Baby announcement gone wrong

[GAZ0188]

We have just had our 1st scan and told the inlaws last night. To say this was a disaster, was an understatement.

We live in a very small town where childcare places with child minders are few and far between. At 5 weeks approx. I asked a child minder at a baby group (very quietly, explained no one knew) if I could have a space in which she agreed. 2 days later she seen MIL at another group and said how nice it was she was going to be a granny again (fuming was an understatement) anyway, partner shrugged it off, said it was someone else in town with the same name.

My cleaner came in a few weeks ago and found me over the toilet, spewing my load, and my ginger nuts and maternity documents on the table that I hadn't had time to move. Also doesn't take a genius to work this out.

Yesterday we got home, told them we had a present for FILs bday and put a t-shirt on our little boy announcing is. He walked into the livingroom and we got absolutely no reaction whatsoever. All we got was "well we already knew as the chuldminder and cleaner told us" from the MIL, all whilst she was sitting on my sofa, with a face like a smacked a...e... looking like she'd just stopped crying before walking into my house. To say I was fuming, was an understatement. Instead of "how have you been keeping" i got a full on interigation of how both the child minder and cleaner knew and then they proceeded to tell us how sad they were that they weren't the first to know and they thought more of us basically.

I grabbed my son, went to the bathroom and run him a bath and bathed him in there until they left. I could not bare to look at them. When they left, my partner messaged them explaining how they both knew and saying thanks for asking how she was. They've looked but still no reply.

Iv woke up this morning and I am STILL fuming. What is meant to be a happy moment has been taken away by their "poor me" reaction and now I never want to see their faces again for a very long time. Growing up in my family, I was pushed aside by my own mother and got completely rejected when my sister came along and this was my biggest fear of this happening with a 2nd child and now this has completely conveyed my fears of this happening again, albeit it won't be by its parents this time..

I have no idea how to navigate from this. I feel like cutting them off for a long time. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

I think any parent would be totally gutted that a childminder and cleaner knew first.

I think you made a massive miss step. If you were telling CM then I would have told both parents first.

Your DH bare faced lying to his parents was definitely BU, that's what would really hurt me as paternal granny.

You didn't get to make your big announcement, you'll get over it, being pregnant isn't that rare a thing!

Leave MIL to DH to sort, not your fault childminder breached your confidentiality.

This

Love this typo, picturing them all in Batman costumes 😂😂

It sounds as if with a bit of communication this could have been resolved. It’s normal to wait till the first scan to tell people and I can see why your in-laws were hurt that 2 people seemed to have been told before them. Your DH should have just said at the time when the childminder mentioned it that it was you but that it was very early days and that you’d only spoken to the childminder on the quiet to ask about a place, and that you hadn’t intended to announce it until the scan. Now his parents will be hurt that he felt the need to lie to them, and added to that they think that you told the cleaner as well but couldn’t trust his parents enough to tell them.

I can understand that their lack of reaction was disappointing but at that point I’d have explained to them why the other two people know and would have tried to have an adult conversation to put things right. Life is so short and grandparents are important in a child’s life. This doesn’t feel worth falling out over to the extent of not wanting to see them for a very long time.

It sounds like you’ve had a hard time with your mum, and I’m sorry about that. You can’t control your in laws. All you can control is how you parent your children. It sounds like you won’t be doing what your mum did. I just think that if you cut them off for this, it could turn into a thing where you can’t even remember how it started.

A normal person hasn't been told by two separate people outside the family weeks before the parents tell them. (If two people have told them, how many other people would they expect to know about it?)

A normal person isn't lied to by their son because he and OP want to save up the "announcement" to eclipse the grandfather's birthday some weeks in the future.

So much drama

If it was me I'd apologise for them hearing it from others

Find another childminder

Sack the cleaner

I think a lot of people here don't know what it's like living in a small town or village where it seems like everybody knows everybody else and can't mind their own business. People talk... If that is so, trying to keep the knowledge from the baby's grandparents is a very deliberate act of exclusion.

Also I’d be absolutely fuming with the cleaner and childminder and would sack both. They’ve shown that they can’t be trusted and trust is extremely important in both those roles. Your poor PIL must have known for a lot of weeks and been wondering why you weren’t telling them when you’d been telling other people. From the way it must have looked to them, I’d be hurt too. They’re probably also feeling that the cleaner and childminder are wondering why you didn’t see fit to share the news with them, because as far as it looks to them, you told both those people but not them.

