Woman Refuses To Help Best Friend Who Needed An Emergency C-Section While She Was Visiting — 'I'm Not An Unpaid Maid'
The fact she thought this was a vacation tells you all you need to know.
eclipse_images | Getty Images Signature | Canva Pro Most of us learn the hard way, whether via our family or friends who have kids or by becoming parents ourselves, that most people have totally unrealistic views of what having a baby is like. I remember being kind of low-key offended when my sister-in-law asked us all to wait a week or two before visiting my new nephew. That is, until I finally walked in the door and saw that my brother and sister-in-law looked like they'd been awake for approximately 15 uninterrupted years. They were so tired that their speech was slurred!
Most of us don't really get this stuff until we witness it or go through it. But one woman on Reddit took this obliviousness to a level bordering on delusion, which would be forgivable if she weren't also kind of acidic about the way her friend's new baby upended her vacation.
A woman refused to help her best friend after her emergency C-section.
In her since-deleted post, likely because of all the blowback she got, the woman wrote that her best friend was just about due to give birth to her third baby. So she planned a trip during the last two weeks of the pregnancy to help "kick labor into action" by keeping her company and helping out around the house.
"I had planned to help out with the school run of her two other kids, take my bff on long walks and catch up on some good old British TV all day whilst they were at school," she wrote. A sort of pre-labor version of a girls' trip. But oh, how her entire demeanor shifted when the plans changed.
When the baby came two weeks early, the woman was furious to be asked to help out around the house.
Just days before she was due to fly out, the woman got a call from her friend that she was set to have an emergency C-section due to complications about 24 hours after her plane landed. "She called me all apologetic, I said yeah not ideal, there would be no TV anymore but I can at least help my bff with her two oldest whom I love."
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But when her friend let her know what types of things she could use help with — cleaning, cooking, and dishes — while she and her husband tended to their baby, the woman was completely unwilling. "I'm not cleaning your bathroom or your kitchen on my holiday… when your husband is also there [on] paternity leave." Holiday? In what world is a trip to help your best friend prepare to give birth a holiday?! That's not a vacation, that's volunteering to help!
To balk now that the nature of the help has changed from "watching British TV and taking walks" to "helping pick up the house" is not only unreasonable, it's incredibly insensitive. This is literally what friendship is about. You show up in a crisis, which having a baby absolutely is, and you do what needs to be done.
Many on Reddit found the woman's attitude shockingly insensitive.
Her friend "got very upset … and said her expectations of me were to clean and look after the kids, and her expectations of her husband was to bond with the new one and IF he had time/energy for him to help me a bit with the housework." Uh, yeah. That's how having a new baby is supposed to work.
But she insisted she's being treated like "an unpaid maid" and that her friend "should be grateful for the help I'm offering, not expect more from me than her husband whom she CHOSE to have three children with." Perhaps. BUT WHAT HELP ARE YOU EVEN OFFERING? You've flatly refused to do anything you've been asked, now that your original plan is literally impossible!
This woman makes me feel insane, but I definitely am not alone. "You planned a 2 week vacation in the home of a friend who was about to give birth?!?," one person wrote. "The only people welcome in the home of someone who is about to or has just given birth are people who are going to help around the house."
Exactly. This is how it WORKS, and it is bizarre to expect anything else. Perhaps there's more to this scenario than we realize, like a truly lazy, selfish husband who never lifts a finger, but the woman did not say if that was the case. She simply said she "just ain't down for cleaning the toilet each day after a grown man." Which fine, fair enough! THEN WHY ARE YOU COMING?
She is acting like she's been asked to clean the house top to bottom every day by close of business instead of being asked to "help out" so the dad can spend time with his baby and help his wife, which is exactly what he should be doing. The hyperbole and vitriol she seems to be bringing to this just isn't justified by any of the details she's shared about the situation.
Which is probably why her friend offered to refund her plane ticket so she could just stay home. She should probably take her up on the offer, because the last thing anyone needs with a squawling new baby in the house is a "best friend" irate at being asked to give the help she offered to provide in the first place.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
