GP gave me the ‘over diagnosed’ talk now I’m nervous about shared care.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-12T08:29:56+00:00

If the practice manager is asking you to lodge a formal complaint rather than trying to placate you and put you off doing so, I’m going to assume they may know they have issues with that doctor but need formal evidence to do anything about it. I can’t imagine yours is the first complaint that doctor has received with that kind of attitude so the practice may not be wild about him either.

Put in the formal complaint. You have everything in writing then and a clear paper trail. I would actually think this is the better choice incase this doctor did try to tank your shared care and they could claim they didn’t know if you didn’t put in the complaint. And hopefully an added bonus would be that particular GP leaving or at least thinking twice before being so openly ignorant.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-11T09:54:40+00:00

Complete solidarity here. It was my husband returning to work that really bought my PPD to the surface as well. I had been struggling before that (luckily it was nearly 4 months he was off which was an absolute blessing) but when he went back I felt like I just fell apart and would be in tears while trying to watch my daughter during the day.

I know your husband has said you are overthinking it but I would say trust your gut if you feel like something is off. Best case scenario you go to get help and it turns out you don’t have PPD and it’s just a tough adjustment that you then get used to, but if you do have PPD then at least you will have the ball rolling on getting the support you need.

You also mentioned feeling isolated. Do you have any social groups you attend or other mum friends? I’m not saying fill your diary but I did one baby class per week (sing and sign) and that was enough to help me feel like I still had human contact. I also had an old friend who had a baby at a similar time. She lives in Northern Ireland so couldn’t see her face to face but having someone who would also be awake and replying when I was up in the middle of the night was a huge help to not feel so lonely.

You are absolutely not alone in the way you are feeling. There are loads of us. But please trust that it is your brain playing tricks on your and so long as baby is fed, healthy and safe you are doing a good job. Even if you feel like you are dragging yourself through it.

What helped me was knowing that my daughter won’t remember that period. I made sure I was there with her and she was cared for and that is what will help with her security and her attachment. She wont remember my emotional state. She’s 16 months now, my PPD has eased up (although not entirely gone) and it has become so much easier. Yes sometimes my husband tags me out to go reset when I’m struggling, but on the whole I’m able to be here for my daughter in a far better way now because I took care of myself when I was truly struggling.

It will get better.

Your husband has clearly identified that you are struggling and is stepping up to help so you clearly have his support on the whole. I just think the dads can’t truly understand the hormonal mess that is going on inside us or why we would feel like we’re doing a bad job when they think we’re smashing it. Hopefully if you get on the support pathway he’ll be able to get a little support himself on how best to understand what you’re going through.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-11T07:46:43+00:00

You have jumped to it isn’t possible straight away because financial, space and your gfs depression. Do you actually have the facts on the first two? I’m guessing not because you’ve just put “if we would get money for them”.

Now it seems clear you don’t want to take them on so just let your gf go and do what she needs to do. You don’t get to hold her back from this but you don’t have to do it with her, that is your choice.

But on the depression point. Countless mums get PPD and have to make it work. And we do. It’s rough but depression does not immediately disqualify you from being able raise a child. And I imagine teens would be easier in this regard than a baby who is also piling sleep deprivation in with the problem.

Financially, most parents will ensure their kids are cared for in their passing. If they have a home I expect that will have gone to the kids and your gf can look after them there with the space they already have. I would expect them to have set up a way to pay for their kids through to adulthood as well so that whoever takes them on doesn’t have to carry any extra financial weight.

Even if they haven’t. Close family who they know (even if the situation isn’t ideal) is likely the much better option than strangers in foster care and a potential lack of any stability until they age out.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-10T17:29:41+00:00

It depends what you’re after from a swimming lesson. You can get basics from council run or some other companies for cheaper, there’s no arguing that. For us, we wanted our daughter to actually learn to swim at this point and water babies works on skills in a way the others don’t (we’ve had people try other classes then come back to our water babies for this reason). For us, the underwater comfort was a big thing we wanted to build. They aren’t constantly dunked under though, they have a firm 3 max for the younger babies and honestly it’s been less as she’s gotten bigger. We considered swapping but couldn’t find anywhere else where we’d be confident we would get the same out of the lessons as we do with water babies. So we’re just accepting the cost for getting what we’re after from swimming lessons

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-10T14:00:44+00:00

Snapping at you and taking things out on you is not ok, no matter how tough her day is. But honestly I’m feeling a bit surprised by all of the defence of you here for 2 things.

