AIBU for telling my parents about my pregnancy very late? I just sometimes forget they even exist or that I have parents

I'd be upset but I've been an involved parent .

And that's the difference, is it not?

It doesn't sound like OP's parents have been very involved, so it's unsurprising that OP doesn't have much of a relationship with them as an adult.

I find your reply quite cruel.

Pot/kettle

Gosh, that sounds hard.
I still remember the one time I got home and my mum was too busy to give me time. To have this happen repeatedly must have been really hard. I’m sorry @BeBreezyAquaFinch . I’m sending you a massive maternal hug 🫂 (I’m a bit older than you)

I don’t have the pleasure or the privilege to talk to my best friends on the phone every other week or so - so this is a consistent and reciprocal relationship seemingly without any conflict. Even if it’s the tone of a neighbour you would have mentioned your pregnancy in the many calls you would have had to date and also with your wedding plans - not to mention your engagement etc over many many months. Not adding up to me.

What about your siblings - you must have told them if you have the detail about their one other grandchild - did they not say have you told Mum and Dad and if not would they have not mentioned it to them.

Oh and people don’t tend to ask if you plan to have children. My DP of 20years and I are childless due to my health, the polite people just don’t ask.

It seems like you are punishing your parents for your childhood.
I don't believe that one can forget to mention pregnancy or marriage to their parents if they are in contact, even if they are not close.

All very strange OP , in a kind way I think you might need to have more therapy.

you should have told them months ago , the same time you told your DH”s parents. Same as when you got engaged you tell both sides at the same time. And so on.

I do understand strained relationships I’m NC with siblings LC with parents and step parent now I’m in my 50s. And not had a good upbringing. I became a parent as a teenager and even with my upbringing the first people I told about my pregnancy were my parents. That’s the right thing to do.

you don’t want to carry this on through the generations so try some decent therapy to get it all out of your system. Ive had therapy myself after a breakdown to try not to pass generational trauma on.

What if you assumed they cared?

Changed your interactions with them for the better. Start involving them, invite them to stay nearby when the baby is a few weeks old. See what happens.

"Never asked me if I plan to have children" could be a matter of tact. Possibly they were plagued by their parents saying "but when are you going to have children", and didn't want to do the same to you.

No, that's not what the OP said. She said she is the only one out of her siblings who has tried to bring up their upbringing with them. The others just accept that that's the way they were/are and have accepted it and moved on but they still talk to them. At least that's how I interpreted it anyway. People are trying really hard to make the parents into uncaring villains here for some reason when honestly, that doesn't seem to be the case at all

Stop the pretence of forgetting to tell them.
Nobody forgets their wedding or their baby.

You withheld the information - perhaps in the hope of goading a response, upsetting them at a future stage, or just proving how remote they are.

You may well be right. They might have been awful parents.

But I'm interested in why you started this thread because it looks to me like you want a reaction - maybe any reaction - from somebody. MN in place of your parents. A chance to have the argument but from the safety of your laptop/phone.

You are about to become a parent. So the timing of the thread/argument is obvious.

Some therapy - or more therapy - wouldn't go amiss. Its clearly bothering you.

So in your phone conversations, did you talk about other things in your life that you thought they would be more interested in?
Or did you only talk about things they asked about? (Many tactful parents would not ask "are you pregnant" in case you were failing to conceive and didn't want to talk about it.)
Or was the conversation entirely about them and their activities?

It's difficult to understand how you could genuinely forget to tell them. Perhaps easier to imagine you deliberately not mentioning it when you started telling other people (perhaps out of resentment that they weren't more involved), and then feeling awkward about telling them later on because you realised it was going to have upset them.

You’re assuming that those(two way, caring) conversations naturally happen for everyone. That is not always the case. Some adult children are conditioned to never really talk about themselves (through years of disinterest) , some adult children deliberately hide things as they can’t be bothered with the drama (things they say being used against them, the parent making it all about themselves etc.).

We lived with them for maybe a few weeks a year

Don't boarding schools have over three months of holidays? Who looked after you the rest of the time?

I think this thread is a wind up.

