Dreading telling my parents I’m pregnant

[3LittlePiggles]

As the title says, I’m utterly dreading it. For a bit of context, I’m in my early 30s and 12 weeks pregnant. When I was growing up, my mum was emotionally abusive and my dad enabled her behaviour. Classic rage and silent treatment from a really young age. We grew up terrified of her and never knew what would set her off next.

This continued into my teen adult years, or got worse, I suppose, on some levels. There were things like my mum telling me my then boyfriend would go to uni, meet someone else and forget all about me; wanting to put a tracker on my phone to know where I am and who I’m with; during teacher training, bombarding me with messages, voicemails and emails even before I got to school at 8am; summoning me to her house to cry all over me and beg me to tell her I loved her, before looking right at me and saying ‘I know you hate me’.

I had a miscarriage a few months ago and she seemed to see it as ‘allowing’ her back in. I got the juxtaposition of her sending messages like ‘if you need a hug, just say and I will be there ❤️❤️❤️’ and then saying ‘so it had died then’ when she wanted to know about my scan. My dad phoned me the day after my D&C surgery but it was more to ask me to ‘keep mum in the picture’ than ask how I was, which was absolutely classic.

In short, I don’t trust or even like her any more. But I’m now 12 weeks pregnant following the miscarriage, and have my scan soon. I don’t want to tell her (I have a strong feeling of not wanting her anywhere near me), but I know I’ll have to at some point. I know there will be something either during my pregnancy or once DC is hopefully here that will set off her awful behaviour again.

I also don’t want to spend any more time or have more contact with her than I currently do. We message on a family group chat every few days, although she never asks how we are, it’s usually barbed comments and ‘oh I didn’t know you still did [XYZ]’. We probably see each other in person every 6-ish weeks.

I know she will see herself as gran of the year and will bring mountains of presents and want to be all over us, but honestly the thought makes my skin crawl. I’ve been having years of therapy, but the problem will never truly go away because she won’t go away.

Sorry, that was long and rambling. Does anyone have any advice? What can I do?

I'm sorry that woman who is supposed to be your mother terrorised your childhood ❤️

Based on what you have said about her, I would run, not walk as far away from her as possible and not let her anywhere near your child. She sounds like a narcissistic deranged lunatic.

Jesus Christ op. I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic but why are you even still in contact with her? My mum was like this and I cut her out for 7 years. I let her back into my life when I had my dc as I was hoping for a chance of a normal family, and I’d massively sorted out my assertiveness towards her by then. It was fine until my dc started getting a little older and she then tried to start the same nasty, manipulative shit with my children! So I cut her out again, think it’s been about 5 years now but I know I’ll NEVER speak to her again. Stop letting her treat you like shit, especially before you have your baby and they get subjected to it too!

I’m really sorry, she sounds awful.

You don’t need to tell her at all. I know it might not feel like it, but you’re allowed to cut her out of your life. You get to make decisions for yourself and your child and you only have to do what you think will be beneficial to you. It sounds like she would cause a lot of harm to a young child (on top of the significant harm she’s caused you) and I don’t think you or your child should be anywhere near her.

You’re allowed to stop involving her in your life.

Why do you have any contact with her honestly the best thing for you and your baby would be to cut her off . What does she actually bring to your life that's positive ?

I agree with pp. Stop seeing her. Does she bring anything positive into your life at all? No? So just stop visiting, stop replying to messages. Be busy if she turns up at your house. You don't owe her anything. You don't need to tell anyone yet. Easily wait till after the 20 week scan before anyone will even start to suspect anything. Then just tell her at the same time you tell everyone else, same message. "Like/love" her reply. Then don't engage.

The obvious solution is......don't tell them. In fact, maybe just stop bothering with them - you will be much happier.

I agree with other posters, can you go no contact with them? They sound awful and it would make your life a lot less stressful.

I've had no contact with my dad and his wife for a number of years, and whilst every so often it's a bit sad, I have no regrets. I wish him well but too much damage has been done and my life is much better off without them.

If no contact is not an option, I probably wouldn't say anything until they ask 😅

Go NO CONTACT now. She is a nightmare.

You could if you wanted add some white lies in. Don't tell her how far you are or your due date for example.

It's hard to go NC, not something I ever mastered. You can lay down some boundaries and pull back everytime she crosses it if you verbalise the boundary or not.

Unsurprisingly my mil is also abusive to me ( I'm sure once you've been abused or your a people pleasure it's like blood in water to sharks). I told mil my boundary, she respected it for a while then went back to her old ways so I pull back again from her.

At the end of the day what do these people bring to the table? Upset and hurt. That's it.

I would wait until you are at the point you must tell them or you be forced to tell them in person.

Normally it would be exciting to tell a parent in person about a wanted pregnancy, but in your case, I would share the news in a message, a few days before your next in-person meeting. I would put off that in-person meeting as long as possible to reduce the odds of miscarriage and to give yourself some breathing space. If something does go wrong, you don’t want their version of support, so waiting as long as possible to share the news is best.

once the baby is here, remember that anything she does to put on a good show is just that, a good show. It doesn’t matter if she makes herself look like facebook’s best grandma. You know the truth and that is all that matters. Pick your boundaries and stick to them.

mine were no babysitting, ever. Never being alone with my child, ever. I didn’t declare those boundaries, they just happened without mention. It’s easier to stay passive and vague and not create something specific for them to fight against.

Thank you so much for your replies, I’m really grateful 🙏🏼

Thank you @readyforroundthree My therapist has recently started to introduce the idea that my mum has narcissistic tendencies/behaviours. It’s something I’d wondered about for a long time, so it was a relief to hear it from someone else! And it’s bizarre how ‘standard’/uniform the playbook is, it’s like narcissistic mothers share a script.

