To want to tell my sister exactly how annoyed i am with her? Long, sorry.

[neverontime]

I am 4.5 weeks pregnant. It has been very traumatic as i found out really early, 2 weeks ago, and had spotting for over a week, my GP thought i could be losing my baby. Anyway, so far so good, baby is hanging in there.

I went away with my Sister, Mum and my 2 children last week. My sis refused to acknowledge the fact i was pregnant and wouldnt talk about it at all, her excuse was, she didnt want the holiday to be about me. But, in my defense, i only mentioned it once, when i said my DD wanted to name the baby Lucy.

We came back from holiday friday, and i met my sister saturday for an afternoon shopping. While we were out in town, my sister brought up the baby and said she was uncomfortable talking about it for a few reasons, her reasons are:

1. My sister thinks its unfair i dont have to work for another 5 years when she is stuck in a job she hates.
2. She thinks i've had my chance to have babies and its her turn now. (my youngest is 4, and my sister isnt even trying for a baby yet).
3. She think its unfair on my other 2 DCs that they have to share me with another baby
4. SHe thinks my DC will miss out on a lot because all my time and money will be spent on the new baby.
5. My sister said if i have twins, (they run in my DPs family) she will never even try for a baby as twins are something she had always wanted, not me.
6. She thinks its unfair i may get funding to re-train as a teaching assistant after my baby is born (i'm currently volunteering at my DCs school as an unqualified teaching assistant)
7. She thinks i will take away the specialness of her having a baby if i have one close to her having one. (Again, she isnt even trying, shes still on the pill)
8. She doesnt want me to mention my pregnancy as it makes her angry.

Sorry for rambling, but i feel so upset that my sister has taken my pregnancy and made it all about how she feels. Having a baby should be something to be celebrated, not hidden away like a dirty little secret.

So, do you think i need to say something to her, or just leave her to her thoughts and see how she feels later on.
And how do i tell her how i feel? I'm too scared to tell her face to face because she was so angry the other day.

Your sister sounds rude and jealous and very very difficult but I bet there is a massive back story. And being 4.5 weeks pregnant or six weeks pregnant and your daughter wanting to call her Lucy is mad. Just plain weird. You both sound odd but she sounds odd in a rude and direct way.

Op, I would say it is possible that you got pregnant this cycle or last.EIther is possible:

Last cycle- if you ovulated late then your levels of hcg may not have been high enough to be picked up on a pregnancy test and your period could have been an implantation bleed.

This cycle: as you say, you might have ovulated early, perfectly possible. Personally I was using ovulation tests so knew my dates exactly. I got my first positive pregnancy test 8 days later using a 10miu test from ebay!

In terms of the docs and how they date pregnancy, they use lmp as most women dont have a bloody clue when they ovulated, so using lmp they basically assume every woman has a 28 day cycle with ovulation on day 14. So if you dont you need to adjust for this- so, weeks since ovulation + two weeks = actual weeks pregnant in terms of how due dates, scans etc are done.

loopy "twins don't follow the male line of a family - makes no difference how many are in DP's side."

Yeah that's what I used to think when MIL used to bang on about how many twins were born in their family.

Identical twins... inherited genetic tendency for the ovum to split into two or more... can come from either side... believe me twins can come from the male side (totally made MIL's day when she was right and I was wrong)

randomness, if there is an inherited tendency for the ovum to split into 2 then it cannot come from your partners side!!
you are (in general) not genetically related to your partner. They could of course pass that trait to your offspring so they may be more likely to have twins. ( it's non identical twins that you see a familial increase anyway)

The actual point of this thread is that your sister is a jealoua idiot.
She should be happy that shes getting a niece/nephew and that you are having a much wanted baby.

My sister can not have children (very small chance anyway!) so she puts all her effort into loving her nephews, treating them and spends hours learning what they like/dont like etc.

Your sister is out of order. You need to put her in her place. Ask her why she is not excited about a new niece/nephew???
Very childish!

