Stepchild present during labour?

[Ruthiebabes76]

Hi everyone, I am new to mumsnet but thought I would post as I am feeling totally stressed out and don't know who to talk to.

I am due this Friday with my first baby. Up until now, I have been very chilled out about everything and my partner and I have done a yoga workshop and been feeling really great about the birth and my birth plan.

However, today my partner announced that as school holidays start on Friday (my due date) he needs to have his daughter from a previous relationship (aged 11) for the first week of her school holidays. I am now in a complete flat spin about what this is going to entail.

Don't get me wrong, I love his daughter and she is a part of our life but I don't want her there when I go into labour. I don't want her seeing me in pain or distress and I certainly don't want to be worrying about whether she is ok. I know it sounds selfish but I also want my partners undivided attention when things start happening and I don't want him thinking about her or having to deal with her needs.

The birthing unit is 30 mins away and daughters mother lives over an hour away so it is not as though everything is close at hand. My partner is being very laid back saying that I will have ages when things start so he will be able to take her home once he has dropped me at the hospital but this will leave me there on my own which terrifies me. And he also apparently has a crystal ball as he keeps saying that the baby will be late as it is my first so the week's childcare will be over before things start happening which frankly is just making me a bit angry!

I am now having a bit of a panic about it all, which is a shame as up until now I have been really relaxed and excited. Now I just feel stressed and tense about the whole business and really quite panicky.

Help me please ladies!!

Hey OP. Have you told your partner what you've written here, about how terrified you feel about being on your own? (I've had a baby and I wouldn't have wanted to be either. Not from the very start of my labour.) Could it be that because you have both been quite laid back, he is underestimating how much you are relying on his support?

If you haven't told him, do. If you have, tell him again, and ask to make plans for DSD's care that don't involve you labouring alone. Is there anyone you can rely on closer than DSD's mother (your own family or good friends?) who could take her while you are in hospital? this is what any family with an older child would do, so don't be put of by the "step" bit, that's a red herring.

Hugs, it will be ok.

At risk of enraging you further, I think you need to chill a bit. I appreciate this is your first child, but it's your partner's second. Chances are pretty good that he's right about it being late and/or taking ages to get going.

Also, it's not on to expect your partner's undivided attention. You've chosen to be with a man who has a child already, who he will have also sole responsibility for on Friday (or whenever in the first two weeks of her holidays you go into labour). Of course he's going to be thinking about and stressing over an unaccompanied 11yo more than you - and probably feeling guilty and stressed out about that because you'll be in labour with his second child! Remember, that 11yo was a baby being born too, once...

Honestly, there are so many variables, there is so much that could happen to make this all a non-point. Even if it does come to it the girl is hardly going to be in the room watching you push... Just chill. It will all be fine. You won't care about it when the time comes, the girl will be so excited to be there at her step-brother/sister's birth (if it comes to that), your partner seems the supportive type. Sounds like you've put a lot of effort into keeping zen: try applying that to this situation. There's nothing to be gained from stressing about something which may not even happen.

Thank you so much for your support!

Unfortunately there is no one close by who can help. My family live 2 hours away and MIL lives 4 hours away so the only alternative would be to have her come and stay for the week as well, which feels like even more of a stress!

I think you may be right about my partner underestimating the support I am wanting/needing. I just need to talk to him when I am in the right frame of mind so I am not overemotional or hormonal about it all, as that won't help!

Thank you so much for the virtual hug - it means a lot at silly o'clock in the morning!

Oh no the answer is never MIL

Yes find a moment in which you can stay steady, and explain how you feel. Point out nicely but very firmly that he has no idea when your labour will happen nor how it will go, and that you need a contingency plan for DSD.

Brock, what a massively dismissive post. I doubt there's many who would be "zen" about an eleven year old being at a birth, let alone a first birth. And even those who would be - my parents included, my older sister went to the birth of my younger sister - have support in place in case things don't go to plan. As is so often the case with births. As for not on to expect your partner's undivided attention. At the birth of your child! words fail me.

Hi BrockAuLit, thanks for the advice. You are absolutely right that I need to chill out about it all, and maybe I am over reacting a bit.

From what I have read about other births, most people seem to stress the importance of having someone totally focused on the mother and her birthing needs. Obviously as this is my first, I have no idea whether this will actually be the case but it seems to be pretty widely written about so I didn't think I was being too unreasonable by wanting his undivided attention. But I am more than happy to be corrected and be told that I can do it on my own!

