I would keep quiet and sort of ignore the pre-wedding prep until you know more. If confronted directly about why you are not chiming in on wedding travel plans, act vague and say things like “we’re not sure exactly what we’re doing yet” and keep repeating that script if pressed. If there is a situation where someone is asking if you want to share in a suite or anything like that where your participation will impact the cost for others, tell them to go ahead and settle plans without you; that you will need to make your own arrangements later.
If your parents become upset that they wanted to be in town and now they’re out of town … that’s on them to deal with. I know it’s hard not to get caught up in it, but really, they need to cope with that. What would they have done if there was a wedding three weeks prior, and then your baby was three weeks early? They are not the primary players here. If you and your wife would rather not be dealing with your parents at the actual birth, this could work out ideally-- they are at the wedding and you get to say “oh so sorry, looking forward to seeing you next week!”
I guess the only mitigating factor is if your parents are actually helpful people and your wife wants them to be available. I don’t think I would have wanted my MIL, but I absolutely wanted my own mom because she’s extremely useful. My house was spotless and all my meals were excellent.
My thought is that you should wait to announce until they’ve bought the tickets. Do some hand-waving about how you’re still working out details. Given the history, you do NOT want Grandma around for the birth. Sorry, she sank that ship herself.
(Besides, imagine the horror of having her hanging around, checking in every couple of hours, and then holding it against you when the baby decides to be 3 days late and she could have gone to the wedding. :eek: )
Grandma can come and visit when you say, and she should go to the wedding.
While you are right that there is a possibility of something going wrong every day of a pregnancy, there are some milestones that plenty of parents feel comfortable using. The trisomy/nuchal test is a big one. In my case, I had a test for a specific genetic condition that was my milestone for telling my parents – because had the test results revealed a poor outcome, I could not have coped with my parents being up in my grill about it in the moment while I was trying to deal with it. None of that means that nothing would EVER go wrong unexpectedly, but it’s not unreasonable for people to make decisions based on factors they can control.
Sure, there are milestones that are used, but I’ve only seen them used for non-close family members, not for potential grandparents.
I’m saying that waiting until the parents have made plans/bought tickets/etc and THEN telling them will piss off the parents no matter what the parents want to do.
The OP is asking for advice, and my advice is to tell the parents right away.
If the OP’s wife doesn’t want them to be at the birth, then TELL them that, instead of passive-aggressively using time frames and ticket purchases to force an outcome that may not happen anyway, and will just lead to even MORE pissed off parents.
Just to clarify: I live in the same city as my parents, so they wouldn’t be staying with us. Hell, even if they didn’t live in the same town, I’d put 'em in a hotel.
While the nastygram wasn’t entirely out of character for my mom, it had been so long since I’d had that kind of interaction with her that it was more than a little bit unexpected. I guess I thought she’d act with a little more sensitivity. I told her how I felt about it at the time, she halfass apologized (“Oh no, that’s not what I meant at all…”) and time moved on.
We definitely don’t want her in the delivery room. Whether we even want them in the waiting room is an open question.
I talked it over with my wife, and we’re going to wait until after we get her bloodwork back before we decide when to tell them. If they decide to start booking rooms, them’s the breaks - I’ve told them that we need a few weeks to arrange our own schedules in August.
I’m guessing you’ve only been around people with sane parents who will be supportive if the shit hits the fan. Sure, potential grandparents like that, you tell right away. Potential grandparents who will shit all over you about and blame you for a miscarriage…those folks you don’t tell until after the APGAR test, because the odds of something going catastrophically wrong and you having to deal with their resultant shittiness are massively lower at that point.
Yeah, it’s going to piss them off that they weren’t told immediately. But the telling them immediately ship already sailed, because with an 11-week, actively-sought pregnancy in this day and age, the OP has known for at least a month. They’re going to be pissed regardless of when he tells them. So that’s not a factor that ought to be considered. Besides, it’s not like his mom was concerned about hurting or angering them when she sent that shitty email.
black rabbit, do whatever you and your wife feel capable of coping with right now, without worrying about everyone else. This is about you, not anyone else, and your well-being is paramount here. I went through something similar (although vastly less traumatic) with my mom earlier in the winter, electing not to tell her I was having exploratory surgery until it was over because she was such an incredible source of stress in the run-up to the previous one. It hurt her feelings a little, but it was the right decision. Trying to deal with her 10,000 incredibly detailed questions about the specifics of the surgical plan and recovery and her absolute inability to understand the sentence “The doctor won’t know until she gets in there and sees exactly what’s going on” on top of my own fear and anxiety would have pushed me over the edge.
