Baby announcement gone wrong

When your in-laws said they heard you were pregnant you should have said ' yes, only 5 weeks. We were planning to tell you soon, only told childminder to secure a place...

I can see why they were upset about you lying to them.

Sounds like you wanted a big dramatic reveal and reaction.

Focus on how lucky you are to have your child and another pregnancy.

You feeling pushed aside when a new baby came along and thinking this will happen with yours makes no sense. If you're going on your in-laws showing no interest surely it's the baby who will be ignored for the sake of the first?

Asking the child minder "quietly" at five weeks to hold a place is bonkers and you should have said you didn't want her to tell anyone, say with the cleaner.

Honestly, pick your battles. This is all so silly.

I would have told them as soon as he childminder / cleaner knew. What’s the big deal? And I wouldn’t have done the t-shirt…

In Oxford you would need to be booking childcare as soon as you got the pregnancy result back. I agree with you about the rest.

You really didn’t need to put in such a big performance for a second child. I don’t see the point of doing it for a first either to be honest. I think we are being conditioned to all perform our lives like social media influencers.

Who made the t-shirt? Some kid in a factory in Bangladesh? How many times is your kid going to wear that t-shirt? It’s all so wasteful.

I’d be very annoyed with the cleaner. Let your PILs stew on it but don’t upset yourself further or stoop to their levels.
Congratulations OP - I hope you’ve told some other people in your life and have had great reactions xx

Hear hear!

You all sound (with the exception of your child) utterly exhausting and tiresome. The whole buying a t-shirt and making a "big announcement" as a birthday present is overdone, the trying to book a childminder at 5 weeks pregnant, your DH lying to his Mum once the cat was out of the bag, hiding in the bathroom....

With both of mine I rang my parents and told them I was pregnant as soon as DH and I knew, but there were no brass bands, dancing girls or performing monkeys.

They're not the manipulative ones. You are

You all sound completely bonkers. 😂

Surely the best way forward is for both sides to save their ire for the true villians of the piece - the childminder and the cleaner?

That's better than my suggestion.

It's straightforward, honest and open.

Can't be faulted and would have averted all this mess

Obviously super unprofessional of both childminder and cleaner but your opportunity to avoid this, frankly ridiculous, drama was when the childminder told your PILs.
Not your preferred timing maybe, but coming clean then rather than lying and then expecting a big ‘surprise’ moment a few weeks later was the best option.
You are now involved in a family argument for literally no reason. It does seem you actively dislike your MIL so perhaps your reaction has been coloured by this. Time to sit down and have a talk about it really, or you can all just keep being immature. Up to you!

Omg I'm laughing waiting to pay in Asda now 😂

I think pretending not to know to protect OP's fragile ego is ridiculous.

"Oh wow, I'm sorry you found out that way, we were hoping to announce it after the 12 week scan. We wanted you to be the first to know but sadly the waiting list for childminders is so long that we felt like we needed to get ahead of it. We can't wait to celebrate with you though!"

Instead of "The important thing is to disguise your hurt and pretend you don't know because otherwise Mum to Be will spit out her dummy and cause a scene."

The people you should be cross with are childminder and cleaner. If you told them to be discreet and they weren't that's pretty shitty

Unless the OP wants to pursue some vendetta against the child minder and cleaner for breaching professional and ethical standards rather than trying to recover whatever relationship she and her DH previously had with the in-laws, I don't see what complaining about the two of them will achieve for the OP.

They're both obviously on good enough terms with the MiL to congratulate her on the news that she was going to be a grandmother again. I'm not 100% convinced that punishing them for telling the MiL something that the Mil could reasonably have been expected to know about before them, will necessarily work in the OP's favour.

But if the OP doesn't give a shit about her and her DH's relationship with his mother, then she should go for it and let everybody know what gossips they are

Apart from not letting the in-laws know sooner, this all comes back to the husband's daft response to his mother's enquiry that it was somebody else with the same name as his wife(!).

Why he couldn't just have said something along the lines of "Yeah it's great isn't it! But don't let on to GAZ0188 that you know. She wants to be able to make a big announcement about it so please don't spoil it for her" I can't imagine.

If the MiL had then spoilt it the OP and her DH would have a legitimate complaint

Except OP does need the in-laws, because they currently provide 2 days of childcare per week.

In that case, think I’d rather do our own (DH too) cleaning. If the only alternative was someone who snooped on us and gossiped what she’d seen and heard back to my MIL (and quite possibly others too). Sod that. Wouldn’t have anyone in my home I couldn’t trust. She might be riffling through my bedside drawers 🤢.

What does this mean and who are you responding to?

your response here and your reaction where you shit yourself in the bathroom etc actually says a lot more about you tbh.

Yes their reaction was not nice but you also knew that they already knew so expecting a big response to your special reveal was unnecessary at that point.

Anyway keep them at arms length and focus on your baby, let your DH deal with them going forward. My view is everyone is BU.

I would also have a chat with your cleaner, that was unprofessional of her and also the child minder but I don’t know what you can do except not use her which also depends on availability where you live.

If you were far enough along to tell the childminder, then you are more than far enough along to tell the grandparents.

I assume you have not told your parents either.
So when you finally tell them and they find out that the childminders and cleaner knew (and now PIL), expect them to be upset.

It’s really strange to think that way. Childish even.

An announcement “eclipsing” and adult’s birthday? Really?

It’s perfectly reasonable to not want to tell anyone about a pregnancy until the 12th week. The cleaner found out, and was not told. The childminder was told for professional purposes. It’s up to OP who she tells and when she tells them.

Anyone who can’t congratulate a woman on her pregnancy because they didn’t like the order they were told is ridiculous.

Exactly this, sorry OP. If you haven't already had counselling from your childhood I hugely recommend it. Made a huge difference to me and best done pre kids

Also I’d be absolutely fuming with the cleaner and childminder and would sack both.

That’s known as cutting your nose off to spite your face. In a small community they’d be hard to replace.

Also I’d be absolutely fuming with the cleaner and childminder and would sack both. They’ve shown that they can’t be trusted and trust is extremely important in both those roles. Your poor PIL must have known for a lot of weeks and been wondering why you weren’t telling them when you’d been telling other people. From the way it must have looked to them, I’d be hurt too. They’re probably also feeling that the cleaner and childminder are wondering why you didn’t see fit to share the news with them, because as far as it looks to them, you told both those people but not them.

I think a lot of people here don't know what it's like living in a small town or village where it seems like everybody knows everybody else and can't mind their own business. People talk... If that is so, trying to keep the knowledge from the baby's grandparents is a very deliberate act of exclusion.