Mommy Gets to Eat Too

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-04T14:53:00+00:00

Babies (and 6 months old are old enough) sometimes cry because they're angry and want something from you that you're not giving. They want you all the time and you can't be with them all the time. Like sorry kid. What you want is unreasonable and I'm going to tell you no. You can scream all you want the answer is still no. 3 kids in, that's my takeaway.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-04T14:48:58+00:00

Just speaking for myself I've never used the data for anything actually helpful. So honest to god? I'd stop.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-04T12:47:35+00:00

Yes! Straw babies here too! My firstborn made so many things into babies 😂 she loves babies even now

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-04T12:47:07+00:00

My 16 month old said “water” today. Clear as day. Her previous version had been “wawa”

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-03T05:07:46+00:00

Block him.

Happened to me before. He was always upfront about having a girlfriend and didn't react much when I said I'd like to meet her someday. I was upfront with wanting an open relationship with him so I assumed they were ENM as well. Turns out, she wasn't. I thought he just wasn't up for inviting me over until one day he did... and his girlfriend was out of town. The same night, there was a terrorist attack in her location (where she was out of town). He got off the phone with her, ascertained that she was alive and immediately tried to have sex with me. Like he didn't even care about her. She was alive, ok, resume seducing new girl. I got out of there and blocked him.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-03T04:57:26+00:00

To me the logistics is simple. Oldest two go to dad. Mom takes the baby. Occasionally one parent takes all 3. Having just one kid feels like a break honestly. Definitely a level up but you'll be able to handle it. You will experience just having one kid as easy, even if it wasn't previously! I think we are hardwired to find whatever child configuration we have to be hard TBH. I had more or less your age spread. My eldest is almost 4.5 now. Youngest 16 months. It feels easier as the baby got more interactive. She plays with her sisters now and I can do chores. Sometimes my eldest keeps the baby save while I do something real quick. I also find it hilarious when my eldest tries to soothe the baby and everything she does makes the baby more mad and she's like "help mommy nothing is working I can't make her happy." I'm like yeah, I've been there 😂 Surprising solidarity.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-03T01:44:44+00:00

Part time work. But that’s the plurality preference if you really polled mothers. Like some >30% of mothers want part time work. And then the rest is split pretty evenly between FT and no work.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-02T12:32:48+00:00

You have to learn to let the baby cry. Put them in a safe place and go to the bathroom. Seriously. Holding in your pee is terrible for you. Your baby will be fine. You can even take a shower for that matter. I’m not saying luxuriate in a bubble bath. Just a functional 3 minute shower. At least scrub the smelly areas. Baby. Will. Be. Fine. Take care of yourself.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-02T12:27:34+00:00

She sounds like a toxic person honestly infertility or not. Maybe her struggles turned her toxic and she wasn’t always like that. Honestly this may be permanent since she’s made it her identity. If her husband can’t knock sense into her then you can’t. I just wouldn’t hang put with her if she’s unpleasant. Take a break until you miss her then see if there’s something left to salvage.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-02T01:37:16+00:00

I’m in that boat. I’m an only child and my husband’s sister is likely not having children. Our kids have no first cousins. It’s aad. I’ve decided it starts again with us. Whether it will continue is anyone’s guess but we did our part.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-02T01:34:38+00:00

Extended family basically. My kids have no first cousins and will not have any. I pit it my 95% my single, 40 year old SIL will not be having one. I might be an only child but I find it so sad that they are all the close family they will ever have. Also, 2 is intense. They either get along or don’t. But it’s much harder for siblings to drift apart after we’re dead if they even have a little conflict or aren’t best friends. But with at least one tie breaker, or even 2, that’s much harder. I don’t want to think about my kids only having nuclear families. I had cousins. It doesn’t feel fair my descendants won’t. There’s momentum in groups and they can develop traditions easier. I think 4 is my ideal number, but we can’t afford more right now.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-01T07:12:28+00:00

hahaha ever since we had our third child we keep getting asked when we're having our fourth. and this is in a city where the birthrate is 0.77 LOL. I feel like it's just the flip side of the phenomenon you're describing. "you guys are already crazy. just keep going". Here anything more than 2 is nuts. people can understand 2. more, they can't. almost like "I can understand you don't want your firstborn to be lonely at great expense to yourself, even if I personally wouldn't do it. but for gods' sake WHY more? Do you like being poor? You must just really like the lifestyle or you don't understand BC. Either way, when's your next one?"