I don’t think it’s at all unusual to delay telling the potential grandparents when there has been a previous loss. And it needn’t involve badly behaving parents- (my parents didn’t behave badly) - or even actual milestones but there was no way I was going to tell my parents about my second pregnancy until I felt pretty confident that there were no complications going on with pregnancy number two. For a couple of reasons , but possbly the most important is that word gets around but there’s no guarantee that everyone who heard about the pregnancy heard about the loss.
If I were in your position, I wouldn’t say anything to your parents or the rest of your family either. I like the vague “We’re not sure yet” response, because quite conveniently, it is in fact the absolute truth. Besides, unless for whatever reason your wife wants her to be there, your mom has no business being at the hospital let alone the delivery room.
My best to you and to Mrs. Rabbit. Keep us posted. Mazel tov to your cousin, by the way.
No, my parents are pretty crazy, just in a milder way I guess. I just don’t understand how parents who don’t live with you can “get all up in your grill” as put earlier, or somehow make you deal with their “resultant shittiness”. Just don’t answer the phone and/or hang up when the shittiness starts.
It sounds like you’ve already decided on what to do, but: are you getting one of the cell-free DNA tests like MaterniT21? Now is around the time when you can take it: it’s a simple blood test, and they have the results to you within 10 business days. It caught my baby’s trisomy when the nuchal measurements showed everything was normal. It is nominally a screening test, but much more accurate than the quad screening. (And you get to find out the gender early!)
It does cost a couple hundred dollars minimum (and usually maximum, too – if your insurance doesn’t cover it you can usually get them to give it to you for that much without much problem).
I didn’t tell family about my latest pregnancy until after the anatomy scan at 20 weeks, because there are heart defects that may run in my family that wouldn’t have been picked up until then. And they are completely supportive and were supportive of my trisomy miscarriage last time; my husband and I just didn’t want to deal with it after our previous loss. (I hope never to have to have that phone call again where my mom was all excited about the baby and I had to tell her that she… couldn’t be excited about it anymore.) [On preview: what doreen said.] So I think whatever you decide is totally okay.
I would just tell everyone, “Sorry, we can’t commit to plans for another month or so, we have a potential conflict that we need to get resolved.”
Your parents will just have to change their plans, if they want to, when you are good and ready to tell them your news. You don’t owe them the information just because they’re making plans. Plane tickets may not be refundable, but can usually be changed for later use for a fee.
I speak from experience. My best friend went through almost exactly the same thing. Her mother was horribly cruel when she lost her first baby due to a trisomy. My friend kept her out of the loop for a long time during her second pregnancy–until well after the testing was over. She waited until she felt she could handle her mother’s crazy attitude. This turned out to be the right call, because her mom’s response to the happy news was almost as crazy and inconsiderate as she had been over the sad news.
Don’t let the potential expense of changed plans guilt you into telling your parents one second sooner than you want to. Your mom made her bed; now she can lie in it.
As others have said, it’s just a due date. Babies rarely come on this day, unless via c-section. If you don’t want your mother there, tell her the baby is due the following week. She’ll never know.
And my guess is that you don’t know people who have gone through fertility and miscarriage issues.
When you go through that, you don’t tend to ring the bell to get all the congratulations pouring in - even from potential grandparents - until you are sure. Miscarriage grief is very strange - its often intensely private. And potential grandparents can either not get it or participate fully in it - it sounds like potential grandma here had a lot of grief and anger over the miscarriage - which was really unfair and inappropriate when blackrabbit and mrs rabbit had their own grief. In that case, saving potential grandma from a repeat of that grief and anger may be the best course of action by just not telling her until the chance of miscarriage is very low - in a few weeks.
I know a lot of people who miscarried one or more children, and didn’t tell anyone about future pregnancies until the 3rd month. It just is too hard to say “we miscarried.” And people who went through infertility who just told people they gave up trying while continuing to try because giving everyone your fertility status every month is also no fun.
Blackrabbit and Mrs - congrats - may this pregnancy be happy, healthy and uneventful (well, with the exception of a big happy event at the end).
They should at least wait until its eyes are open.
You have at least until everybody else on the email trail puts in their two cents worth as to travel plans and such; even without the baby issues, people would probably not be surprised if you held off and didn’t dive in until everybody else had spoken up. If anybody pressures you for info, make a vague claim about possible work/finance/home repair issues and you’re not ready to commit yet.
Once it gets to the point of people really having to know, to paraphrase Miss Manners, “Anybody who doesn’t want to hear about a new baby must be an awful poop.”