Congratulations. I knew i was pregnant right away with both my little ones

"I'm not calling you a liar necessarily, but what you are saying is physically impossible and cannot happen"

FFS OVing at day 14 is an AVERAGE! people ovulate at all ends of their cycle, I OV right at the end, my two are "pysically impossible" according to some, but my 20 week bump is kicking me right (concieved month 1 of trying with OV dates confirmed by both sticks and scan) now and my 3 YO is sitting beside me (concieved first time we were a bit lax, also OV testing at the time and OV confirmed by dating scan)

The egg splitting isn't genetic, producing more than one egg is, so non IDs are genetic, IDs are not. Statistics don't distribute themselves evenly, not every family has exactly the same amt of IDs, some have none, some have em in every generation - that doesn't make them genetic

yup I agree that you could also be a month more pregnant, with DS I mistook my implantation bleed for a period at first, only tested when I got other symptoms, and this time had a long bleed but with DS1s experience behind me I recognised the difference

some people bleed every month around the time of their periods when pregnant

sounds like you could do with a dating scan

ALL of you who are banging on about it being weird about the op telling anyone this early - its her close family ffs she hasn't taken out a full page spread in the local paper.

I did a test 4 days before my period was due because I was excited and impatient and I told my sister and parents (who I was staying with at the time) as soon as I had told dh. It was nothing to do with being attention seeking, it was about sharing exciting news with those closest to me.

I am not stupid, I knew there was a chance it wouldn't work but actually I would have wanted the support of my family if that had happened so didn't see why I shouldn't tell them this early. The decision when to tell is a personal one and it isn't really for anyone else to criticise anymore than I would criticise someone else for waiting as long as they liked.

Op yanbu. If that had been the response of my sister I would have been devastated. I think the best advice is to steer clear of her at the moment. If she won't let it lie I think I'd say something among the lines of how hurt you are and while you appreciate she may have issues going on that she hasn't shared with you you'd prefer that if she can't say anything nice she doesn't say anything at all.

Because actually while her comments are understandable if she is having fertility issues they are still not acceptable.

On the timing front, I told people very early and I had some negative comments about this - 'isn't it a bit soon to be telling people' (that was at 7 weeks) etc etc.

My children knew, because I felt like death and told them why. And once they knew there was no stopping them. And like the previous poster I felt that if anything went wrong, I would just tell people that as well. It's a personal choice when to tell people, I think, and not weird, whenever you decide to do it.

I have no idea when my baby was conceived, I thought it was on day 10 of my 'last' cycle but the scan puts me two weeks ahead of the midwife's dates (LMP based) which would mean I ovulated during my period, and conceived after having no sex for 10 days.

None of it makes any sense. Either it's a truly enormous baby (totally in proportion etc, not just one duff measurement) or I'm a freak of nature.

randomness identical twins don't run in families. Fraternal twins run down the maternal side as they are a consequence of the mother producing two eggs per cycle instead of one. Identical twins happen by chance.

Sounds to me like your sister is very jealous, whether she is ttc or just really frightened of infertility.

Yes she is being totally unreasonable to say those things to you, but it sounds like her feelings are just out of control about it and she cant deal with your news. Perhaps she feels like you have 3 DC and she has none and she is just too jealous.

Obviously she is unfair, but maybe you can find a bit of compassion for what she may be going through. You dismissed her fear of not being able to conceive as 'just her being paranoid', but maybe its really bad for her.

I would just leave her to sort out her feelings for a little while, but not make too big a deal of it.

I have two sisters who haven't spoken for about four years now over a session where they both 'spoke their minds'. I hate it and have done my best to make peace as have my parents, but neither will move and its heartbreaking, so please dont let it go too far.

I dont blame you for being upset about what she said, but surely you can see that her points are ridiculous and stem from her issues, not her true feelings about you.

