'AITA for enforcing a no-kids-talk rule and not offering to plan a baby shower?' UPDATED

"AITA for enforcing a no-kids-talk rule and not offering to plan a baby shower?"

Really are ~we~ the AHs. Our friend group (F, 30s) gets together about once a month. A few years ago, certain group members began trying to conceive. One of the first ones to start trying was “Katie.” Unfortunately, Katie and her husband had difficulty conceiving. This was understandably very difficult for them.

Once other members of the group started having kids Katie asked us to not talk about kids at our monthly get-togethers because it was difficult for her to hear. She also made it clear that she would not attend any baby showers. The rest of our group had mixed feelings about this.

We understood that Katie was very upset about her difficulties conceiving but it was disappointing to not be able to share important parts of our lives. We generally go around and everyone talks about what’s new in their lives (work, promotions, hobbies, etc.)

But whenever one of us was on maternity leave we could basically only say “everything is good” because we couldn’t talk about the main thing happening in our life. That said, now that our kids are older and we are all back to work/have time for hobbies we have started to enjoy having a dedicated time for “no kids talk.” It is something that we have even come to look forward to.

Fast forward to now and Katie and her husband are pregnant, which is very exciting. She is nearing her due date and planning to take at least a year off to stay home with the baby. That’s enough background so now to the point.

Last night me and two other members of our group got a text from Katie’s husband saying that she is really upset that we barely ask her about her pregnancy when we see her and that no one has offered to throw her a shower. At first, we were surprised to hear this.

We do text Katie at least weekly to check in on her, we just don’t talk about it at our monthly hang-outs (she has been talking about it in her updates but no one has asked any follow-up Qs about the pregnancy and we more focus on her other updates).

We talked to the rest of the group (except for Katie) and the general vibe is that we want to keep the no-kid-talk rule in place and it feels a little rude that Katie expects us to when she is the one who made the rule in the first place Would we be the AH if we keep our traditions? We also don’t feel like we have time to plan a shower with the holidays happening.

It sounds like no one wants to go through the stress of planning a shower when Katie didn’t even go to theirs. TLDR: Are we the AHs for sticking to our tradition even though the original reason no longer applies?

Here's what people had to say to OP:

Natural_Garbage7674 wrote:

NTA. You kept quiet about the massive change your lives were going through and about your little bundles of joy to help her cope. You hid your lives and your joy so that Katie would not feel extra sorrow. That was above and beyond. But now, because of her, you have adult time. Adult time that you've all grown to appreciate and rely on as a release from the relentless onslaught that parenting can feel like.

A moment to just sit and be you. You respected her peace of mind, it's time to respect the rest of you. To be ruder about it: She couldn't cope with her emotions when everyone else was getting what she wanted, now she can't cope with her emotions because everyone else isn't overjoyed that she's finally getting it.

She's never going to see the rest of you as anything but AHs about this because she's been selfish the whole time and that's not going to change. You aren't AHs for wanting to keep the status quo, but she's never going to understand why you aren't capitulating to her Main Character the way you have been for years.

BetweenWeebandOtaku wrote:

NTA. You all went out of your way to accommodate Katie, which is pretty impressive. Now that she has to do the SAME EXACT ACCOMMODATION, she's complaining. She got an amazing gift of selective silence from everyone. Now is the time for her to show her appreciation by giving back the same.

Night_Owl_26 wrote:

NTA. This isn’t about lacking empathy. It’s matching the energy you’ve been given. Katie is not entitled to a baby shower thrown by any of you. She neither helped plan nor attended any of yours. Additionally, you’re correct that the holidays are a demanding time for most people, especially those with families. Your time is spoken for.

IF you felt like it, you could take up a collection among your friend group and present her with some kind of loaded gift card or each buy and send things to her house, but you aren’t necessarily required to do so. I would recommend some grace for the fact that she is late to a very, very difficult game that y’all have already been playing for quite some time so keep that in mind.

But no. Keeping the No-kids talk rule is appropriate. I just imagine that Katie will distance herself while on maternity leave when she has nothing else to talk about.

kindred_soles wrote:

NTA - She really should apologize for putting the rest of you through that in the first place if she wants to change things moving forward. People can be selfish during periods of crisis and friends can move past it, but she needs to at least acknowledge that she was not a good friend to you all for many years.