Terrorised is sadly such an accurate word. We were so scared of her, even though we didn’t properly understand that at the time.

Thank you @soscarlet I’m really conscious of the impact she could have on my DC, either directly or through her impact on me.

Nothing 😔 I see her and contact her because I feel the obligation to. I completely tense up in her company and can barely look at her, whereas she seems to spend the entire time staring at me (which my sister commented on too).

She’s always seemed to think she can ‘buy’ us. So so many expensive and extravagant presents that at birthdays and Christmas we’d have to have a pre-emptive clear-out of all our things because they’d all get replaced and there’d be no room for anything. She’d take photos of the huge piles of presents on Christmas morning but never of us. And the presents would be used against us as well, so she’d throw things away if we were ‘bad’, and my dad would get them out of the bin and hide them in the garage.

No amount of telling her we don’t need more stuff makes any difference, even in adulthood, and it’s all a charade. She’ll say as we’re opening things ‘I don’t know what that is/what that does’. She gave me a present at Christmas which was actually something we’d talked about not being necessary/being a bit of a pointless product. It was a kind of off-the-cuff conversation about how you could do the same thing yourself, that kind of thing, and then I unwrap one at Christmas? She doesn’t actually listen/care/know us, she just likes ‘stuff’.

My dad actually said to me once ‘we don’t want presents, we just want to be loved’. So he does know, really, on some level.

‘A good show’ is so apt! Everything is 100% about how it looks. My own gran said she thought we were the perfect family, because that’s how it looked from the outside. It was nothing of the sort on the inside 😣

I’ve already spoken to DH about this and said there’s no way they’ll have unsupervised contact. They couldn’t be trusted to look after me, there’s no way I’m giving them the most treasured thing in my life to ‘look after’.

Here’s the thing: you’re the mom now. It’s on you to protect your child from harm. And your parents WILL harm your child. They abused you. If they can be so cruel to their own children, why would they treat yours better?

And your baby need their mother to be treated well by those around them. You will be the most important person in your baby’s world (and their dad). You being mistreated and hurt will hurt and upset them.

Protect your baby by protecting yourself. You deserve to be safe and supported and loved by those around you.

Your feeling of obligation to have contact with them is all part of the emotional abuse you suffered as a child, it is NOT your job to make them feel loved and wanted, that was their job as parents and they failed miserably. It doesn't matter what you do or say, it will never be enough to them and they will always expect more. Like someone else said, you are a mother now and in order to be the best mother you can you need to protect yourself from stress and negativity especially during pregnancy. I have no doubt that they will be just as awful grandparents as they were parents, maybe appear doting at first but I imagine your mother will eventually find ways of manipulating situations with your child to have some kind of control over you or to cause you emotional distress. I know it's easier said then done to cut them out of your life but think of your child's future, your baby doesn't deserve to have people like them in their life.

Why are you having so much contact with this horrendous excuse for a mother? You're in a chat group and see her every 6 weeks? Take a huge step back. You're deep in the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) that narcissistic parents are so good at fomenting around their children. Read up about it, it's a thing. Put your little family first and make sure you have cast iron boundaries around you. Don't worry about upsetting your parents - they don't care if they upset you, and with parents like that you can never actually win anyway so you may aswell suit yourself.

@SantasRubiksCube @LarkRiseSummer it’s definitely FOG/fear obligation guilt.

I was thinking yesterday about how I’ve spent years of my life trying to protect my mum from the fact we have a terrible relationship and from my growing realisation that I really don’t like her. Isn’t that ridiculous, when she says and does whatever she likes, even if it’s hurtful? She doesn’t care, and yet I feel the need to message her and send the right amount of ‘xx’s so she doesn’t get pissed off, and generally placate her so she doesn’t kick off about something ridiculously minor.

It’s the definition of walking on eggshells, isn’t it? Still, after all the work I’ve done?

You learned that an unhappy mother resulted in punishment, in one form or another. It takes time to realize that her moods were never your responsibility to manage and that you don’t deserve the way she treats you.

Take care of yourself. Your baby needs you to. I personally found that I was able to make decisions easier when I focused on what was best for my kids vs what was best for me. Example: my kids don’t deserve to see their mother verbally abused or be upset and stressed every time their grandmother is around vs I don’t deserve to be treated like this.

Having been an abused kid, I wasn’t really convinced I deserved better, but my kids sure as heck did.

The family you create is more important than the family you came from.
I wouldn’t have any contact with her. Enjoy the rest of the pregnancy and take care of yourself and in a few months take care of your lovely new baby ❤️

Your mum doesn't sound like she deserves your sense of kindness or obligation.
If continuing contact is hurting you then it's OK to step away. You will soon have little one to think about and protecting yourself is also protecting them, healthy and happy mum more likely to lead to healthy and happy baby.

I am in the exact same situation. Currently 19w. Stopped contact with my mother last year. Grown up and continue to receive abuse. I told her at 16w of the pregnancy - because I thought she has a “right” to know, hoping her behaviour will change, she respects the boundaries and is no longer abusive - all the unrealistic hopes. Initially she was happy and she “behaved” (for about 1 week). That, as per the history, was short lived and to this day I continue to once more receive abusive messages. My advice is look after yourself, your MH. Mothers like this will not change. I too have received therapy. They are narcissists, they do what is necessary to feed their narcissism without consideration for others, including their pregnant, vulnerable daughter. Look out for yourself as your narcissistic mother won’t. I have once again stopped responding to her abuse and am determined to not see her ..
I wish you all the best.

Toxic mothers can be toxic grandmothers. Been there, done it, have several t-shirts. Sorry you are going through this too x