Telling a 9 year old her brother was unplanned

[LaPoulette]

Hello,

I never know whether I am being oversensitive or blowing things out of proportion.

My MIL told my daughter - who is 9 nearly 10- that her brother (he is 2) was a surprise because of the big age difference between them. Initially, I understood it as a "surprise" to them (the grandparents) which I can understand. However, my daughter has now asked me how can babies be either planned or unplanned - which has been a difficult conversation in itself.
Am I justified in being upset about this?
Related to the subject of pregnancy, my husband had said to his dad that he wanted to talk to him about a few things - but left it unspecified. MIL then sent us a text saying that now that we had said there were news, could we please tell them as she had spent a bad night worrying about me being pregnant (I am not, but maybe she thought that as I have gained some weight?) or my husband's health, which to me seems to put in the same basket something that we might feel positive about (pregnancy) with something that is unlikely to be positive. All of these comments have happened at the same time that my SIL has had a baby, and there has been nothing but support and showing affection. For context, my daughter was unplanned (but loved with all my heart) and she does not know she wasn’t.
My husband talked to his dad, and then she sent a message apologising for having upseted us and that she didn’t mean to. To me it does not feel like a true apology as the apology does not acknowledge that what she said was wrong.
Would a normal average person be upset by this? I am not in the best mental health state, and worry that maybe I am being unreasonable.

Many thanks in advance for any advice and views.

Oh crikey, I'd be livid with them for broaching that subject with your dd - what on Earth were they thinking?

The gentle answer is granny was surprised because most people have a 2-3 year age gap. Maybe you can talk about someone in her class who has a sibling 2 or 3 years younger/older as an example.

I’m guessing that your dd knows about sex? If she’s at school in England then she’ll probably have sex ed at school soon (next year) so you can explain sex leads to a pregnancy and contraception stops pregnancy as the scientific answer.

However I would probably say that ds wasn’t unplanned because he’s much younger, he was born at the perfect time for your family. Just because 2-3 years is most common, it doesn’t mean that is the gap for every sibling group.

She is not in an English school. But I have now explained it to her, to the best of my ability - as it came about unexpectedly and I was upset by it all whilst doing so. I hope she did not notice.

Thank you both for replying. I think I am a little bit in crisis - can't stop crying as I can't figure out why me and my family deserve these comments. I have a very strained relationship with MIL, but this has seemed to have tipped me over the edge.