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...

Your cleaner and childminder shouldn't have said anything but you shouldn't have made out it was nothing when you knew mil already knew. She's obviously not stupid and probably felt like a twat when you decided to tell her.

(Also understand that the cleaner and childminder wouldn't have thought they were the first ones to know either)

Seems like all a bit deal out of nothing.

Yh sorry love I was gearing up to 100% be on your side but realistically you were trying to trick your MIL (both the hiding it in the first place then making her guess off a t-shirt) which is not the same as announcing

& Worst still(!) you didn't actually have a gift for your father in law's birthday.....?

I'd suck it up, apologize, (get FIL a card), & agree moving forward how they/you want them to know & at what stage & crawl under a rock till things calm down

Baby announcements are not birthday presents.

👏

All of this ☝️

Needless drama - Your partner should have been honest with his mother, and generally, after the first grandchild, Grandparents seem to cool off quite a bit anyway.

The first child is the one who gets all the 'excitement'.

You all seem to have made a drama out of very little. 🤷‍♀️

I completely get this. You don’t care about the ‘pregnancy announcement’. It’s that you tried to do a nice thing for PIL and instead of doing the totally normal thing and feigning surprise and being thrilled for you and telling your ds what a great big brother he will be, they were really nasty about it not being a surprise and acted like a bunch of mouldy old lemons at what should be a happy time for all of you, all just because they thought you didn’t do the surprise bit good enough.

It’s not the same but when I told my mum I was expecting my first (I’m an only child, these are her only grandchildren), her response wasn’t, oh my god, I’m so excited! I’m gonna be a granny! It was, “was this planned?!” 😳 I was a 32 year old financially secure professional woman who was newly married to lovely dh for 1 year, exactly the time in life you’d expect a baby to happen. And she acted like she needed to help me research my local bpas clinic like a 15 year old school girl. It was…weird. And as it turned out, said a lot about her and her own anxiety as a mother. We are NC for entirely unrelated reasons.

They have been awful selfish cows here and they need to apologise. I suspect this isn’t the first time you’ve seen histrionics like this from them though and won’t be the last.

Well in that case, just ignore them. Your DH has explained how this happened so the ball is in their court.

She did know because the DH had lied to the MIL and said “oh no it’s not my Susan Smith, it must be the other Susan Smith in the village who is pregnant because my wife isn’t and hasn’t arranged a childminder!”
OP knew this.

You're not coming across as much better OP.

Oh babes.....men get with women like their mothers 😅

They are being quite childish to ignore the announcement but I also think you should be angry at the cleaner and childminder for gossiping.

Good message. I’d be inclined to have laughed it off on the day with an ‘omg the gossip in this town’ shared exasperation and moved on immediately, but as everyone is letting this escalate I think @Spirallingdownwards has written a good message.

The silliest thing about your post is you telling your child minder at 5 weeks!
I'm not surprised MIL was upset...you lied to her.

She did because they had said " why does the cleaner say you're pregnant?" And the op and her dh lied! An then someone else told them too!
The inlaws aren't stupid!

@RosesAndHellebores

Off at a tangent but why couldn't you climb on a chair when you were pregnant?

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Oh I just chose not to, as a teacher you can find yourself in a classroom, on your own balancing on a chair trying to staple things to the celiling or whatever. It's usually a good idea to tell your TA in case you need a little back up.

I don't think the why is particularly relevant. I actually swore the TA to secrecy and she still told people. Unfortunately the one person she told decided to tell lots of people.

The OP is feeling hurt at a time which should be special. I get that, though I'm surprised to find myself in the minority.

You booked a childminder at 5 weeks pregnant before you even told your PIL? Yeah,my nose would be out out of joint too.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned the OP’s other posts but she seems to hate her MIL because it seems the MIL would quite like to spend some time with her family and help out. But doesn’t hate her so much because MIL provides childcare for their son 2 days a week. Imagine seeing her twice a week, a woman who must save them hundreds of lines a month and lying about a pregnancy whilst some random women are in the know.

Yes she did. Childminder told MIL, who asked DP, who lied to her

It's the cleaner and the CM that are at fault here. As your employees they should regard confidentiality.

Since you knew full well they'd blabbed the birthday reveal was rather pointless.

As to your in laws and your reaction, seriously you need to all grow up a bit.

Pot calling kettle black 👍

Sulking in the bathroom is quite attention seeking behaviour.

You should be angry with the childminder and the cleaner!

She DID KNOW because her DH was there when MIL was told by the CM!

MIL is not stupid and saying “it’s someone else with the same name”, is ridiculous! Don’t treat MIL like a bloody fool.

I don't blame them for being pissed off! You told the childminder when you're only 5 weeks pregnant, you left your maternity notes lying around (do you even have notes at 5 weeks?) and then your husband lied to his parents.
Oh and you then flounced off to the bathroom with your son.
This is batshit orhopefully completely made up

There seems to be lots of RSD /Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria/ going on. You explained where your comes from and they will have their own story.

I think the way to go is explaining why the childminder and cleaner knew and how they where supposed to be queit until you were ready to announce the news to grandparents as you wanted to make it special. I would concentrate on how you wanted it special for them.

And deal separately with the childminder and the cleaner.