wasnt supposed to start making regular payments until this month.

I fell pregnant and decided to keep my pregnancy a surprise and didn't tell Sally, didnt tell anyone apart from my mum and even then she didnt find out until near the end and of course I needed someone on standby for my other kids when labour came around.

Sally had booked a date to go pick dresses, didnt ask if it was suitable for anyone just booked it (her wedding her choice, I have no issues with that) but unfortunately I couldnt make the date as had no babysitter and also heavily pregnant at this point so wasnt mad that I couldnt make the date as I would have had to announce my pregnancy (couldnt hide it) and didnt want to take away from her day.

The dress was picked, the hen was booked i was attending the hen and organising shirts etc for said hen, baby would have been almost 12 months at date of hen so would have established eating routine etc by then.

Baby was born very quickly, I took a few days to get my head around it then let grandparent and aunts/uncles know then video called Sally to let her know.

Instantly knew Sally wasnt happy and she straight away asked about her wedding and hen, ensured her all would be ok its over a year away and that I would be there.

Then came the messages about how friends dont keep secrets like this, all while im 4 days postpartum, explained I wanted to keep it to myself my choice etc and it just went from there, I was banished from the hen party and we parted ways. Again im not mad about this because people who she spoke the back off so badly are now the new bridsemaids but out of curiosity wondering how others would have dealt with this and who is in the wrong?

Well after this update, surely you should be relieved she's dropped you. It sounds like she wasn't much of a friend anyway if it was always you doing the running and chasing, and she was doing things (with others) and leaving you out....

I do wonder if, deep down, you deliberately didn't tell her some kind of punishment for her not being a very good loyal friend.

Anyway, as has been said, it's done now. You kept your pregnancy a secret until after the baby was born, your friend was very hurt and upset, and has fallen out with you.

Congratulations on the birth of your baby, and I wish you well, but it's time to move on now. The friendship is dead.

The thing is OP, unless you didn’t leave the house for several months, your pregnancy wasn’t a secret. Anyone who saw you in the last couple of months would have known you were pregnant. If you work, your work colleagues would have known you were going on maternity leave. Your neighbours would have seen you getting bigger. If your kids are at school, the teachers and other parents would have seen you were pregnant. So it wasn’t a secret from the world. It was just a secret from the people you didn’t see. You made a conscious effort to keep your friend in the dark, which I would find hurtful and strange.

Can you really not see that a close friend would find this hurtful?

She considered you a best friend important enough to have you as bridesmaid. I can understand why she is hurt you didnt tell her about pregnancy as life changing news. That action would make her feel like an acquaintance at best.

If you explain nobody knew then she might be less hurt, but it is very unusual so I can understand why she has taken offence.

There was an opportunity to catch up, the dress fitting, and you lied about why you couldn’t attend to keep your pregnancy secret. She honestly deserves better friends than you, you don’t even like her

Quite the drip feed!!

Lots of my friends didn’t find out I was pregnant until I announced the birth.

whilst it wasn’t a secret (after 25 weeks) I just didn’t do announcements.

your body, your baby, you decide. No one else (except dad) has a right to know.

IMO it’s your friend who is being an arsehole. She should respect your right to privacy

I agree with Sally. How ridiculous keeping a wanted baby a secret. Don't think I would bother with you much in the future either.

I can see why she would be hurt - it’s was a baby not a haircut or a new car! A major event in anyone’s life and you kept it a secret from your best friend? Very odd!

Most people would find concealing a pregnancy strange. Though my guess is anyone who saw you in later pregnancy would guess and you weren't fooling them with your "secret".
Your choice though and your friends choice to find this extremely strange.
It may feel like a repudiation of trust to speak to a friend and conceal that you are pregnant.
If i were your friend id think your behaviour very bizarre but i wouldnt do or say anything about it.

Your friendship sounds like it was quite strange, never seeing each other and she phones you when she's driving or going to a shop? It is odd to call her with a new baby out of the blue. She was probably quite confused and hurt that you hadn't told her about it.
I can see why she would feel differently about you after that.
You don't seem to like her anyway, she drinks and leaves her kid with a babysitter, bitches about other women etc, so not worth getting upset over, and at least you don't have all the wedding palaver to deal with now.