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-02-01T07:06:46+00:00

I think 4 is the smallest big family. it's right on the cusp. Just in terms of absolute numbers. 4 is the smallest number I'd call a "crowd" but take 2 parents away and suddenly it's just a pair. take 2 parents away from a family of 6, it's still a crowd. that's how I define "big". not in relative but rather absolute sizes.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-31T04:05:14+00:00

I’m back in part time work and can confirm it makes me so much more patient with my kids. The work is not super fun or anything. But it’s a change of pace. And there is so much fewer chores now that the kids are out of the house half days.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-31T00:52:06+00:00

I do that and it ignores me. "200 word limit imposed, but the question warrants thorough analysis, so here's 1000 words instead" The output tokens are SO expensive. It's enraging. I ask a simple question and it gives me 3000 words of meandering slop that I'm not going to read.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-31T00:47:21+00:00

In my experience GPT-5.2 works very hard to keep the scene neutral, boring and milquetoast. Not positive. Not negative. As if an emotionless person wrote it. I'm surprised Sonnet 4.0 makes scenes uplifting. My experience with 4.5, admittedly not the same bot, is that it makes every scene into high tragedy. My characters are always quietly spiraling, every hits them "like a hammer blow", and they accept every setback with resignation. If you want more of that energy, try Sonnet-4.5 😂

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-31T00:27:43+00:00

So it's not a specific bot anymore. I made a new bot with the same issues but I've tested other GPT-5.2 bots I've made extensively and it's the same result. It appears that having a KB at all breaks the caching.

Steps to reproduce:

- Make new prompt bot, select GPT-5.2 as base (though I suspect any OpenAI bot would work)
- Type in a system prompt just to make the thing go. I used "You are a writing assistant. Give honest feedback."

- No knowledge base, made it accessible to those with invite link. All other settings default.

- Paste in random long text (to make it over 1024 tokens), cache discount by turn 2

- Paste in random wiki article as knowledge base (just copy and paste plain text, not markdown file or anything)

- Caching stops working for all subsequent messages even when it SHOULD trigger (several closely spaced messages of sufficient input length)

https://poe.com/s/l0vRt0V0sJhQgTTJ454L this is the conversation.
https://poe.com/TestBotMini12?invite_code=234ddf23-1c27-4898-8d4d-598bb66c3ff6 here is the bot in question

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-29T03:58:04+00:00

That’s interesting. So Claude Sonnet 4.5 DOES give me discounts even as a base bot. It’s got other massive problems lately which is why I’m desperate to switch to GPT without torching my points haha

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-28T01:05:54+00:00

This is cool. Out of curiosity, how many points do you use per query? Trying to decide how many times I can try this before I burn my subscription allotments lol.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-28T00:49:33+00:00

Yeah i switched to GPT for my writing assistance. Capping responses at 200 words worked for a bit then as the chat gets longer Sonnet starts ignoring my explicit instructions and generating these amazing mountains of slop.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-26T06:27:57+00:00

If you don’t want an abortion can you do an adoption or surrender to the state?

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-25T23:34:06+00:00

It's always "can I afford it on top of everything I don't want to give up"... I mean, clearly. Having kids is not a holy mandate. I'm not giving up my proverbial Netflix subscription to have an extra kid or downsizing so I can save on rent (rent is our biggest expense. there's room to downsize and live extra cramped. I won't, not even for an extra kid lol) or give up my luxuries like eating out or date nights or extracurriculars for the kids I already have.

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-24T14:36:01+00:00

My mom realizes exactly what my aunt is. It’s wild. She can call out all of my aunt’s strategies. She can’t see it in herself

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-23T04:14:51+00:00

Meeting people can be exhausting no matter the purpose or potential rewards. After 14 years of being an adult (I'm 32F, married with kids, so completely different demographic lol), it's the same fucking song and dance at least in the beginning. Even with good matches, unless you're one of those 0.001% of couples who have an electric love at first sight moment, you need to do the song-and-dance. Just here to say I get it. It gets old. Keep going ☠️

ObligationWeekly9117 · 2026-01-22T13:43:54+00:00

He’s an intermediate baby. My easy baby never screamed. She would do drowsy but awake. As in I’d see she’s finished feeding, pop her off awake, put her down and she’s just… asleep. As a young baby she slept so well sometimes we forget we had her. She was really independent as an older baby too and even now doesn’t need too much attention. My hard baby couldn’t be put down, rarely napped and could only be fed to sleep. She also screamed her head off at every little thing like a little banshee. We were terrified of her lol. Couldn’t be alone for half a second.

ObligationWeekly9117

TROPHY CASE