To have a baby my grown dd doesn't want me to have?

[pebblecity]

I have a 23 year old dd who I had when I was 17, she has a 1 year old who we occasionally have to sleep over in what was her old bedroom.
I am pregnant again now at 40 after years of trying and dh and I are over the moon.

Dd however is not so pleased, we announced our pregnancy after the 12 week scan and she's really upset that her daughter will be 2 years older than ours and that our baby will be eventually in dds old room which our granddaughter sometimes sleeps in if we babysit, the rooms a double and there is still room for our granddaughter on occasion to stay in there but dd said it's not the same.
Dd is disgusted at the thought and although we thought she'd be surprised, we didn't expect this reaction, especially as we've been ttc for a long time with many losses (which she doesn't know about) but now we are really exited.

I understand this is weird for her because of the age gap but were we right to go ahead if it's what we really want?
This is so upsetting for everyone and I feel so guilty that she feels the way she does.

Tell her to get over it. You’re only 40, most people don’t have their first until mid to late 30s / early 40s these days!

She will come around.

Happy for you OP, congratulations!

I don’t. By the time one child is an adult and are living independently it really isn’t much difference to the living set up of half siblings. I have 22 year old and a 1 nearly 2 year old and my oldest kid wasn’t too impressed until she actually met the baby. Now they have a lovely bond.

My youngest brother is the youngest of several, all of whom are more than 20 years younger than me. I remember my daughter bouncing her aunt on her knee calling her aunty baby. It’s not a biggie and doesn’t need to be.

Absolutely is was very common in the past. Women married young and continued having children until they hit menopause by which time their eldest children had families of their own. My grandmothers youngest cousins are barely a decade older than me and we are all very close and I love having such a multi layered family. I had my last child at 39 and was sterilised because we’d had so many problems with genetics and stuff. My eldest is 22 and if she had of got pregnant as a teen it wouldn’t have stopped me having my bonus babies in my late 30s.

i was 33 when my youngest sibling was born. He’s 15 years younger than my eldest. It’s wasn’t a big deal and nobody batted an eyelid.

Im glad you had that experience. I didnt.

I had a friend who had nephews and nieces much older than she was. It was always a bit of a friendly joke and not an issue at all. One of our friends has just had a 4th child, with his new, younger wife, who is a couple of months older than his new grandson. No problem.

The DD might come to terms with it in time, or she might not. The little ones might bond, or they might not. Either way, OP will have to accept it as the price of her life choices, in the same way that many posters are demanding that the DD come to terms with the new situation.

Yes I think this sums it up really.
DD may come round, or it may push her away and the relationship may not ever be the same. Time will tell.

Yeah my stepmother is close in age to me, about 5 years older. She’s a welcome figure in my life. We get on well as women, not stepmother/daughter which is fine. My own uncle is also five years older than me and we’ve always had a very brother/sister relationship. I have a big multi layered family and it’s nice.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

IMO, there's a huge difference between your mum and dad choosing to have a 24 year gap between siblings, and your parents divorcing, re-marrying and naturally going on to start second families.

If I was 23 years old with a toddler and my mum told me that, after 24 years, she was going to have a second child, I would wonder whether she'd lost her senses lol. If she'd divorced my dad, re-married and started another family then I would think "oh, fair enough, she wants a baby with John too".

They're completely different situations.

That's a very unusual scenario and not one that most people ever think will happen to them, especially as OP has never given her daughter any inkling that she wants to have another baby.

It is not very unusual if you are from a large family and large families weren’t that long ago. It’s also not unusual for a woman of OP’s age to have a baby and not share her struggles with her daughter because frankly it isn’t the daughter’s business when she doesn’t live with OP and her daughter has her own partner and family.

Absolutely. OP’s biological destiny is not controlled by her adult daughter purely because she is her daughter. Imagine if the daughter came
on here saying my mum doesn’t want to me to continue with my pregnancy because she doesn’t want a grandchild?

I think it’s unusual in todays world of contraception to have such an huge age gap with grandchildren already unless it’s a redo second family.

I know one family and it failed on the basis of the mother daughter relationship and her daughter wasn’t that fussed till it actually changed everything.

Not a huge difference between me
and DH having two babies 20 years after the first though, which is precisely what we did.

That is quite unusual though - there aren't many families who deliberately choose such a big age gap between children.

It’s the opposite for me. People have done the baby phase and moved on to the next phase of life. It doesn’t make sense to go back a step just because they have a new partner.

obviously people can and should do what they want. That doesn’t mean the people caught in the wake won’t find it odd and maybe need to adjust.

Op would be wise to remember that those of us who are just using it for Internet forum discussion fodder will continue to dissect for eternity and never reach a consensus so our opinion doesn’t really matter.

People are being unkind about your daughter. It's just been her for all this time and she's a bit shocked and it's not how she thought things would pan out. It'll work out and she'll come round. I expect she feels she will be less central to your life and you'll be a family separately to her.

That's pretty precious.
If a 23 year old is embarrassed that her 40 year old mother is having a baby which therefore means she's having sex then she must be extremely immature.

Before I opened this thread I was thinking could she be a tad and somewhat understandably envious. She's an adult and mums having a baby before she does. However its very much the opposite she is still not much more than a child herself and she already has her own baby.
Could she be a tad embarrassed after all when you're a teenager your parents "don't have sex", do they. I know someone Age 21 at who moved out when she found out her mum was pregnant. She only lasted on her own for 2 weeks, mind. 😂

Oh I do apologize she's 23 not 17.

It might be unusual in the 2020s but a generation or so ago with big families it wasn't that unusual.

I was in primary with a girl who's uncle was a couple of years older. It meant they were more like cousins than uncle / neice.

Enjoy your baby 👶

Like OP we had losses.

@Crocadoodledoo

However, I don’t think the OP is that bothered about preserving the closeness with her elder daughter, judging by the tone of her replies - it all feels a bit ‘out with the old, in with the new’.

Which replies? She says she feels really guilty and thanks people for advice but I can't see anymore messages from the original post?

My brother is 2 weeks older than my first dd it's so weird there in the same class at school. Uncle and niece together in year 4. Still can't get my head around it sometimes!

It's the thanking the very same people who are insulting your daughter. It comes across weird. If it was me, I'd probably say 'thank you, but my dd isn't like that, she's very nice and I think she's just...'

@Sako81 I'm sorry to hear that

OP does say her DD has no idea about her losses or that she was trying for another baby and I do think that if she knew, she'd be behaving differently.