AIBU for telling my parents about my pregnancy very late? I just sometimes forget they even exist or that I have parents

[BeBreezyAquaFinch]

I need an objective gauge on this because my mother is currently upset with me, and I’m genuinely struggling to see if I’ve done something wrong.

A bit of background: I (35) am heavily pregnant with my first baby with DH, main due date is in early September but baby could come in August. My husband and I are thrilled and looking forward to being parents. Last week, I was on a casual catch up call with my mother and happened to mention the pregnancy. When she asked how far along I was and I told her, she became incredibly upset that I’d kept it a ‘secret’ for so long. The issue is it wasn’t a secret I just didn’t think they’d care. They’ve never really cared about anytbing I’ve been up to. They came to the wedding I even forgot to invite them till my husband asked. It’s not that I’m upset I just forget that they exist sometimes.

To preface: I am not heartbroken or bitter about my upbringing. I had an incredibly privileged childhood and have very fond memories of my parents taking us skiing, on holidays, I got to see the world from a very young age and picking us up for exeat weekends. But the reality is, I barely know them. We did not have nannys or anything of that sort, there’s 4 of us altogether. They’d pick us up from boarding school, take us out etc but all in all we were kind of left to our own devices, money was never an issue my father topped up our accounts whenever we wanted never questioned what we spent the money on, we’d have parties at their house all the time they never cared.

From a young age, my siblings and I were sent to boarding school in the UK. My parents lived all over the world for work Monaco, Switzerland, the US, Luxembourg. Even when we briefly went to school in Switzerland, it was a boarding school. We lived with them for maybe a few weeks a year. I made friends for life at school and have done plenty of therapy as an adult to process it all. I don't hate them at all, but I view them as distant relatives or acquaintances who happen to have given birth to me, rather than "parents."Because we only ever have superficial chat, it genuinely didn't cross my mind to announce the pregnancy to them. I just didn't think they'd care that much.

My mother thinks I've been incredibly cold and hurtful by leaving it until the final weeks to tell her she's going to be a grandmother. From my perspective, we don't have that kind of relationship.

So, AIBU? Should I have managed this differently, or is her reaction unreasonable given the distant relationship they chose to cultivate?

I genuinely do not hate them I just forget they exist. I even have fond memories with them but due to my upbringing to me they’re just somewhat random people who happen to be my parents. My husband has a very different relationship with his parents and he too attended boarding school. We do not plan on sending our child to boarding school. I was raised by other people and essentially raised in an insitution.

Well hers certainly seemed to.

Would you send any of your children to boarding school? OP's parents have made their daughter into the adult she is by out-sourcing all their parenting to strangers.

OP could have had a privileged education without being sent away from her parents. Why the hell are you blaming OP rather than her parents for the lack of a close relationship?

Your post is an unedifying mix of maudlin and victim blaming. None of this is OP's fault. It it all her parents' fault.

Except their company.

I get it, @BeBreezyAquaFinch . I was also sent to boarding school and it has definitely affected me. Feeling rejected and unwanted by your own parents, even with the best of intentions, is very difficult to process. Especially when you are told how (financially) privileged you are. Super tennis courts don't make up for not being able to see your siblings, pets, toys or sleep in your own bed for over a month.

Now, if we're going to be real, I don't think you Forgot. I think you were rejecting them for the way they rejected you. I know when my parents do or say certain things that makes me feel like the odd one out again, my Go To is very much to go quiet, to keep things from them, to stew and think "what's the point anyway."

I've had a lot of therapy - therapy specific to boarding school - to work through this. Because we could continue with a faux polite, arms-length relationship. Or I could try for something more. I'd recommend:
Therapist and Counselling - Boarding School Therapist
Seen & Heard - Support and signposting

Really look into some specific therapy here to work through this, perhaps with other ex-boarders who will get it (and a lot of other weird and wonderful things too!). Your relationship with your parents may never be what you want it to be, but you may be able to either make peace with it, or try for something different. Time for the generational trauma to end here though, more therapy will be the biggest gift you can give yourself and your son. Congratulations on the pregnancy and wishing you all the best.

Ah, thank you.

That might be exactly why they haven't asked. Did your parents start their family immediately, or did they have years of your grandparents asking about when they were going to - possibly very annoying if they weren't planning to for a while, or actively painful if they were trying and failing.

My ExH was neglected as a child, different type of neglect but also no attachment between him and his parents, and having children started all sorts of mental processes, he had to work really hard in therapy. Having kids is life changing, even when you had a happy childhood (me), so please be prepared for that if you can. Perhaps find a trusted therapist before giving birth? Specialized in attachment theory? I have only read your replies, so this may have been mentioned already, and/or perhaps I'm totally out of line. Either way, congrats on having a baby (soon) and best of luck! 💙

@BeBreezyAquaFinch i genuinely don’t think you you forgot to tell them, or you didn’t think they’d care - it sounds more like you’ve deliberately withheld the information as some sort of protection for yourself. You say you don’t know them but you could always try to get to know them, you’re a fully grown adult.

I don’t know what my grandparents were asking them.

This just seems to be quite the norm for me as even at work with friends etc it’s not against the law to not ask it was purely just an example to show they don’t have much interest in us. They don’t have to either. If they choose to be part of my sons life I’ll let them I’m not going to deny my son the chance to know his grandparents but they have 8 other already living grandchildren that they don’t seem to bothered with so I don’t think they’ll really want to be involved with my son. That’s okay though he has other grandparents who are looking forward to meeting him and other family members and lots of cousins I think he will be very loved and I’ll do the work on my own issues to make sure I create and maintain that bond with him. That’s all I can do.