I wonder how your DP's ex feels about her DD potentially seeing you in labour? She's only 11 and it may really freak her out to see someone in pain. Is your relationship at all amicable? Would the ex come to pick her up once things started in earnest? (Even with the long drive?)

Things may start on Friday or they may not. As you know. But it must be hard having a new thing to worry about chucked into the mix right now - why is the childcare being sprung on you at the last minute?

Thanks again Rootypig, your support means a lot x

Indeed Figginz - I too wondered why it is only just being discussed today! To be fair, I think the mother probably just assumed it was a given that we would do one week of the holidays and she would do the other week, which is fair enough. I guess I just assumed that given the unknown factors, alternative arrangements may have been made. She may well be persuaded to drive down to collect DD but she is not generally the most accommodating of people (to put it politely!) so I could see her taking hours to get to us, especially if things start to happen in the middle of the night....

Ah well, what will be, will be I guess!!

OP, you know what you feel you need. Advocate for yourself. As I say, this is not about the "step" bit of DSD. Any family with older children make plans for them to be taken care of around the birth of a sibling. You are not remotely unreasonable to expect your partner to do the same.

Op, I have two step children, and four of my own, and if anyone had suggested that I wasn't the full sole focus of my husband's attention, he'd have had something to say about it, probably involving the words fuck and off. Two of my dcs were born overseas so we had no family, and had to rely on help from friends, but that's just what you need to do. You are in no way needy or unreasonable to expect your dh to find a solution to dsds childcare when you are in labour. Fwiw, my dss lived with us when ds1 was born, and he saw the first hour or two of my (not fantastic) labour. It wasn't a great experience for me, and scared the crap out of him, but we gave him the 'job' of timing the contractions which made him feel important until we managed to arrange childcare (I was 16 days o/d so all our childcare plans had gone out the window!). But it would have been a cold day in hell before is have either allowed him to stay for the birth or allowed dh to leave me alone.

In short, talk to your dh again - if he's as supportive as he sounds, you will come to a solution together. And god luck! :)

It sounds like he is probably looking to his previous birth experience as a rationale for this one. If that was late and slow to get going, he will expect the same, neither are unusual for first babies. I can see how you feel this is undermining your worries about how the birth will start.

Firstly it's important to tell him that every pregnancy / birth is different and you don't want any other responsibilities to worry about.

Secondly, he's actually probably right. I worried for 9 months about DS1 seeing me in labour and when the time came, quite frankly I had period pain type contractions for ten hours then went to hospital and had a baby. Being with DS1 in the early stages was perfectly manageable and actually good because it took my mind off things... We even played football in the garden!

You will need to know the signs to look out for yourself but it's true when people say you know you're in labour.

There is also every chance that you will go overdue as well so you might be worrying about nothing.

From the emotional perspective though, I would feel exactly the same that I just wouldn't want anything that might take any of the focus off me.

I'm sort of on the fence with this one. I'm not sure that your dps idea of dropping his dd to her mums after taking you to the birthing centre is a good one. In an ideal world you wouldn't even go to the centre until labour is fairly well established by which time you most certainly wouldn't want to be alone for upwards of two hours. A better plan might be to take her as soon as you go into labour. Either of these would need to be cleared with her mum though surely?? She'll need to be in and ready to take her whenever needs be.
But... I don't really see any need to miss out on such a lot of time together as a family. I know you say you want your partners undivided attention but from his daughters point of view she's going to miss out on seeing you and her dad for, what might turn out to be no reason(if the baby is late). What would be your plans if she lived with you full time? I'm due my second this Summer and I've a 15 month old now- i think that when you have kids already your labour will be a bit of a compromise, or at least allowances need to be made.

I think, OP, I made the assumption that you would be giving birth at hospital. If so, when the time comes, you may find yourself in the early stages of labour attended to briefly by medical staff but otherwise having contractions being alternately bored and in pain. You would be able to manage with your partner popping out for a few minutes here and there to check in his DD. It's a hospital, there will be plenty of spaces for her to wait with a book, ipad etc. When the going gets going, you will not be all alone in the room at any point and the "going" won't (shouldn't) last so long that your partner can't be with you fully at that point.

rooty I'm afraid I do think it's not on to expect a parent to put a child completely out of their minds, at any point, when there is no alternative (which I sort of assumed would be the case, otherwise why would OP post). Would you? If you knew there was nobody else available to look after your child, how would you take to someone telling you to put your child out of yor mind? FWIW, I think this is also a personality thing. I had 7 family members in the room in addition to DH while I laboured (admittedly no children), didn't bother me in the slightest.

