Angry and Confused - family expectations!

[rmaun1986]

Hi all, i'm new here so apologies if this is long winded!

I am 8 weeks pregnant, having found out at week 5. This happened very quickly for us, for which I know (& feel) incredibly lucky, but it came as a shock and something we are continuing to adjust to. I have been with my husband for almost 12 years (since uni) and having kids has always been on his agenda, but not necessarily mine. He's never been pushy or forceful on the topic, but in the last 2 years (i'm 32) family and friends have increasingly made comments about my potential future regrets if we didn't. Don't get me wrong, I love kids! I see (& experience) the pleasure they bring to their parents, I adore my niece who i look after on a weekly basis and have complete respect for parents. I think its just not been something I felt I needed, if that makes sense; i've always been very career focused and I do have a tendency to over think things and can often find future obstacles that make me postpone decisions, especially big ones!

I have a pretty emotionally draining job in the NHS which i've been unhappy in for some time, and so in the last year, I have thought more about my life and what I want out of it, and so decided that perhaps having a baby in the near future would be fulfilling, and shift in my life perspective, and also, perhaps the right time with my age and where I am at in my career.

A week after i found out i was pregnant, I was head hunted for a position that i have been dreaming of for the last couple of years. I now can't take this post (not for any discrimination issues, it simply wouldn't work with me now being pregnant). I think it's pretty understandable given my previous life goals to date, that this would make me disappointed to now be missing this opportunity, albeit for a lovely reason.

My mum and sister and I, grew up just us 3 and so are, in theory, very close. My sister is older, with a 2 year old, and is very emotionally driven in her ways. This can make her say and do things she often regrets. I'm the opposite, I don't show my cards often but when I do i am honest and direct. I have only seen them a handful of times since finding out i was pregnant, each occasion involving alcohol for all but me. They know how I am as a person, how ambivalent I have been about children, how quickly this happened for us, and how disappointed I am about this job.

I'm not overly excited right now; i'm still getting used to it all and to be honest, for the last 4 weeks (before i even knew i was pregnant!) i've been feeling so unwell! I'm shocked at the "morning sickness" symptoms, i had no idea what this actually meant. So not only am I adjusting to my new life to be (all the while still being a worrier!) i'm feeling sick, dizzy and exhausted about 75% of my day every day; still working, still getting everything done, because thats whats expected.

Yesterday, after a few drinks (them not me), they decided to quite forcefully tell me how my reaction to being pregnant is effecting them... that its worrying that i'm not showing excitement, that i seem "miserable", that how I am effects them, that they don't know how to speak to me, that they both know exactly how I am feeling as "you're not the only person to have been pregnant".

This escalated, I cried a lot, my husband intervened and the conversation was ended. We're now all just moving on, but i'm so mad with them both. I feel like not only do they not know me at all, but basically i've been told how i am adjusting to this (only 3 weeks in!) is wrong and not normal. I feel mad that they're telling me they know how i feel; my mother hasn't been pregnant in over 30years and my sister was not 1% ill during her first trimester, and we are so different in how we deal with our emotions. I feel now, like i have to pretend i'm feeling well, when i'm not, and any (what i consider) normal thoughts and feelings i'm having about being pregnant in the next 7 months, i have to keep to myself as they won't want to hear it. Basically, be happy and excited or say nothing.

I feel ok with where I am at emotionally given how I just am as a person, and the quickness of this, plus the whole job stuff. My husband isn't worried, i'm not wallowing and he even told them that they've seen snapshots of me when i'm feeling unwell vs him seeing my at times when I'm not feeling sick and seem much brighter.

My sister has apologised for her usual "saying things in the heat of the moment" she didn't mean, but neither of them seem to think that this conversation was premature or unnecessary at this stage.

Am I being unreasonable? Am I "not normal" for not being excited yet and also being effected so much by the sickness?

sorry for the length of this!! Thanks for any responses in advance :)

Honestly, I could have written a lot of your OP myself. I also come from a high stress job with a medical background (that I love and am successful in) and also fell pregnant very easily and very quickly. I was never particularly maternal but by the same token, it’s not like having children was a hard ‘no’ either. I just felt like the time was never right and my DP and I could have easily just carried on traveling and enjoying our life together but I felt like if I didn’t at least try to have children, I would regret it.