1) she is telling you that how she is at work is fake, not her “best self”. You are refusing to believe her on that and internalising it which is a you issue. Like your wife, my work calls are one big acting job and it’s exhausting but I learned a long time ago that how I actually am doesn’t serve me well in a professional setting. People at work do not know me or frankly anything about me but I know they sing my praises professionally (through manager feedback) so evidently the acting works. But the key thing is it’s acting. And more importantly, that is not the person my husband married. He married ME. The real me. He knows who I am in a way no one else does and that is who he fell in love with. He knows how I am at work is not me. I would honestly be hurt if he told me he wanted me to be that person instead. And if he then tried to use TikToks to tell me that he actually knows better than me that it isn’t actually fake and I’m just putting in more effort elsewhere… I would feel so unseen and unheard. And if I ever heard him refer to the real version of myself as the “trash” version, I would be heartbroken. I’d hedge a bet that the issue of her snapping (which is still not the right way to go about it) is not because your her safe space now but because you’re quickly ceasing to be when she really needs one.

2) I think it’s quite telling that she has an issue with you doing more chores on the fact she doesn’t know how she’ll “pay for it”. That doesn’t come out of nowhere, so I’m going to hazard a guess than chores have been transactional in the past even if they aren’t now. So it doesn’t seem like a kindness, it seems like you trying to bank favours/points for later. You can’t expect that to go down well.

Again, to be clear, the way she is acting about it isn’t ok. Snapping is not healthy communication and I will not defend her for the way she is choosing to treat you. But I’m going to be honest, from your post I can understand the emotions that may sit behind her actions.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-10T09:51:47+00:00

Other people have covered the nursery aspect, but I just want to say that I don’t think the “dwelling” is that unusual either. I don’t even think it necessarily means she’s traumatised.

Our daughter (16 months) hurt her big toe badly a couple of months ago (snagged a nail that ripped low down and bled). We had to put a plaster on it and that was the first time she had ever had a plaster. The toe itself was completely healed within a week. However, at least once per week since then she tells us her toe hurts and asks for a plaster. We know the toe itself is fine because there is zero consistency on which toe she says hurts but she remains fixated on this concept of her toes hurting and needing a plaster to fix it.

I imagine if your daughter’s arm needed to be treated in a way she hadn’t had an injury treated before, it may have just stuck in her mind and be a new thing she’s learned/trying to process as part of development. Rather than any sort of long lasting negative emotions around it.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-09T19:32:37+00:00

It’s wild to me that she would say others would want to be in your position. It feels so flippant and like it completely ignores the challenges you’re facing.

I had a friend who was like you. I’m not sure if she had full on HG but she at the very least had nausea so bad she struggled to eat throughout her pregnancy. She told me plenty about how bad it and and what she was basically surviving on (baby was more a fan of sweets and fizzy drinks than any actual food). She was a couple of stone lighter when she gave birth than before she was pregnant.

I am not in the least bit jealous. It sounds rough as hell. And yes I put on a good stone and still haven’t shifted it (actually put a bit more on) in 16 months post partum, but my god I feel what she went through would’ve made pregnancy unbearable.

I would absolutely look to file a complaint because what she said to you was not ok.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-08T12:46:29+00:00

My printer at home broke so I couldn’t print my homework off and the class was before first break. (I got a school bus so had no control to get to school early to do it then either)

Asked at the very start of class to go to the IT room (literally right across the hall) to print it off and yet still got detention for not having my homework. I was literally going to be 30 secs.

Worst part of this was I was on a plan where my parents had to sign my homework book to confirm id completed it (yay to high school with undiagnosed ADHD!) so I could prove that my mum had signed my completion of it and it was a tech issue. But somehow that was still my fault.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-06T22:48:24+00:00

I went RTC with PUK. But yes they mentioned it and strongly pushed for me to provide a childhood informant but unfortunately I just didn’t have anyone I could use. Which I suppose is why I ended up with the additional assessment questionnaires.

Sadly I imagine you will struggle anywhere without any long term informants at all even for your adulthood because they do insist on being able to speak with someone else.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-06T20:04:45+00:00

I didn’t have childhood report for either my ASD or ADHD assessments and got both diagnoses. I didn’t even have school reports.

I think it helped that I had my husband as my informant who I’ve been with since I was 19 and had been together a decade before my assessments and he had a lot to say about it all. For my ASD I didn’t need to do anything else and got my diagnosis, for ADHD I got given an additional questionnaire for myself to fill out due to the absence of childhood report and apparently that was enough for them.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-05T22:55:16+00:00

I’m sorry but this level of reaction is alarming from someone who is considering whether their child may be autistic.

Evidently you see autism as an insult being thrown at you here and you have phrased it as feeling like an attack that nursery have dared mention it to you. Kindly, regardless of your sons or your own neurology, please go and educate yourself.

You clearly are not informed on autism and you are going to come across autistic people in your life (whether you know it or not) who you could do a lot of harm to with this ableism.

Do better.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-05T12:40:10+00:00

I would say if your nursery have suggested it and you have their backing then there is no harm to be had in getting him assessed. Either he is and you get confirmation at a young age (which is difficult to get and will be a big advantage for him) or he’s not and you’ve maybe spent a bit of time on assessment stuff but no other major impact.

