First Time Dad

[DC905210]

Hi everyone, sorry to invade Mumsnet, I can not find anything of much use on the Dad's side of things.

My wife is 4-5 weeks pregnant, and she does not want me to tell anyone until the first midwife appointment I understand the reasons for that (lots of people to tell if something goes wrong etc) but there are two elements of it I am uncomfortable with / frustrated at.

Firstly I work for a very small company where you can just tell if something is on someone's mind there is a calendar month today before the appointment. Is it normal to sit in an office with two other people (who incidentally I 100% trust to keep it to themselves) for a month pretending nothing is happening?

Paired with this the company is very flexible and such as the first midwifes appointment they would almost certainly let me work for home and fit around it but instead I will have to take a day off (which I assume for a new Dad could come in handy later on) to pretend I am doing something else. For what?

Secondly, she does not want to tell any family.

Between us we don't have Dad, they have both passed away and we do not speak to her Mum. My Brother has a two y/o little girl and a little boy due in November and I have a lot of stuff to ask him, my Mum as well will be our overriding principle support in everything we need help with, it is reasonable that I should accept not telling them for another month? They too are 100% guaranteed to not tell a sole.

It is not like (god forbid) if something did go wrong we would not bother telling them, the point is just lost on me.

Please don't take this as a moan of like "poor men" or anything but we don't have the support that woman have. I have read frightening sounding things about labour for example and I am anxious about it. I don't want to start adding to the pile of worries that my wife has about it but I am just expected to live with it for a month.

Shocked at the level of hostility? What hostility? You have been reassured by many that your concerns have little base in reality. When you continued to offer information that you believed justified your position, you've been reassured and advised in depth by people who drawing on their own real life experience. Perhaps you've been told some of this rather bluntly by some (which is feature of this site and nothing personal) but I cannot see hostility here at all.

Is it normal to sit in an office with two other people (who incidentally I 100% trust to keep it to themselves) for a month pretending nothing is happening?

Yes, perfectly normal and commonplace.

My Brother has a two y/o little girl and a little boy due in November and I have a lot of stuff to ask him, my Mum as well will be our overriding principle support in everything we need help with, it is reasonable that I should accept not telling them for another month?

Yes, again very reasonable and normal not to tell family until the 12 week mark.

OP these are the questions you wanted answers to but it seems like you don't like the answers. Just be guided by your wife, she will let you know what she needs. Don't question it or try to change her mind because you will cause her stress.

Congratulations and good luck.

Yes, I'm blunt. I make no apology. I'm also 23 weeks pregnant ao5nd not a 'teller', so I completely understand where the OPs wife is coming from.

i'm sorry if you think you have been given a hard time on here, but I do think that the responses are normal for this site. Try not to take it personally. People are giving you good advice here, try to not let any upset you might feel, cloud that. you sound quite anxious and maybe the responses are touching a nerve more than maybe they usually would?

When I first got pregnant, my husband felt like he had to do/know everything straight away. it took a while for him to understand that pregnancy is a looooong process. Don't forget that by the time you find out that most people you know are pregnant, they are often gone 12 weeks. it feels much much longer when you've known from the start. there is plenty of time to ask your mum/brother things.

be guided by your wife, and if that means having to wait, then so be it. if she doesn't want you to tell your work colleagues, then that's how it has to be i'm afraid. She is likely to be very hormonal, just imagine how upset she will be if you did say something to your colleagues and she later found out. not worth it at all.

as an aside, depending on how your nhs trust do things, you may be actively discouraged from going to the booking in appointment. certainly, at mine it was suggested that my husband didn't come. its because they want to make sure that women who may be having DV issues or who are in bad relationships or may have other concerns, are able to be open and honest with their midwife.

also, calling Grotbag a troll and telling her she should be ashamed is out of order IMO

The thing is OP we've been there, some of us more than once. We've lived every sodding week of pregnancy so have actual life experience. Ignore our advice if you like but no one has been really hostile. Try posting in AIBU for that!

HappyIdiot luckily I didn't take it personally .
I can't see anywhere where I've said anything that could be considered troll like. You asked for opinions and got them OP. I stand by the fact that you are thinking far too much about you, and not enough about your wife in this scenario.
Many, many men cope with not telling anyone until 12 weeks or even later. I don't see why you are so different.

Why will you need to work from home a lot? Are you planning on going to every appointment? You really do not need to, not much happens. Apart from the booking appointment you only really need to go to the scans.

Pregnancy is long long long, the only loyalty you should have is to your wife. It's perfectly normal to not tell anyone until the 12 week scan. We didn't apart from parents. No one else knew.

You don't need to take time off every time your wife is sick, it's pregnancy it happens. I was being sick in the loo at work. You really don't need to be talking to your brother about things either, your wife is 4-5 weeks. You have months to talk about things!

And it's perfectly normal to not tell work. What do you think us women do? We get on with work and pretend, it's almost like you think you're lying. This pregnancy at the moment is about you and your wife. Stop making it about everyone else.

You've got a long way to go yet.

I said it would help me be able to take time off from work so I can spend more time after the baby is born if I could tell them I need to work from home when doing baby stuff. I conceded though what my wife wants she will get and I understand that and I explained about three times I am not mentioning any of this to her because I don't want any pressure on her. I am not having a go at her like what is being implied, I was trying to ask an anonymous forum for some bits of information.

NerrSberr, A significant amount of the stuff I want to ask my Mum relates to child care (her ability to help us) and some is financial, we borrowed £40k from here to put towards the deposit of our house and currently I pay her back £2k a the end of each month.

I want to reduce that amount so I have some money spare to start buying baby items.