You knew your choice was unusual and likely to ruffle feathers. It’s your choice nonetheless. You knew just by the term “surprise” that there’d be shock and likely annoyance. So I’m not sure why you’re surprised by this really? You knew what you were doing and yabu. It’s deceitful imo.

I don't think anyone was asking if YOU were in an abusive relationship, they meant Sally.

So in 9 months you didn't speak at all, not even texts, just that once time where you lied about dress shopping?

This is slightly odd. You didn’t see your mum either for practically the whole pregnancy as she only knew towards the end?
However it sounds like you don’t really see her as a real friend anyway.
It’s entirely up to you how or if you choose to announce your pregnancy, but you don’t seem to recognise the impact on your relationships this will have.

My guess would be that she’s been questioning why you have been pushing her away these past 6 months or so. Why you didn’t want to come to her dress fitting. Why you were being weird and shifty. She probably thought it was her. You were upset she was getting married. Or upset because she did something wrong. Or just confused if the friendship was not what she thought it was. And then it was just so you could do a big reveal and she feels like she’s the butt of the joke.

I think sometimes things don’t feel from other’s perspectives the way we hope they will looking out at them from ours. Totally not the same situation, but it’s kinda similar. My mum got married to her long term partner and didn’t tell me until the weekend before. She didn’t want to ‘make a big deal of it’ or make me feel like I ‘had to attend’.

We live on opposite sides of the world. It’s not possible to just hop of a flight with 7 days notice unless you have an extra £6k to spend. I had a trip planned to spend several weeks with them 6 weeks later. But she planned a wedding, albeit a small one, with guests and a photographer and catering…but then, surprise!! Didn’t tell me until she knew it would be impossible for me to be there.

I still don’t know why she did it. Maybe some of it was not wanting to make a fuss or be an inconvenience. I suspect a lot of it may have had to do with her partner’s children not attending (he wouldn’t invite them and they wouldn’t attend even if he did). Maybe she thought it would look better if none of the children were there. Maybe he wouldn’t let her invite me. Who knows. We are NC now. It wasn’t the reason our relationship broke down, but it hurt a lot. It was definitely one of the nails in the coffin when the relationship did finally fall apart about 10 years later.

I think it’s the expectation of the big OMG reaction - which is exactly what the OP was hoping for - that makes it feel like an attention grab. OP was on her 4th pregnancy, knew people wouldn’t be that interested, so had to find a way to make it a drama

Baby would be 12 months old and on solids at the time of the hen, but you were heavily pregnant at the dress picking time? Which is it?

Me too

This bit isn’t hard to understand, you’ve just mis read it

You sound just like a now ex friend of mine. Close friends for 30 years. Been through a lot. Went to meet her and she had a baby don’t even say it was hers (could have been her teen daughter) and I had to ask. No idea of pregnancy even though we talked a lot

her choice but my choice not to continue being friends with someone who wasn’t really a fiend in the end

I thought this was 'not telling anyone til 12/20 week scan' territory. I've never heard of anything so bizarre as not telling anyone until after the birth.

I’d be very hurt if a friend hid a pregnancy from me and would reevaluate what that friendship was

I disagree.

Being friends with someone is almost like a contract, albeit unwritten. There are certain unspoken rules, that differentiate friendships from relationships with colleagues/strangers. It’s not about rights. It’s about behaving in a way that facilitates and maintains a degree of closeness. Once you start cutting those ties, the friendship is damaged.

You lost me at keeping the pregnancy a surprise - a surprise for who?

The paradox of this is that in claiming you wanted to avoid the drama of people knowing you were pregnant OP, you’ve actually created more drama by suddenly appearing with a baby. It’s more attention seeking than avoiding. That’s another thing that would make be reevaluate the friendship. I can’t be doing with drama.

I think it’s very odd you didn’t tell your best friend you was pregnant I’d be miffed too