Coming back again to encourage therapy - for the sake of your own child, if not for you.

Like I said earlier, I did this when I was pregnant with my first, and found it so valuable. It made me realise the positives and negatives of my own complex upbringing - and I think this has helped in raising my own happy, confident children (they are older teens now), so far at least!

No parent is perfect and no childhood is perfect, but having self-awareness is a great thing. Unfortunately, DH (who had a similar upbringing to you) has always avoided therapy, even though I've tried to get him to go! As a result, he struggles massively with his (very distant) relationship with his parents, and often his own emotional responses as a parent can be lacking at times. He's becoming more self aware the older we get, but if he'd done this earlier, it would have been a lot better for all concerned!

No, I get that and I'm not assuming a regular lovely warm sharing of information thing. I'd have thought they'd approach it like the need to tell your employer about a pregnancy, it's not an emotional thing, it's a just a change in your life and circumstances. I also don't think the OP has any obligation to tell the parents, it's just mad to me that she'd forget. I understand estranged parents, my DH didn't tell his dad about any pregnancies or babies or wedding because his dad wasn't involved in his life at all and they had zero contact despite living in the same town. I think the odd thing here is that the OP and her parents still talk on the phone and it never came up.

I don’t think you can explain this away. I can’t believe it never occurred to you over the last 7 months to tell your mum, not once when your baby kicked when you were on the phone with her, etc etc

You will come to appreciate your mother once you become one yourself. You’ll understand her more, especially as you say they were not cruel etc but just tried their best in their own way

But can you imagine telling your parents you're pregnant and them just saying "Oh that's nice, as I was saying about Starmer..."

OP, you need to go back into therapy, with a better therapist, and unpick all of this, starting with why you feel the need to maintain the fiction to yourself that you 'forget' about your parents when you are clearly making choices on some level to disengage from them. It sounds like there is a long history of dysfunction in your family and it's not enough simply to want to be a mother in order to break the cycle. You are going to need help and it's going to be hard work.

I've seen it said before that some people post on AIBU as a form of self-harm because they know they'll get a flaming and they believe that they deserve it, because MN has plenty of people who will tell you the worst things that you believe about yourself. I wonder if there's an element of this on some level here.

Now they know that you arr pregnant have they asked after you at all - about fatigue, morning sickness, how you are feeling in general?

Thanks I’ll see if the support I need I’m not against any form of therapy

YANBU in the slightest. You reap what you sow.
They couldn’t be bothered to parent you themselves or take any interest in your life other than throwing cash at you (and holidays that they also benefited from) to alleviate any guilt and keep up appearances to others.
They don’t get to sweep in and dictate that they are now involved because there’s a shiny new grandchild to show off on the way.

I don't think the shock is that you took from them, it's that you've created this idea in your head that they don't care. If they didn't care, they wouldn't have done that.
At 18 I got took to my parents home after a DV incident with my BF at the time. I needed to go to hospital in the morning as I couldn't walk. Parents told me to ask my BF to take me as they were busy. So I did, and went back to live with him and experience further abuse. My parents never said a word about it or offered me a place back in the family home.
The funny thing is, I know they do care about me. They have done other things to show that such as helping me out financially. They just can't deal with emotion after growing up in abusive homes themselves. To pretend your parents don't care when they housed you and got you a job at 22 and have weekly calls with you is ridiculous.

I have reported the thread. It may well be genuine, and if it is then I apologise for any unfair assumptions.

That said, there has been a real increase lately in threads that turn out to be fake, exaggerated or otherwise misleading. People post them for all sorts of reasons: some for entertainment, some because they're fantasists, some to gauge opinion for research purposes, and some as a form of creative writing exercise. I've been taken in by a few threads recently that were fake, so my spidey senses are probably in overdrive.

Oh, and a quick edit to add that my parents were drug taking irresponsible idiots who were happy for us to go in and out of care from birth. They were both dead by the time I was 10 years old. I know all about adults who are meant to love and care for children but put their own needs and wants first.

It sounds like a very unusual relationship. I find it hard to believe you forgot to tell them about your Wedding or pregnancy. You mention several times that they don't seem that interested or you didn't think they would be. I think this is the crux of the issue. You are still waiting for them to be interested in you. You're an adult now and you have a choice to make. Either cut contact or embark on a proper meaningful relationship, to do the latter you might need to reflect a little more on how their lack of interest makes you feel and possibly address this with them.

No my mother says she’s annoyed that I didn’t tell which is understandable but they haven’t really showed much interest but even asked the gender of the baby maybe they will once he’s born we will have to see. They might not even want a relationship with my son, they have 8 other grandkids this won’t be their first grandchild.

I think that the very opposite of OP appreciating her mother more once she has a child may happen. If OP feels overwhelming love for her baby and that she could never ever send her child to boarding school away from her and their dad, she will judge her parents even harder.

Why does ANY woman need walked down the aisle and given away to a husband? Even if OP wanted to, maybe it was her sister she had chosen.

I wasn't saying that her father should have walked her down the isle - but surely the question of whether she wanted someone to walk her down the isle came up at some point when the wedding was being organised? At that point wouldn't the OP think about whether she wanted her parents involved in the wedding or not?

The difference is , there’s actually a need to tell your employer. That would be on your mind.

If OP’s parents never ask what she has been up to, how she is, how’s work, what has she been up to etc. and the exchange is purely functional and about whatever they want to talk about I can definitely see it happening. It’s not on OP’s mind because she is not used to sharing or talking about herself. She just follows a (dysfunctional)pattern.

Do they ever ask questions about you/your life?