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?

I think she resents her friend for putting her husband first. I could be wrong but I have a feeling it irked her a lot.

Maybe Sally really wants another baby and is suffering from secondary infertility or has had miscarriages or her partner doesn’t want another one, and she’s upset by you popping out babies in a way she sees as relatively easy? And hasn’t had the best part of 9 months to process this? And thinks that you’re being insensitive and can’t deal with you now?

It was an odd thing for you to do OP, and although her reaction seems extreme there might be a good reason for it.

You must be the only person on here other than OP to think her reaction is extreme

It’s one of those threads isn’t it where the OP didn’t want discussion, she wanted validation. And because the thread isn’t going their way, we’ll get constant drip feeds to ‘prove’ she’s right

She never did ask how I was. As soon as I answered any call she would start by ranting and raving about something that had bothered her etc the calls never started "hi, how are you" always more "wait until I tell you" messages never started and ended they were more just rolling on conversations.

Are you jealous that you are still a fiance and not a wife after having four children?

You said you and Sally had no mutual friends, so why couldn't you have told her about thepregnancy?

I agree that her not asking you out and also hanging up when husband is back from work would be extremely annoying. Did you ever talk to her about this? Does her husband like you?

I’d be so so so hurt that my best friend of yesterday and years kept her pregnancy secret

Would absolutely break me.

This is such strange behaviour I simply think the entire post is made up.

Surely no one does this?! Unless you didn't ever leave the house for 6 months (maybe 5?) someone must have seen your bump, neighbours, kids friends mums? your managers must have been told for you to get maternity pay? To tell you manager but not you mum or 'best friend' is just peculiar. Was your OH sworn to secrecy, even from his family? Did he think that was strange? Did your kids know? Absolutely nothing about this makes any sense at all and if you were my 'friend' I would be incredibly concerned about your mental health to the point of possibly notifying SS or similar, or presume I wasn't a friend at all and cut contact with you, I definitely wouldn't want you as a bridesmaid.

And this is coming from someone who kept my pregnancy very quiet, family, close friends and people I saw/spoke to. No big announcements on SM, and not texting or letting acquaintances know (unless we were actually talking or meeting up). even more so third time after a stillbirth with the second pregnancy.

@M231OTW It’s funny, because something of this situation happened to me this week. For context, I am a midwife.
I saw a post on my best friend’s partners Instagram of a baby girl….I was like, WTF?! (She lives in a different country also, hence why I haven’t seen her in person.) So I text her, asking if she’d had a baby and hadn’t told me.
She called me the next day and said the whole pregnancy had been incredibly difficult, with concerns that she would never get to take her baby - because of concerns raised during blood tests, scans etc. She only told her parents and her sister.
Was I hurt that she hadn’t told me? Of course. But it was because I wanted to support her! To be a sounding board and someone she can vent to and relay her biggest fears to. I completely understand why she didn’t tell me, and at the end of the day I am just happy that she has had a healthy baby.
It could be that this is how your friend feels, she just doesn’t know how to express it. Or maybe she isn’t as good a friend as you thought?

@cocobanana922 i specifically asked if the op was in an abusive relationship. I asked a number of questions that I said might have been going through my head if a friend had suddenly done this to me - I’d have wondered why they had done that, and one of the things would be was she in an abusive relationship (that perhaps she had talked to her friend about) and she would have judged her for choosing to have another baby.

I really don’t think many posters are going to believe you here. You tried to make her sound bad in your OP because she goes out for a drink and sometimes uses babysitter. Nobody agrees with you there because what she does is totally normal. Now you’re trying to drop feed that she is actually a terrible, selfish friend… whilst ignoring any other questions and comments about your very very odd behaviour. So yeah… we’re not going to believe you.

Why don’t your respond to some of the comments about your behaviour?

What is 'tik tok theraspeak'? I don't even use TikTok and have never been in therapy. You've pigeonholed me entirely wrongly there. 🙄

But nor do I believe that people should feel duty bound to adhere to social norms around something as massive as pregnancy announcements if they don't want to. If a friend of mine did that I'd be surprised, yes, maybe feel a bit hurt/shut out, and also worried in case there was some particular reason they hadn't felt able to share. But I certainly wouldn't 'break friends' with them like some primary school child. That's far more 'weird' as far as I'm concerned, not to mention selfish.

I agree.

What you did was really odd op and your trains for it even odder
It's a lie by omission
I've no idea how you thought she would react but I don't think you can blame her

Well that’s a very weird thing for you to have done. Every action has a reaction, and this is hers.
you started it!!

See, the way I look at this is that a best friend should feel pleased for a happy event in their friend's life, not get bent out of shape over a lack of baby bulletins. Quite apart from anything else I'd have said a best friend should care about the possible reasons for the silence and whether there was anything wrong. Not make it all about themselves.

Although that's all slightly irrelevant given that this particular so-called friend has made it clear everything is about her dress and her wedding. Some friend.

So, as I suggested up the thread, this is yet another of those situations bafflingly frequent on Mn — the ‘friend’ I don’t actually like, who never treats me particularly well, shows any interest in my life, and hasn’t noticed she hasn’t seen me in several months although we live close to one another, but whose behaviour I meekly tolerate for reasons I am unable to explain.

I can see why, if you're like most Brits where things tend to get announced earlier, you've been talking to her, and she's been supportive of you before, the choice to not tell could be hurtful. That the only reason you're giving is 'my choice' probably makes it worse. I think you may have made Sally feel she isn't meaningful part of your life if you can't explain your reasoning in more detail than your choice, so why would she choose make you an important part of hers?

I did similar with my later pregnancies - beyond my husband and kids, I told people I saw in person once it was obvious, but didn't tell anyone wider than that until I was term, some people who'd been really negative with my first pregnancy didn't get told until after the birth - some by proxy (some family members I couldn't stomach talking to after some things were said, but I gave the okay for other family members to tell them). Even those I told, I didn't talk about my pregnancies much and those who knew me got that - I'd dealt with a lot of negativity in my first pregnancy, I had other health concerns, and I'd also had a friend die from pregnancy complications so really was not emotionally up for the typical excited pregnancy discussions.

For a long-time supportive friend whose wedding I was meant to be part of, even if we were very different, I'd probably have found some way to see them in person after the anomaly scan at the latest unless I had some strong reason not to do so. I did that with a few people when seeing them naturally wasn't working out as I did want them to be part of my life. The ones who didn't get told until after the birth, like I said, were people that were really negative, hurtful and were no longer meaningfully part of my life, they were relatives or other community members barely connected to me.

Yeah, this. Why would you have a baby be a nice surprise for anyone? You were really odd not telling your best friend. She will have thought you told each other everything, and you spoke regularly, and were keeping this HUGE thing from her. It is so, so, weird to do that!

Sally sounds a lot like my ex best friend. And over a decade later I still feel lighter for not having her in my life anymore. I was gutted at the time but what she said to me was so unforgivable it was easy to decide the door was shut and locked on our friendship.

Keep her messages to you so in later years when you're wondering how she's doing you remember she's was never interested in how you were doing.

She never did ask how I was. As soon as I answered any call she would start by ranting and raving about something that had bothered her etc the calls never started "hi, how are you" always more "wait until I tell you" messages never started and ended they were more just rolling on conversations.

Unusual perhaps, but your body your choice. If you HAD told her would she have made it all about her? I'm getting a whiff of main character syndrome and by not telling her you took that away from her.

Yes no mutual friends but @M231OTW couldnt trust her to keep the info to herself as stated in her original post….nah