You didn’t forget to tell them, to be this far along and catch up with them via phone every few weeks when you would have attended appointments etc you deliberately didn’t divulge the information.
People don’t tend to randomly ask when/if people are going to have children so it’s not something they would have asked.
However I don’t think you’re wrong in not telling them important information if you don’t want to, it’s obviously a learnt self preservation mechanism.
I think it’s important to ‘own’ your choice not to tell them rather than try and convince yourself you forgot. No one is entitled to information about another but your parents are probably right to feel snubbed.
My Cousin attended boarding school whilst my Aunt travelled to far flung places teaching. She had to rely on Aunts to have her during the holidays, she is very independent and self sufficient and makes jokes about her lack of parenting.
She herself is a brilliant mother, chose and could afford to be a SAHM because she wanted to make sure she was always there, however her and her Mum are friends if not a traditional mother/daughter relationship and she treats her like anyone else within her friendship circle, news that would be shared amongst friends is shared to her parents.

No parent scores 10/10 on everything. Maybe they score low in some areas but not others.

They bring their own dmaage, same as you will. Growing up means learning from it.

The interesting thing is that when you become a mum yourself, that becomes painfully clear and your darkest thoughts are whether your children will forgive your shortcomings (for which we find many, no matter how much they look at us with innocent wide eyes and tell us they love us).

Perhaps your parents know this fault about themselves and this is their penance. Fine. But when you find yourself falling short, just remember, you haven't truly forgiven them and your child may treat you the same one day.

You're also bringing family dysfunction into your child's life from day one, whereas at this point you can still talk to your parents and find a better way forward for everyone.

Your mother is probably well aware people would judge HER for having so little interest or relationship she doesn't know a second grandchild is coming. Do you think that's relevant perhaps?

I do know how you feel a little but suspect if you consider your parents' relationships with their own parents it may tell you something. It certainly did me.

I think this is really the question. OP described a 'distant' relationship with her parents but then told us she speaks to them every fortnight. That isn't 'distant'.

She told us she 'forgot' but clearly didn't.

She claims to have hardly seen her parents growing up - well, is that actually true, or was it actually more like 18 weeks a year?

She thought her mum wouldn't care - but everything she has detailed about her parents other than that final drip feed about the photo sounds like a parent who cares and is doing their best for their child.

I have met a lot of 'boarding school survivors' and I've seen the best and worst of boarding school parents and OPs parents really do sound like perfectly ordinary parents who have to live overseas for work but want the best education for their child. That in itself does not make them emotionally distant - quite the opposite!

Currently the OP hasn't given any detail other than the photo that suggests her parents actually are or were emotionally distant or dont/didnt care. However, there are several things she has claimed that don't fit with the details she has given and that does make me question whether they were the emotionallu distant ones here!

OP, are you neurodiverse? Because the way you are interpreting your parents actions is very odd unless there is something you havent told us.

It is not your fault that there is no emotional connection to your parents. It was their job to build that loving connection with you. They clearly were unable to have warm loving relationships with their children, just as they cannot have warm loving relationships with their grandchildren. So it is not surprising that you are not bonded to your parents at all.
It is very sad that you are getting criticised on here for not having feelings for your parents. As you say you don’t hate them but it sounds like you are just indifferent to them as you imagined they were indifferent to you. So now you are surprised that your mum was hurt she didn’t know earlier about your pregnancy.
As parents we reap what we sow, so your parents did not sow a bonded relationship with their children so she can hardly now be surprised that you are not bonded with her. She will get over it.

The main thing now is you have a happy marriage and are excited for your future baby and you won’t repeat any of the patterns of your childhood.

Well I can understand this, having had multiple miscarriages myself and one time my dad who was really hard of hearing, I was having to shout down the phone whilst crying that I’d had yet another miscarriage, we didn’t tell our parents til the second trimester, and some friends didn’t know till a few weeks before as we’d just not spoken to them and I didn’t put anything on Facebook.
I didn't go to boarding school either but can see that parents may end up being more distant especially if they’re abroad so you rarely see them. I didn’t have the best relationship with my parents for different reasons, however, I did say my kids would be brought up very differently, and I think that you now have this blank slate with your own children so they’re not phoning you feeling disappointment that they’re not in your close group. Good luck with the rest of the pregnancy and the new arrival when they come

Do you ever see your parents? What are your relationships with your siblings like?
I think that you'll probably need some emotional support when baby is born - I found that a lot about my upbringing (narc mother) bubbled up when I had my children