I’m due my first baby later this year. I have had a difficult relationship with my sister since we became adults. She went through a phase of being extremely manipulative- mind games, lying, trying to turn our parents against us in order to favour her and her family and made my life and our other sibling’s quite difficult, for a period of a few years. Our other sibling went very low contact with her as a result, feeling that she still looked down on them. It upset my parents too. Don’t get me wrong, she can come across as sanctimonious at times but I think all of it can be attributed to poor self esteem and a need to compare herself to others so I myself don’t want to ever step away from her fully as I’d like a relationship ultimately and she says she would too.
Things seem to have evened out in the last 6 months and she seems more like the version of herself we used to know, much to my relief. She has taken an interest in my pregnancy and seemed excited. However, over the past few weeks my parents have been helping us prepare for our new arrival- helping decorate the nursery, storing some of baby’s things at their house, talking about Christmas plans with all the family.
This seems to have triggered some jealousy in my sister. I’m not sure why. (They did all of this for her as she had their first grandchild, nearly 3 years ago now). She keeps repeating things like, ‘mum and dad must love you so very much’, and ‘you must be feeling so grateful towards them’ and just weird, almost guilt-tripping comments like this.
From what I can gather she hasn’t particularly enjoyed parenthood herself and has found it very hard. Whenever I reach out to chat to her lately about anything; funny things DN has done, weekend plans etc she will consistently divert the conversation back to me and make a comment like ‘not long until you’re off work being controlled by your new boss’ and ‘very soon you’re going to have a real life human being to take care of, permanently’
It all has started to seem a bit doom-casty and as though the intentions aren’t very nice. I am under no illusion that motherhood is far from a walk in the park, and that I have it all to come, but she is making these types of comments every day now. She has also said she is ‘so surprised’ I’d be going back to work before 12 months, because in her experience people don’t have a baby until they’ve saved enough to be able to afford a ‘proper’ maternity leave and she can’t imagine having to go back and leave such a tiny baby. She was fortunate enough to become a SAHM which is most people’s dream. I will be going back at 10 months FYI, baby will go to childminder part time and be with myself or DH for the other days. Just can’t afford the year.
What is her motive here? Could she think she is being helpful and trying to ‘prep’ me for it or do you think she’s projecting her experience on to me? Talking to her is making me fed up but I don’t want to take a step back because I sense her own self esteem and mental health might not be great atm.