I didn’t greatly enjoy being pregnant either so I think I probably felt some of the same judgement from others that you’re getting at the moment. Where’s the glow? Aren’t you overjoyed? Isn’t it amazing? To which I would half heartedly smile and shrug.

I’ve said before that biologically speaking, it’s really lucky we have the better part of a year to get used to the idea of having a baby. It gets better, I promise. By the end of my pregnancy, I couldn’t wait to meet my little guy and when he arrived it was love at first sight. It was all worth it and it will be the same for you.

People will judge you no matter what you do and im afraid once the baby is here, it only gets worse. Ignore the haters and just do what makes you happy. Congratulations

Families can be crazymaking. Obviously, the way your mother and sister are acting don't make sense on any kind of logical level. You are the one who is pregnant. By definition, you are the expert on how you are feeling and how you should feel, and they should take their cues from you. It isn't your job to support them in how they cope with . . . your pregnancy. They need to support you as you cope with your pregnancy. It's your fucking pregnancy.
However, families operate on strange, mythic, primal substructures that have their own internal logic. This is what drives seemingly intelligent women to act out strange behaviors as if they are in a trance. What I have found helpful is recognizing when family members are acting entranced, and refusing to engage with these patterned behaviors by setting boundaries. If I don't like my family's behavior, I will say--in absolutely as few words as possible, something along the lines of "I would prefer to discuss other matters."

Here’s my guess- your mum & sister are reacting to some service you’ve normally provided them with, being withdrawn since you’ve become pregnant?

Were you a great listener, and were the conversations always about them, their health, their problems? Now you have legitimate reasons for ‘making it more about you’, and they’re getting stroppy?

Maybe you have less leisure time now, or less energy to help them as maybe you used to?

People get quite jealous of your attention through pregnancy, and it may come out in the way you describe. They feel bad, so they want you to feel bad too? Horrid.

Focus in on your baby, your future family unit. Leave them to their pettiness and draw a line. The only way to deal with people who ‘punish’ you is to increase distance (permanently). Lord knows how much worse they could get as your child rearing gives them endless chances to critisize.

Yanbu. I suspect they may end up being upset at any ssuggestion of you reacting or acting different from them. Hopefully not but some people see others actions as criticism on them so just be aware if it happens more.

My friends had wonderful pregnancies, mine were awful. Hate most of the trimesters, love what you get from them. But then maybe do as i did and ask who would be cheerful with (list symptoms) a continually bleeding and sore anus,violent sickness and nausea (needing medication throughout), headaches, dizziness and severe leg pain. Shut the 'it's only pregnancy' folks right up especially when dfriend (who spouted it) had noro and no sympathy from me as she threw up less times then i did in a day. When she whined i countered it with 'well you should have washed your hands better then (she choses to not wash properly) and well you've had it better then me today. Purposefully being as big an arse as she had kept being. Finally she got it and apologised. Ironically since my first pregnancy she has a terrible one so now apologises loads despite no one needing one!

I think this is one of the reasons why people don't generally announce they're pregnant until the second trimester. So they've got time to get their head around it all and generally feel a bit better about it (physically and mentally).

I had been TTC for nine months with my first and I still remember the day I found out. I hadn't told DH I was doing a test and I remember looking at the positive test thinking 'oh shit I'm pregnant'. I had a proper flap. Told myself I could hide the test from DH, sneak off and deal with it on Monday and no one would be any the wiser. I was also 32 when I fell pregnant and had only really decided I wanted them when I hit 30. It's totally normal to feel conflicted about having a baby. My DC are 6 and 4 and there's times even now I question whether or not I'm cut out for this! I've just recently had to turn down a dream job because of child care problems with it and it does sting. I love my kids more than anything in this world and have happily put myself in harms way to protect them. But I'm still gutted that being a parent means I have to make sacrifices on this level.

I don't think they're comments come from a place of malice. They're probably excited about the pregnancy and want you to be as well. They probably just don't know what the right thing to say is. So perhaps tell them what you want or need from them.

Every woman and every pregnancy is different. My first one was absolutely fine, second was terrible (especially in the last trimester). For every person who tells you pregnancy is not an illness, I gave birth and did a 12 hour shift in the workhouse the same day blah blah blah, there are twice as many who have struggled and hated every minute of being pregnant.