Also I’d be absolutely fuming with the cleaner and childminder and would sack both.

That’s known as cutting your nose off to spite your face. In a small community they’d be hard to replace.

Exactly this, sorry OP. If you haven't already had counselling from your childhood I hugely recommend it. Made a huge difference to me and best done pre kids

It’s really strange to think that way. Childish even.

An announcement “eclipsing” and adult’s birthday? Really?

It’s perfectly reasonable to not want to tell anyone about a pregnancy until the 12th week. The cleaner found out, and was not told. The childminder was told for professional purposes. It’s up to OP who she tells and when she tells them.

Anyone who can’t congratulate a woman on her pregnancy because they didn’t like the order they were told is ridiculous.

If you were far enough along to tell the childminder, then you are more than far enough along to tell the grandparents.

I assume you have not told your parents either.
So when you finally tell them and they find out that the childminders and cleaner knew (and now PIL), expect them to be upset.

What does this mean and who are you responding to?

your response here and your reaction where you shit yourself in the bathroom etc actually says a lot more about you tbh.

Yes their reaction was not nice but you also knew that they already knew so expecting a big response to your special reveal was unnecessary at that point.

Anyway keep them at arms length and focus on your baby, let your DH deal with them going forward. My view is everyone is BU.

I would also have a chat with your cleaner, that was unprofessional of her and also the child minder but I don’t know what you can do except not use her which also depends on availability where you live.

In that case, think I’d rather do our own (DH too) cleaning. If the only alternative was someone who snooped on us and gossiped what she’d seen and heard back to my MIL (and quite possibly others too). Sod that. Wouldn’t have anyone in my home I couldn’t trust. She might be riffling through my bedside drawers 🤢.

Except OP does need the in-laws, because they currently provide 2 days of childcare per week.

Unless the OP wants to pursue some vendetta against the child minder and cleaner for breaching professional and ethical standards rather than trying to recover whatever relationship she and her DH previously had with the in-laws, I don't see what complaining about the two of them will achieve for the OP.

They're both obviously on good enough terms with the MiL to congratulate her on the news that she was going to be a grandmother again. I'm not 100% convinced that punishing them for telling the MiL something that the Mil could reasonably have been expected to know about before them, will necessarily work in the OP's favour.

But if the OP doesn't give a shit about her and her DH's relationship with his mother, then she should go for it and let everybody know what gossips they are

Apart from not letting the in-laws know sooner, this all comes back to the husband's daft response to his mother's enquiry that it was somebody else with the same name as his wife(!).

Why he couldn't just have said something along the lines of "Yeah it's great isn't it! But don't let on to GAZ0188 that you know. She wants to be able to make a big announcement about it so please don't spoil it for her" I can't imagine.

If the MiL had then spoilt it the OP and her DH would have a legitimate complaint

The people you should be cross with are childminder and cleaner. If you told them to be discreet and they weren't that's pretty shitty

I think pretending not to know to protect OP's fragile ego is ridiculous.

"Oh wow, I'm sorry you found out that way, we were hoping to announce it after the 12 week scan. We wanted you to be the first to know but sadly the waiting list for childminders is so long that we felt like we needed to get ahead of it. We can't wait to celebrate with you though!"

Instead of "The important thing is to disguise your hurt and pretend you don't know because otherwise Mum to Be will spit out her dummy and cause a scene."

Omg I'm laughing waiting to pay in Asda now 😂

Obviously super unprofessional of both childminder and cleaner but your opportunity to avoid this, frankly ridiculous, drama was when the childminder told your PILs.
Not your preferred timing maybe, but coming clean then rather than lying and then expecting a big ‘surprise’ moment a few weeks later was the best option.
You are now involved in a family argument for literally no reason. It does seem you actively dislike your MIL so perhaps your reaction has been coloured by this. Time to sit down and have a talk about it really, or you can all just keep being immature. Up to you!

That's better than my suggestion.

It's straightforward, honest and open.

Can't be faulted and would have averted all this mess

You all sound completely bonkers. 😂

Surely the best way forward is for both sides to save their ire for the true villians of the piece - the childminder and the cleaner?

They're not the manipulative ones. You are