Brock what a ridiculous idea bringing the 11year old to the hospital ? I would say to you dh you need a plan for your DSd for when you go into labour, and that him driving her is out of the question.

You might need anything and he needs to be there, I would say that the only solution is a taxi back to her mums. A lot of cost but she really can't be around for this as it is your first and you his first no help.

You may well go over due and it won't be a problem but it is totally unreasonable for him yo think when something happens he can disappear off for two hours.

Just as his ex to keep DSD for the whole of this holiday and say you'll have her for the whole of the next one. Not rocket science is it? And that'll hardly damage her.

*ask

Brock you have no idea what the OP's labour is going to be like. Want to talk about my labour? My contractions were immediately three minutes apart, I went straight to hospital, and when I got there I was at the point of transition. What's more, you are reading into the OP - assuming, as you say -that there are "no alternatives", when OP has in fact said that her partner plans to drop DSD with her mother, leaving OP on her own for -? three hours, at a guess, two at the very minimum. Plenty of women would give birth on their own in that time frame.

I have no idea why you are determined to give the OP such a hard time. As rose says, it's not bloody rocket science to arrange care for an 11 year old.

I was zen too. Believed everyone who said first labours we're overdue, slow etc.

As it was I was two weeks early and everything went to fuck very, very quickly. If dh hadn't been there right from the beginning, and had been a first time parent too, we might well have had a very different outcome.

I was in too much pain to communicate, so it was dh who stood up and said it wasn't right and insisted somebody took me seriously.

Not to scare you o/p, but I agree you need a plan in place that doesn't include being dropped at hospital or left alone while your dp does a two hour round trip. It might well be ok, but if it isn't...

Get your dh to have a chat with his ex and discuss what will happen if you go into labour. Does she really want her 11 year old hanging round a labour ward- would an 11 year old be allowed in a labour ward?

Do you have a neighbour who could watch her until her mum comes?

First baby: three days early, not a long labour. Well before I was classed as 'established', I really needed DH with me to help me deal with the intensity of the contractions. I would have found it very frightening to have him go off on a 2-3 hour journey at that point.

Also, what 11yo wants to spend part of her school holidays in a hospital waiting room, maybe for 6 or 8 or 10 hours, maybe in the middle of the night? Absolutely not unreasonable of the op to think that giving birth counts as 'exceptional circumstances' and proper arrangements need to be made for her dsd!

rooty I have absolutely no intention of giving OP a hard time! Have I?! I see nothing in her posts to suggest that she feels that way. I'm sure she would have said so if she did ...?

I really think this is a personality thing. I just do not think it's a big deal. I don't normally bring this line out because it's the very definition of trite, but women have been doing it since the beginning of human time. How have we managed to lose perspective to the point where it can be reasonable (and then some!) for a person to say that she doesn't want a parent "thinking about [his child] or having to deal with her needs"? I just don't get it, that's a phenomenal statement.

I've done it, I know what childbirth can be like. It can be really, really difficult. But, mostly, it isn't. Especially not in the western world. Ultimately, the complaint is not one about safety of mother or baby, or their health or well being. It's about the labouring woman's feelings (desire for support from the father) versus the child. It was entirely reasonable to assume there was no alternative (otherwise why post?!). I just don't see it the way you do. And nothing I have said was meant to, or (it seems) did give the OP a hard time. It just wasn't excessively pandering or molly cuddling.

Anyway, this is all besides the point. Sounds like it will all be sorted out to everyone's satsifaction, which is the main (only) thing.

Brock if anything I think the OP's extremely open response to you is probably indicative of not advocating for her self strongly enough. Echoes of the OP eh.

I'm on the fence with this. I had DS and DD was at daycare. We had people locally who were able to come by in the middle of the day or night if I went into labour. I think that might be a good solution as her staying on the hospital isn't acceptable. I know here in the US they were very clear that DD wasn't welcome at the hospital, especially as she was in daycare. Would think the same attitude applies for older children too.

It's very different if it's not the mother's own child. All of the maternity wards I've been in in the UK have signs up saying the only people allowed in are the mothers OWN children and her spouse, and that's it.

Hmm. My first birth was four and a half hours from first twinge to baby. Not all first births take ages, although lots do. I agree, you need a better plan.