Haunting_North4679 wrote:

NTA. Katie is self-centered and needs to learn she isn't the main character. Should have booted her the moment she proposed the rule in the first place tbh. It's not a rule that a good person would come up with in the first place. But, you guys decided to abide by her self-centered nonsense rule, now she can deal with the repercussions.

Later OP came back with this update:

I just want to address some common comments...

1. We were all still pretty young when Katie first started trying/experiencing fertility issues. For most if not all of us she was the first person we knew to share that she was experiencing that.

When she asked we not talk about babies/kids at the monthly get together we agreed because we didn’t know if that was a reasonable ask or not and really just wanted to be supportive of our friend. I understand many of you would not have agreed to that and if it happened again, idk, maybe we wouldn’t but at the time we went along with it.

2. I know Katie distancing herself from such a big part of our lives over the past few years has been a source of hurt for most of us BUT aside from this issue she is a lovely person. No one has any plans of excluding her from our friend group. We’ve just always understood it as a coping mechanism for her and no one in the group thinks that’s worth ending a friendship over.

3. I am fairly confident that no one is acting out of retaliation or in a “tit-for-tat” manner. Since Katie asked for the no-kid-talk rule we have always still talked about our pregnancies/parenthood, we just did it when Katie wasn’t around.

Although we can only coordinate the big no-kid-talk group get together about once a month, friends who live closer to each other or work together or who have kids the same age often meet up at other times and we would normally talk about kid stuff then if Katie wasn’t in attendance.

Once Katie got pregnant we started being able to talk kid stuff when she was around and have definitely talked about her pregnancy in those settings, just not at the monthly get-together. This wasn’t done in retaliation, it’s just how it’s always been so we didn’t really think to do anything different.

4. The reason most of us want to keep the No-kid-talk rule in place is because as our kids have gotten older we’ve come to appreciate having a time to take a break from being moms-first and just enjoy our friendship and the other aspects of who we are as people. We are often in work-mode or mom-mode so having this dedicated space has been really nice.

I understand that Katie is not where we are today but rather where we were back then when we really wanted to gush about babies and kid stuff so I sympathize with that but I also think it’s a bit unfair to expect us all to accommodate her again. We are more than happy to text about her pregnancy or talk about it on other occasions.

The rest of us just want to have this one get-together remain kid-talk-free. To be fair I she does live the farthest from the rest of us so she usually only sees people in the group about one other time a month but we are still available by text.

More from OP in the comments:

1. She has met our kids at holiday parties, etc. She usually would avoid just casual hang-outs where the kids would be there (or birthday parties/kid-centered events) and she would keep her distant when the kids were babies but she has met them all.

2. She always made it clear that she was happy for us but wanted to remain separate from celebrations because they were difficult for her. She asked not to be invited to showers and kid birthdays. As far as I know she didn’t get anyone gifts but I don’t think anyone really expected her to, especially because we didn’t invite her.

3. She has some family but they are mostly older/have moved away/she has a complicated relationship with them. If she had a shower I think we would all attend if we are able.

4. It’s definitely less of a burden now than when our kids were very young. I think it was disappointing to each of us, especially during our first pregnancies and early parenthood, to not be able to talk about that part of our lives in a setting where we normally should have been able to gush and/or rant about it.

but we obviously adapted and found ways to share those things in different contexts. so basically it was disappointing and a little hurtful but something we were willing to do.

5. We haven’t talked to Katie about it yet (now that her husband has reached out we are definitely planning to). Katie does know that we had come to embrace the “rule” because over the past few years we would occasionally talk about how nice it was to take a break from being a mother-first and have a chance to just be who we are outside of our kids.

6. We’re definitely all on the same page that it’s frustrating that we made that sacrifice for Katie but now she’s asking to be able to talk all about her experience when we were all together when she was the reason we were never able to.

We’re not angry at Katie and we know how difficult her infertility struggles were which is why we agreed to not do any kid-talk in her presence. I do think though that her husband’s text caused some previously forgotten feelings of hurt and disappointment to resurface.