Pregnancy and PD parents

[WinterStar]

Hello again you lovely people. I'm expecting baby #4 in May, and I've noticed that since I found out I was pregnant in September, I've been more triggered than usual by my PD FOO. Dad has NPD. I'm vvlc with him. I'm down to sending a Christmas present and receiving birthday/Christmas cards. I'm incredibly anxious about him finding out about the pregnancy. And I'm especially upset because I know that in his world boys are more valuable than girls, so I'm worried that the fact that I'm having a boy (I have three beautiful girls) will spark some kind of renewed effort in contacting me. (Though my brother has two boys who are carrying on the family name, so this may not end up being an issue at all.) I'm not planning to tell him about the pregnancy. I'm not planning to tell his mother, my grandmother. I did, however, tell my brother who has served as a FM in the past (I think he has fleas and fog but no PD). I imagine he'll tell my dad at some point, and I don't want him to, but I also don't want to call him up to tell him not to tell my dad, particularly because I think he'd just tell my dad sooner. If it's not even on his radar, he's less likely to bring it up.

Mom probably has BPD. She parentified the heck out of me, and I've never felt that I had motherly support. I told her about the pregnancy a few weeks ago, and she said, "I know what I'll be doing with my vacation time this year," cheerfully. And she proceeded to talk about watching my girls while I'm in the hospital.

The thing is, I haven't asked her for help this time and don't really want it. She brings neediness and stress everywhere she frequents. She is always seeking reassurance from me. She's extremely limited in what she's willing/able to do. She has decreasing mobility and cannot take the stairs to our guest bedroom. She says she can sleep on the couch, but I don't want her underfoot in our main living space while I'm in labor since she'd certainly get here before I need to go to the hospital. She's also an incredibly picky eater who claims to be allergic to a bunch of things she's not allergic to. She won't take my girls to and from school (I don't understand quite why), and I don't know how to get alternate transportation for them (there are no school buses here). She needs a detailed list of what she needs to do to care for the girls, and when really obvious things are left off, she just doesn't do them. Like, she came to watch my kids when my husband was having surgery. She got my daughter ready for school, and I had another mother I know pick her up and take her to school. Even though it was cold that morning, my mom didn't have my daughter put on a coat because I hadn't included that in my instructions. My daughter had an outdoor field trip that day, and I had to come home from the hospital, get the coat and take it to her before the field trip left. It was very stressful. I do not understand how my mom didn't know she shouldn't send a small child to school without a coat on a cold day. I need someone who can come and help, and I can be confident in their good judgement so that I can focus on what I need to do.

And I'm just incredibly disappointed that my mom's entire reaction to the announcement of another grandchild was all about her, what she's going to do. She didn't ask about the baby. She didn't ask about me. This is not new behavior, but it hurts all over again. I feel particularly vulnerable while pregnant. My adult self knows that I can't rely on my mom emotionally and that I need to trust my gut and hire on-call, overnight childcare even if I have to pay through the nose for it. But I still feel like there's a scared little girl inside me who keeps crying and calling out for her mommy and is confused about why mommy won't come. I don't know how to heal her. I've been in and out of therapy for many years (currently in), but the little girl just keeps coming back.

[Call Me Cordelia]

Hugs and congratulations. Boy, do I understand. So much of your experience matches mine. I just had baby #5, the first time I did not have any Pd family members around for any of it. It was so so so much better as a result. This is the first time I felt actually able to rest postpartum!

Absolutely trust your gut. And your previous experiences. You have every reason not to want your mother around. Just the fact that you don't want her is plenty of justification, really.

In addition to all you said, I didn't like how your mom referred to her vacation time. It seems like an implied guilt trip, because you are taking all of her time. And she's so generous to give it all up. 

Do you have any supportive community around you? Friends who might be willing to come and take care of your kids when it's time for the baby to be born? I assumed people would resent being asked, but I had no other option so I did it. They actually told me they were honored I trusted them at such a time, and it really built up the friendship. But if you are paying for care, I agree it would be completely worth the cost!

I'm truly very sorry you were so disappointed in your mother. You are a good mother to that confused little girl.

[p123]

OP parents can be a nightmare with pregnancy.....
My Dad, when we told him, said "but you're both too old and babies cost money", then "so was it planned?". My wifes face......

I hear what you say about MIL too. My MIL comes to visit to help sometimes (or hinder). She does the same sort of things. Heres a classic- when we cook bolognese - she will eat spaghetti but not pasta (you know like the different shapes such as penne etc. Really - despite us telling her its exactly the same and that spaghetti is pasta she won't believe us.

