How to deal with anger at Mum

[sparkling123]

This post could be outing but I am so upset and I don't want to keep talking to my husband about it. I'm 20 weeks pregnant and have had 2 episodes of bleeding, all was fine, baby is 100% fine and docs think it is caused by burst blood vessel in cervix. I am under a consultant as I had LLETZ treatment a while ago, have had one app. at 13 weeks, he was happy it would be fine as treatment was minor, and another in about 7 weeks just as a precaution but he said he was not concerned. I also had a miscarriage last year at 8 weeks, So that's my background. What I am so upset about and can't seem to take my mind off is an text conversation with my mum I had 2 days ago. She asked me how 20 week scan was and I said fine, and she wanted to know if there was any follow up to the bleeding. I said no, baby is totally healthy, there are no concerns. She then told me that my Aunty had also had an abnormal smear a long time ago, and had to have a biopsy (same as me, leading to LLETZ) and it was very painful. The reason this has upset me is because my Aunty ended up losing her baby at about 7 months and nearly died, she developed sceptascemia and went into a coma, this was when I was young. She has never had children as the risk to her life is great. I am just feeling overwhelmed today with emotions. I am angry that even after I said to my Mum it wasn't relevant or appropriate to tell me this she won't apologise and is making out that I am being stupid. She said 'well, my mistake for thinking you would want to know' which to me isnt an apology for being insensitive. I am also now irrationally terrified in case there is a genetic link, which was Mum's reason for telling me. I am just now generally feeling down. I had been feeling confident and happy about pregnancy after a good anomaly scan and finding out we're having a girl but today I am just jn tears and can't seem to get past this. Mum ended the conversation with 'anyway, enough of this, I have things to do' as I was freaking out saying it was not related and that she shouldn't have told me'. Now she is pretending nothing has happened and asking me if I had a nice time at ikea. How can I get my head straight again?

Not sure I have enough experience to advise, I think your M um didnt think through what or how to tell you. It doesnt sound like it could be genetic more the previous treatment coincidental but that would be for a professional to say.

I was given some upsetting news about my genes when I was pregnant.

It must be a scary time for you but right now there is no reason that what happened to your Aunt will happen for you.

A girl, how lovely

It's understandable that you feel scared and worried and you want to take the ignorance is bliss approach to situations that may be similar to yours and/or a possible negative outcome. However, it seems your mum has a completely different approach, the be prepared for the worst and hope for the best. I don't think you should be angry at her, unless you have specifically told her you don't want to hear any negative things that may be relatable to the situation. If you have and she ignored it, then definitely be angry and explain why. If you haven't, then you can't expect her to read your mind, and tell her not to tell u anything like that from now on

Thank you. I told her in reply that if the medical professionals have no concerns and I have no concerns then she shouldn't bring up any of her concerns. It is such a horrible situation, also as I find the whole thing around my Aunty very upsetting, it was such an awful time and still awful for her.

Her defensiveness will be because she put her foot in it and feels embarrassed.
Is your mum usually like this, doom mongering? If she is perhaps your heightened anxiety has made it into an issue and she will not see why you are upset if it's her usual way of being?

Your mum was thoughtless, and she knows it. Give yourself a few days apart, and it will be forgotten.

If you're still worried, go and see your doc/HV again and let them reassure you that its nothing to worry about. Do they know about your Aunt?

@earlybyrd think you have hit nail on the head, she is a total doom merchant and usually I make a joke out of things with her. I guess as it is a sensitive subject for me I can't do that. She is incredibly melodramatic so I'm not surprised she has told me this but I'm just unused to being so upset as I usually filter her out. It didn't even occur to me to bring up my Aunty, she had an abnormal smear about 5 years before she was pregnant and it was all fine for her in the end. The reason they monitor if you've had any cervical procedure after abnormal scan, like cone or LLETZ treatment is to ensure cervix is closed, and if it isnt they put a stitch in. That's why I wasn't really concerned as the consultant seemed to have no concerns and if he did there is a well known procedure to stop anything bad happening. My aunty losing her baby wasn't related to her abnormal smear, the baby was born preterm and would have had severe health problems had it survided, so was to do with babys development, not her cervix.

@Jaxhog thank you, yes I am going to take your advice. I don't normally ignore texts of Mum but am going to for a few days as I just don't want to speak to her

Quick update. I spoke to Mum today, she couldn't understand why I was so upset and didn't realise I would 'react so strongly' to what she said. So that's that.

You did overreact a bit
But it’s understandable that you did given you are/were worried
It’s all down to people coping with stress in very different ways - you can’t expect your mum to act like you and vice versa
Life is too short to hold grudges give her a hug and tell her everything is fine so look forward to being a grandma soon

I don't think you over reacted at all!

It was a monstrously tactless thing to say! To equate your situation with the dire outcome for your Aunt was unbelievably tactless.

I'm so sorry you had a miscarriage previously ; also all the worry about your cervical treatment. Of course you're going to be feeling raw and vulnerable ((hug))

Motto: don't tell her stuff, keep things generally bland.

Congratulations on your pregnancy

I think you are underestimating the huge advances that have been made in this area of medicine over the last twenty years, OP.

But I understand how horrible it is to imagine the things that can go wrong.

@springydaff yep unfortunately that's conclusion me and OH came to yesterday, I just won't be telling her any medical details about pregnancy from now on. It's so sad that I have to do this with my pregnancy as I would love to have a normal relationship where I share things with her. But she has always been like this. She doesn't do empathy so I'm blocking her for my own mental health. At PP, sorry forgot name, yes I am confident I will be monitored correctly, it is my Mum who is underestimating medical advances and is convinced I need to make doctors aware of Aunty's situation even though they have told me they have very little concerns and I am going back for consultant app. at 26 weeks. I've spent last few days trying hard to get back mentally to where I was just when I had a lovely 20 week scan and saw our lovely healthy girl, and before my Mum started this whole thing. She always jumps to worst conclusion, she did this with a relative who was diagnosed with a very treatable form of cancer. Yes, we were all worried but stayed positive until we knew exact diagnosis and how the treatment went. Luckily the treatment was a success and they are still all clear a decade on, but my Mum was incredibly negative about outcome from the start and I had to keep saying to her to try to be positive, at the end of the day nobody is stupid and knows there what the statistics are but what good does dwelling on the negative do. She kept saying 'it's not good', well yes it's wasn't good but that isn't helping anybody, especially my poor relative who was probably terrified. I think my problem with this whole thing is she doesn't actually understand the medical side of it, she is just in her head thinking they are related and jumping to worst conclusion. I know that because I had LLETZ, I have a risk of preterm delivery due to weakened cervix, I knew this was a risk when I had the treatment. I'm fine with that. It's not going to stop me being positive and sit there worrying about the what ifs, I'd never leave the house. I also don't know why she decided to tell me this in response to a lovely text conversation about my 20 week scan, that was a very happy conversation. She has had months to tell me this, she has known about my LLETZ treatment for 3 months now. Why in response to my good news? My issue is that she really pissed on my chips. So, that's it, if she wants to go round raining on people's parades she just won't get invited. Sorry for long post but needed to get off my chest, trying hard as I said to get back to usual positive (that's not same as naive as some people seem to think) mood. Think this will be my last post on this, as I need to draw a line under this, and agree that only way with her is to sadly keep her distant.