"but maybe you can find a bit of compassion for what she may be going through"

but what good will this do, apart from letting the sister continue to be vile to the OP at an emotional and stressful time!

to have compassion in a relationship with someone you have to have a bit going each way, the sister has no compassion whatsoever for the OP so treating her with kid gloves is only going to make the OP feel shit and enable the sisters behaviour

a few of us have said that if the sister was just saying that she FELT that way, that would be totally understandable and we would sympathise, but she's not just feeling it she is lashing out at a pregnant woman. No she does not need sympathy because that's not okay

Randomness, identical twins are not thought to run in families and even if they do, you're not related to your DH, so how could you have had identical twins because of him? Franternal twins are said to run on the maternal side of the family. My paternal Grandmother has twin sisters. No other twins in our families. I have been pregnant with twins twice, but I put that down to the pill, once whilst on the pill and once whehn I'd recently come off it. The pill is said to increase the chances of twin pregnancies.

OP I also knew I was pregnant very early on, faint positives (that I didn't really believe at the time!) from cycle day 18. I hadn't tested before then and I also ovulate early.

I would ignor eyour sister. I would love another baby, am desperate for one in fact and will almost certainly never have another. Howeverm if my sister told me she was pregnant, I would be thrilled for her. Being sad about something yourself does not mean you should begrudge others joy.

I feel I have to stick up for the OP here, being described as 'horrid' and 'odd' and having a 'look at me look at me' attitude.

She told her closest family that she was pregnant early on. Hardly a hanging offence. And her sister has been deeply strange and very unpleasant about it. Whether or not there are difficulties OP doesn't know about, behaving in that way is completely unacceptable.

I spent 15 years watching my sisters have a total of 5 children, fearing it would never happen for me. By the last two, it was so hard, and my mother rang me after each announcement so I could have a little cry to her on the 'phone. It did not occur to me though, that this was any kind of licence to treat my sisters or their children like dirt, or some kind of selfish inconvenience.

OP, I think all you can do is give her a wide berth, and not expect much from her in terms of interest or support.

Oh and I told everyone I knew from the moment I was pregnant each time. Why not? A miscarriage or loss can happen at any time and I don't see a potential loss as a reason not to tell people. Why should it be?

My DC also knew from early on each time and when I did have early miscarriages, I simply explained to them that the pregnancy hadn't actually been a baby because there has been a problem with the sperm/egg early on and it was never going to grow into a baby. They were fine with that.

How old is your sister?!

However old she is, she is terribly immature and has serious issues! The cheek of her - not only to think those things but not to realise how ridiculous she must have sounded saying them!

Maybe she also doesn't want you/her/your dm to become too close to your baby in case you lose it.

But it sounds to me like she is longing for a baby and either not managing, or her dp isn't ready to try yet. Just because she says she isn't trying doesn't mean that she isn't. Someone I knew only admitted she had been trying for 5 years when she finally got pregnant. In that time she had been very vocal about not being ready to try and it would be dreadful if she was pregnant because it wasn't the right time.

yes fracternal twins come from mothers side as the mother has to release 2 eggs (i have twins) id twins come from the egg spitting again.

How old is she, and is there a big age gap between the pair of you?

And perhaps just do as she asks and don't mention it to her, and only talk to those that are interested in it. I had v similar with my sis.

Just what OP needs a thread full of you might lose your baby

I'm fairly sure that the sister isn't being that selfless as to even be considering her OPs feelings - see original post.

'the' not 'her'

"Just because she says she isn't trying doesn't mean that she isn't."

so what?, even if she is, she is not UR to FEEL jealous but is still totally UR to lash out at the OP because of it!

neverontime I am about as pregnant as you and I've told anyone who'll listen!

There's no way i could wait till 12 weeks!

I did the same last time.

To return to the OP, I think it would be reasonable to tell your sister how her comments made you feel.

I would just grin and bear it for a while and let her get over it IF (in case there are cicumstances you dont know about) in a couple of months she is still behaving like this then i would confront her.

I got pregnant from ovulating two days ish after the end of my period. I know this as we only had sex that day so it must have been around then and the dates from the scan dated the pregnancy to that day as well. It is totally possible. I normally have 26 day cycles.