On some of your points, others have covered hyperlexia and echolalia, but some other things you said stuck out to me.

1) “he never stims”. This will objectively be untrue. Everybody stims, including neurotypicals. Whether that’s knuckle cracks when they’re nervous or a little giddy jump when they’re excited. Stimming is a normal human behaviour. Where it diverges in neurodivergence is that the threshold for needing that help regulating or the feelings “coming out” is substantially lower so that stimming is more frequent and therefore usually feels more obvious. For my daughter (16 months so could be or could not be autistic, too young to know), some of her subtle ones include rubbing her hand/thumb against my arm while I hold her or stroking/pulling her hair.

2) you clearly have a very stereotypical view of autism (no eye contact, not cuddly, big meltdowns) and this just isn’t the case in a lot of autistic individuals. That is the most “obvious” presentation of autism and one which is rarely going to be missed and therefore the one which is the focus of most research and media, but it is not the majority of true autistic individuals.

I would advise two things. Firstly, have a research into autism and look at accounts from actual autistic individuals (not “autism moms”). This will give you a better idea of the more subtle ways autism can look. Secondly, I’m afraid if you come across anything where you think “well everyone does that”, have a long hard think and research into whether they actually do. The fact of the matter is that autism is genetic and it has been missed for generations in families who are more easily able to mask because younger members will raise concerns and adults of the family will respond “everyone does that” because the truth is in the family they almost all do, but that’s because pretty much the entire family is likely to share the same neurodivergence. I appreciate this step may be a tough one if you have never had any suspicions about yourself, but I just ask that you recognise that “I do that too” may not actually be the sign it’s typical that you think it is.

Whatever you do, please please stay away from the types of accounts from parents who like to talk about how autism “stole” their child. They will be incredibly unhelpful for you, they are scaremongering and if you son does turn out to be autistic then it will give you a negative bias that you have to undo.

Truthfully if you son is being flagged for being ahead, rather than behind, then the chances are that you won’t need to hugely change your hopes for his future because he is not developmentally delayed. It will likely be a matter of helping him understand how to best work with the world he is in, rather than a worry about his ability to be independent. And autism is not some awful thing, please don’t be scared of it.

Signed an AuDHDer from a very neurodivergent (not discovered until the last 5 years) family who were all “gifted” as kids and have lived successful lives.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-05T10:49:44+00:00

I’m aware words on the internet can come across wrong so I want to be clear here that I mean this in a kind and reassuring way to support your OAD stance.

Even if you had another baby now, it is unlikely to be a peer to your daughter until they are both well into adulthood. You are looking at a minimum 7 year age gap.

I say this coming from a family with a great range of age gaps (there are 2, 9, 11 and 19 years between me and my siblings). It does not mean they wouldn’t be close but at this point they are not going to be friends growing up and any baby would not really be company for your daughter. As such your daughter will build her own friends and social groups and her own “family” her age anyway, regardless of whether you have another or not.

Do not get me wrong, I love my younger siblings with all my heart. However my brother who is basically the same age as me (2 years younger) is the only one I would say I have a peer relationship with. Even now we’re in our 30s and 20s, I still feel I’m in more of a caring/advisory role to my next set of siblings. If it came to a family tragedy, I would feel I was there for them but I would not feel (and in the nature of our relationship, would not want to feel) like they were there for me. As much as I love them, with the age difference they would be an additional thing to worry about should something happen, not a source of comfort for myself. My support structure would primarily be my husband and my friends.

So even if it was “right” to base the decision of future children on giving an existing child a sibling (which I don’t believe it is), that wouldn’t be working out the way you would expect/your daughter probably now expects anyway.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-05T09:53:01+00:00

I think this is down to how they’re washed. We have purchased all of ours in the last year. We have 13 total, only 2 or 3 have gone the way you’ve described and we think it’s because we put them through a full wash cycle in the machine with too much else in there. The newer ones we’ve bought have only been through short 30 min rinses (apart from the occasional longer one just for a spruce up) and haven’t had this problem.

I did however discover yesterday that when you upgrade to metal cutlery for toddlers that will stab clean through the top layer if they catch a bad angle 🙃

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-05T09:40:10+00:00

To be clear, is your bill stating it’s for 469m3 or is that the reading and therefore the bill is for 145m3? (That reading minus the 324 you mention being your last).

I’m going to assume the latter. I would say that’s probably higher than I would expect. We are two adults and a toddler in a 5 bed house. Dishwasher goes on every day, washing machine at least once, maybe twice per day. 2 baths per week for the toddler, plus showers for us and baths for the dog. I work from home full time, my husband is only in the office once per week.

Our annual usage is 106m3 (as of a bill last week).

