Just imagine for a moment that you’ve given birth a mere five days ago and have been asked to attend a family pool party. Would you go? (Hint: The only correct answer is “hard pass!”) Because nobody should be forced to do anything, and a mom five days postpartum definitely shouldn’t be forced to attend a last-minute pool party.
One mom found herself in this exact situation but was basically forced to attend. She shared her frustrating situation in a Reddit post in order to get other parents’ opinions.
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“So here I am. It’s 1327 on a Sunday afternoon, and my 3 year old informed me we are going to a pool party,” the second-time mom wrote in her Reddit post. “I said, ‘oh, really now?’ because he often tells me we are going places like the moon and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. So then, my usual JYDH says ‘Yeah, Cousin X is having a birthday party for Child X at 2.”
The mom shared that her husband’s family has a habit of planning things at the last minute, and she typically rolls with it, but because she had so recently given birth, she understandably didn’t want to attend this party.
“Anyone who has ever experienced the miracle of childbirth knows that day five, you are still in industrial sized pads, actively bleeding, sore and tired,” she wrote. “My feet are 3X their size, my breasts hurt, and I don’t even want to talk about how my equator line is doing right now.”
She told her husband that she didn’t want to take their 5-day-old premie to a pool party, but her mother-in-law got very upset and ultimately, her husband relented and she found herself relenting as well and agreeing to go.
“This is not going to be the hill I die on,” she said. “My day and my hill will come, and I refuse to martyr myself over a pool party today. So I’m going, but any time anyone asks how I am, I’m giving all the details.”
“I’m going to let them all know the mandatory gala party I am throwing the next time any one of them suffers a major medical trauma,” she continued. “Dear Husband is in the doghouse.”
However, once she posted on Reddit, many commenters noted she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to after just having a baby.
“WHAT IN THE WORLD is DH thinking even asking/promising it in the first place?!?!,” one commenter said. “I don’t understand why you can’t say no? You just gave birth, your body needs to heal, you to rest and bond with your baby. This doesn’t need to be a hill to die on. A simple no will suffice,” another said.
After hundreds of people told her she could, in fact, just decline the invitation and stay home, she changed her mind and did just that.
“I don’t know why I thought I’d let this one slide. I have an adult diaper on, I am not going to a damn pool party,” she shared in her update.
Good for you, Mama! Looks like the right call was made. Take care of yourself, and let the people who didn’t just give birth to a human being deal with the rest.
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