I couldn't have stayed with DP for 9 months if he'd been like this 4 weeks in, jeez....

The other thing is, you tell the whole world at 4 weeks and it's gets very boring for everyone else very quickly.

And yes I have DC and I'm saying that. Please respect your wife's wishes here.

god me either jorah! he's not this intense now and I'm due today!

You really honesty have plenty of time to think about child care and money. Honestly. It's early days, a lot can happen.

OhEmGee,

A significant amount of my work is client based and entails travel all over the UK. Working from home to me sometimes is the difference between coming home at night or not.

I am just wanting to be available for my wife as much as possible, we do a lookahead forecast of where we will be for the next four weeks every Friday and are allocated clients accordingly. I currently have no "excuse" to be given home or local work.

Please take this the right way - I may sound pessimistic, but it's just being realistic. So much can happen/go wrong in the next two months. Also, whether you ask in now or 8 weeks time, will your mothers answer be any different?

OP, I REALLY REALLY relate to you wanting to start planning and organising finances and stuff right away. But it isn't a great idea to do that until you get past 12 weeks because it goes wrong SO OFTEN. I know , I did it and it went wrong. And while I fucking hate sitting on my hands and waiting, 40 weeks is a really long time. You will have shitloads of time to sort out finances and childcare. and don't worry about money for baby things - we've been totally overwhelmed by the amount of things we have been given. I'm sure you will find the same. I really empathise with you wanting someone to talk to about it too. If your brother would agree to keep it extremely secret, maybe your wife wouldn't mind you confiding in him?

Once you get to the stage where your wife is happy for you to tell people, you can announce it at work and make plans for working from home if that's what you want to do.

But, yes, it's normal to wait and not tell anyone just yet.

I have also not suggested telling the whole world anything, just my Mum who we owe a load of money to, my Brother who I want for support (incidentally, he and his wife told me and my wife long before 12 weeks) and two colleagues will immediately adjust my working practices so I am not hundreds of miles from home and maybe working from home.

Think of this way OP, it's very special for you and your wife to have this 'secret'. It's intimate and it's what makes you a couple. No-one else can share this with you, it's your precious, wonderful news to treasure until the time is right to reveal it.

It's like those moments just after the baby is born when it's just you, her and the baby. No visitors yet, no family, no friends, no intrusions on your most precious and personal relationship. Those moments don't come along too often in life so make the most of it

Agree with what siani just said.

You seem to have a lot of loyalty to your work which I think is laudable but misplaced. Your workplace will have plenty of secrets. People will lie and not share with colleagues their own diagnoses, worries, job interviews, affairs, etc etc etc... Not telling them, and booking a day's leave without telling them it's for a midwife appt, is totally normal and is not a breach of trust. They would be more likely to be surprised if you told them this early, than shocked if you told them later.

Also, you don't have to even outright lie, you don't have to give a reason for a day off and if you want to it doesn't have to be a specific one!!

I know at the early stage it's hard to sit on your hands when you're worrying, but as has been said, there really is plenty of time to think about this stuff, you don't have to do it all at once.

I said it would help me be able to take time off from work so I can spend more time after the baby is born if I could tell them I need to work from home when doing baby stuff.

i'm not trying to antagonise here OP, but I genuinely don't understand what you mean by this? do you mean that you want to work from home when the baby is born or you want to work from home during the pregnancy because you want to be available to do baby stuff (assume you mean appointments, scans etc)

with regards to the financial arrangement and reducing your payment to your mum, I really would strongly suggest not starting to buy any baby stuff yet. sadly, anything can happen. it really is best to wait. also, not to freak you out but you don't know that there's just one baby in there!!! I know you want to start planning for the future but this will all still be there in a few weeks or months time.

Hedgehog, I know my brother will be ultra discrete, because I have been with him and his wife too.

I will not lie to my wife though so I am not going to talk to him without her knowing.

I can wait 12 weeks, it is fine.

As you have probably established yourself from this thread, OP, there are two parts to the answer to your question:

1. different people have different levels of comfort about telling anyone about a pregnancy prior to the anomaly scan. There is no right answer.
2. the person who gets "right of veto" aka the final decision on when to tell people is the pregnant person.

There isn't any more to say, really. I think you're being a bit precious about all of this. What's so hard with just going along with what your wife wants WITHOUT making it about a logic competition and without needing to understand. I know you're a lawyer but do try not to bring work home.

I had a premature baby and even I'm telling you, you have loads of time! At 4 weeks, there's not much to tell, your wife has probably done a test and might not have even missed a period yet. As the first 2 weeks are a freebie if you like, she's actually only 2 weeks pregnant in terms of the baby's development.
In terms of helping her at home, it's a nice thought but on average I'd say most women need help towards the end, maybe 7-9 month mark? When lifting is awkward, and you might want to pack, batch cook, tidy etc. Some women do suffer from horrendous sickness and if that happens she might need you, but most of us feel grim, nauseous but can carry on as normal more or less

I have also not suggested telling the whole world anything, just my Mum who we owe a load of money to, my Brother who I want for support (incidentally, he and his wife told me and my wife long before 12 weeks) and two colleagues will immediately adjust my working practices so I am not hundreds of miles from home and maybe working from home.

and that's fine, except you have said that your wife doesn't want you to. I doesn't matter whether you're talking about one or two trusted and loved people or a cast of thousands. if she has asked you not to, I really think you have to go along with that. whether you think its sensible or rational or not, you have to let it be her decision. you may find that once she has got her head round it a bit, the excitement may overtake the nerves and she ends up wanting to tell them before 12 weeks anyway. or they may guess if she's not drinking/falls asleep in her dinner/cries at pet charity adverts not that I've done those things when pregnant, oh no.