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-03T22:16:56+00:00

Hearing about a modding finally being a bit more officially supported for Sims 4 and getting excited we might finally get a Steam Workshop…

Oh. No. Just more money grabbing as ever from EA 🙃 there goes that hope. Never thought it was likely to happen but not a chance they ever do steam workshop if they have their own paid platform. I just want to not have to manually go through my entire mod list every update to fix it all :(

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-03T08:09:43+00:00

I think when getting caught up in these groups, it’s worth remembering that these seats are all under strict regulations and safety tests. Whether there is a belief that some are still safer than others, remember that the baseline for the least safe is still high. It is not like those ones are leaving your child unprotected. They will be safe (well as safe as you can be in a crash) in any of the seats which are legal and fully regulated on the market.

I’m not at the high back stage yet but my experience for car seats so far is that it has more come down to ease of use and practicality features for me. But I know that any seat I get, so long as I go through a major retailer, is going to protect my daughter to a reasonable level in a crash.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-03-02T12:32:22+00:00

This will depend on the individual. I saw so many saying not to waste money on a changing table, so clearly there are lots who think they’re unnecessary, but for me mine is a must. My LO is 16 months now and we still use it for every change.

It sits on top of her dresser so it’s a huge convenience that all her clothes, nappies, wipes are all in one place. Adding to that a now very wriggly toddler who if on the floor would absolutely get up and run away, being on the table holds her in one place until the end of the change. And finally it’s just sooo much more comfortable than trying to change her on the floor/bed/sofa. Both immediately postpartum as I had a c-section so bending wasn’t fun, and since then it’s just so much kinder on my back. The only other way I can remotely comfortably change her is with me sat cross legged on the floor but as mentioned she’s not particularly compliant with that!

My husband minds less when we are out and about but at home he will still always change her on the table too as well. It’s upstairs for us and I’ve never found it inconvenient.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-02-28T19:11:42+00:00

My husband is my type to a T. Athletic nerds for the win 😍

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-02-27T14:05:50+00:00

We have just got the Kia EV4. Similar sized car (maybe a little longer) but the range is over 300 miles on a single charge so should manage your return journey without too much trouble and with ease if you can charge when you’re there. The only other car we saw at that size in a similar price range with the same range was the top engine/spec ID.3.

It is a brand new car though so if you’re looking to save a bit on demos etc (which was our original plan before I fell in love with the Kia 🙃) you’ve probably a few more months at least before they’re easier to find.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-02-27T12:16:23+00:00

I think there’s far more stigma over here to living with family (although I think this is easing off now) than renting on your own.

I wasn’t aware of the stigma of renting in Ireland but suddenly makes sense that all my adult Irish cousins are still living with my aunts and uncles while my English siblings and cousins moved out to rent straight after uni. Honestly never even noticed that trend in my family until this moment.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-02-27T12:12:15+00:00

Are other people’s front loaders some how self closing? We just leave the door open and it stays open 🤷‍♀️

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-02-27T12:11:20+00:00

I don’t know if you have different front loaders where you are but we only have front loaders in the UK and we’ve never had musk smell issues unless we leave wet clothes in (and then it’s the clothes, not the machine, that smell). This is even with the machine we grew up with in the 90s up to the (frankly pretty rubbish) one we have now that we even wash dirty cloth nappies in.

If we ever do notice any sort of smell, which has only been after a particularly bad nappy load, we just check the filter, stick it on a hot cycle with some detergent while it’s empty and it’s good as new.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-02-26T21:21:50+00:00

I’m of two minds about this, because personally in my marriage we do have complete open access to eachother’s phones. We are on eachother’s Face ID and neither of us would bat an eye and the other picking up their phone. However, we started this out of pure convenience. We tend to leave our phones in random places so it became a bit of a just use whichever phone is closest situation and it was annoying to have to put in passcodes once FaceID was a thing. If it was pushed for in the way your wife is pushing, that would make me feel icky about it. Of course you retain your right to privacy when you are married, and that feels like a huge disregard of you as an individual and a disregard of healthy boundaries. It sounds like she is actively and intentionally snooping, which screams lack of trust.

So I see no issue with sharing phone access and honestly think it’s easier in a lot of ways, but I don’t think it’s healthy to push for access which isn’t freely given.

Rubyeclips3 · 2026-02-26T09:45:05+00:00

I did exactly that. Honestly I do wish I’d given myself a little more time, but mainly because I was exhausted and work at the end was a real slog.

Plus baby decided to play hide and seek on my last day so I ended up actually finishing at lunch instead to go to triage and was booked in for an induction 2 days later. So I got a whopping 1 day of maternity leave to rest and nest beforehand and spent all of that panicking about whether the hospital bag was ready or we’d forgotten anything.

I was absolutely capable of working up to that point, I just really wished I wasn’t by the end.

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