Anonymous wrote:My husbands best friend of 20 years got married two months after baby was born. We also had a four year old. He is closer than family. I stayed home, and would have even if it was my own family, unless I could have had a baby come with us.
You never know what the newborn starve will bring. At 6 weeks I was still completely exhausted, and our nb had problems latching and sleeping, resulting in a lot of extra work.
I agree with pp that you have unreasonable expectations. I kept our four year old, but if we had a 2 year old at the time I would have asked he take s/he with him.
Anonymous wrote:Wow. I am surprised everyone is siding with the mom. Barring unexpected complications or some warning from newborn's doctor, I would absolutely assume and expect her to do it for an extremely close family member's wedding.
Anonymous wrote:OP I think you’re the one keeping your children from your parents. Why can’t you bring the 2 year old without your wife?
One second you say your family is all about helping babysit the kids for the wedding. The moment anyone suggests you take them up on this offer and bring the toddler, you backtrack so fast and say it’s impossible without your wife. Seriously, either there’s tons of help at the wedding and it’s easy to take the toddler ....or it’s not. (and you should listen to your wife!)
Deep down you know that this “family help” is not going to materialize and everything will get dumped on your wife. If YOU can’t handle taking the toddler on your own, don’t expect your wife to travel with a 6 week infant AND a toddler.
Anonymous wrote:Looking for a little perspective. My brother is getting married 6 weeks after my wife’s due date (toward the end of this year.) We also have a son who will be almost 2 at the time. The wedding is a 3 hour flight away. I am the best man in the wedding and so will be somewhat busy during the weekend of the wedding with various wedding party obligations. My wife is already saying that she doesn’t think she will be up for traveling 6 weeks after giving birth. She keeps bringing up how she will still be recovering (she had a natural birth with our first and recovered very quickly), she had low milk supply so we supplemented with formula the first time around, probably will do the same with this coming LO, so she is also complaining about having to pack bottles and formula and sterilizing them and pumping to try to get her supply up. I get that it’ll be a lot of work to travel with a 2 year old and a 6 week old. However, I am a little frustrated because people do it all the time. And if it were her sibling getting married I know she would suck it up and go 100%.
Another thing she has mentioned is that she feels like she won’t have much help with the kids at the wedding because I am the best man. I told her I will make sure I am able to help her a lot, and especially my parents will help her but she wasn’t happy about that and in fact doesn’t want their help. She doesn’t like them and that is no secret. So I believe that she is using these excuses to get out of letting my parents see their grandchildren. Either way, I was curious what you all think. Is it reasonable for her to be saying months in advance that she probably won’t be attending my brothers wedding? (Which means my kids won’t get to attend it either? My brother has also invited my son to be the ring bearer but my wife wants me to tell him no. Again, I believe this is to limit my parents access more than anything.)