When/if to tell family about labour?

[Beckyv88]

I’m wondering when or if you plan to tell your family you’re in labour, or if you’ll wait until the baby is here?

I’m a bit reluctant to tell my MIL I’m in labour since she’s been so intense throughout my pregnancy and has made lots of comments about basically taking care of my baby for me because I guess she thinks I won’t be able to or won’t want to. She’s asked me to tell her straightaway when I’m in labour but I want to as I’m sure she’ll show up at the hospital and refuse to leave, which will make me anxious.

However I do feel it’s a bit unfair maybe to tell my parents and not her, and I do think she’ll be hurt. But my parents will respect my boundaries whereas she won’t.

What do you think?

Only person we will tell is my friend who has a key to the house so she can take take of the dogs. And possibly my yard manager to look after my horse 😂😂😂

Everyone else can wait!

I was induced last time, so told them the induction date but that they'd hear nothing else till the baby arrived. Fortunately both sets of parents are pretty sensible so kept quiet and didn't badger us with texts. Plus my parents were on holiday so safely far away!

This time, PiL will be looking after DS, so we'll have to tell them! I'll probably let my parents know too, they live far enough away and are sensible enough not to dash straight to the hospital. In other circumstances I'd completely support not telling anyone till the baby arrives.

However I do feel it’s a bit unfair maybe to tell my parents and not her, and I do think she’ll be hurt. But my parents will respect my boundaries whereas she won’t.

This is not about fairness. This is about what you need to support you during your labour.

If you want your mum to know that you are in labour, tell her. It is nothing to do with your MIL. I would not hesitate to tell your mum but not your MIL, if that would make you feel more secure.

My parents are no longer with us so no issues that side of the family. DFiL we could tell and wouldn’t make any fuss; he’s 5-6 hours away by public transport and has no car at the moment so wouldn’t be turning up at the hospital unannounced. DMiL is likely to turn up if she knows in advance (and expect to be honoured for it) so we won’t be telling her. In fact, once we get our c section date, we’re going to add a week so we do t have the world and his wife asking and can focus on ourselves:

My husband mentioned about letting his mum know so she could come down and wait in hospital. She lives in England so this means she'd be staying with us. Ha no.
My first child was born hypoxic so was in Nice for 2 weeks and I didnt hold him for a week so I'm adamant I want the chance to hold my newborn baby this time around and savour it. I'm not being robbed of it again and having to hand him or her off to someone else straight away. I couldn't care less how selfish it makes me. She's had grandchildren already and had 5 of her own kids.
Same goes for my mum. I just want a day that's all of just me, baby and husband.

My husband texted my mum to let her know that I was in early labour, but she kept it to herself and didn't tell my dad. We told her because I was 3 weeks early and they had said they'd come to bring us home from the hospital as we don't have a car, and if they were busy over the next day or two then we needed a plan B. After the initial texts he didn't message again until a few hours after the baby had been born, but it was very quick (8 hours all in) so she hasn't expected to be notified that quickly. They came down on the day he was born but live 4 hours drive away so we had around 12 hours of just us before they arrived.

We told both our families, but both sets are normal and respect boundaries, so I wasn’t dreading my MIL to burst in through the door while I was crowning or whatever.

DH just text the family group chats and let them know how things were going every few hours.

oh i so dont want anyone to know this time round.

OP, there was like this sense of pressure behind me that felt smothering because people knew. They knew due to my mum being my 2nd birthing partner and she just bloody told everyone where she had to go and then constantly sent them all text updates and kept asking me how I was - despite me telling her several times to stop asking and to stop talking to me (I really just wanted silence). The longer the labour went on (I was there for 2 days) the more anxiety hit and probably contributed to my stop-start contractions.