Sometimes if hilarious but not all the time. Other night I cooked tagliatele bolognese (wife had gone out for an hour so it was left to me). She'd eaten it week before because wife told her it was "flattened spaghetti". I served it - took one look and refused to eat a spoonfull. I was not happy!

[WinterStar]

Thank you, Call Me Cordelia. I really appreciate you sharing your experience and encouraging me to trust myself. Your insight on my mom's vacation time comment is very good; she definitely wanted to put attention on how selfless she is.... by talking about herself; when it comes down to it, it's kinda funny how they do that.

OP parents can be a nightmare with pregnancy.....

p123, you're so right. My husband's parents also have PDs and also weird about pregnancy. We told them when we were having our first child, and there was no reaction at all. Every subsequent pregnancy, they've had no reaction. Not happy, not sad. No comments. They just start talking about something else. They are loving grandparents too. It's so weird. I don't get them at all.

So I said something to my therapist this week about my mom. I have talked for awhile about how she emotion/worry dumps on me and how she has never shown any interest in my emotions. Like, if I share an emotion, she talks about some time when she had the same emotion, and it was really hard for her.  Then, this week I said my mom is emotionally sensitive and catches other people's emotions, and the therapist seemed to think these two aspects (not caring about my emotions and catching the emotions of others) don't belong together. Is it weird with somebody who has a PD, particularly BPD, to catch others' emotions but also not be considerate of others' emotions?

[Seven]

WinterStar
Sounds like we have the same mother.  I believed my mother was very empathetic.  First to want to jump in and help others, except  for her daughters of course.   The sons are a whole different ball of wax. Took me a while to figure out she only did it for the attention, so she would  get praise, outside validation that she was "mother of the year", all while never giving that same attention to her children. Don't mistake empathy for martyrdom like I did. I don't think they really care about other people's emotions.  They just use other people's emotions to become the savior.  Remember, PDs are either the hero or the victim, but never the "bad guy" in their own eyes.

[MamaDryad]

First of all, congratulations! I've only been pregnant once, so I assumed that it was the change from non-parent to parent that made my mother's behavior, which I had normalized for my entire life, suddenly intolerable to me. But maybe there's also an element of those mama bear hormones in the mix. When your entire body is focused on creating and protecting this new life, it makes sense that your tolerance for childish behavior and inappropriate expectations from the adults around you would decrease drastically.

[SparkStillLit]

Congrats!!! You rock the socks, 5 pregnancies. I only did two and I was DOOONNNNEEEE (well, the second was high risk and dangerous for me and him the whole time).
Anyway, my mom does weird shit, too. She....THINKS she's being helpful. She does what she thinks you should want done. Make sense? Maybe not, ha ha. She doesn't listen to what I say I want or need and she does what she thinks I *should* want or need. The two don't often coincide.
I mostly tried to keep her out of my hair. She lived over an hour away at the time. She was at the hospital for DD'S birth (first child), but not for DS because he arrived unexpectedly and very early. She drove up, but he already was born and was with me and all the fuss was over.
I don't know how far apart you are, but I made up offputting things. We weren't going to be home, we had this or that, blah blah. We live MUCH closer now and I still do this. She fusses and carries on and now calls the kids (teen and very young adult), but they're on board with her data mining and don't give in or provide details.

[SparkStillLit]

P.S. If you have other supportive friends and such around you, you can bring them in to help you FOR REAL. People help, they're happy to, especially other parents.  PDs would have you believe otherwise, but it's not true. If they're EXTRA good friends, they can help deflect and distract your mom!

[WinterStar]

Don't mistake empathy for martyrdom like I did. I don't think they really care about other people's emotions.  They just use other people's emotions to become the savior.  Remember, PDs are either the hero or the victim, but never the "bad guy" in their own eyes.

I think you're right, Seven. I think she is using other people's problems to maintain her victim status. A kind of "Look at the pain in my family. It is so hard for me!" Thanks for the insight.

[WinterStar]

When your entire body is focused on creating and protecting this new life, it makes sense that your tolerance for childish behavior and inappropriate expectations from the adults around you would decrease drastically.

I agree, MamaDryad. I think part of it is also that I (unconsciously) have higher expectations while I'm pregnant. Like, I feel entitled to have needs right now in a way I don't other times. And it hurts so much that she's still so self consumed that she literally never asks how I'm doing, how the baby is doing or what kind of help I might need. She'll offer to help, but as always, it's only what she wants to do and not terribly helpful. At least I've finally figured out that it's easier to not have that kind of "help" at all.

[WinterStar]

She....THINKS she's being helpful. She does what she thinks you should want done. Make sense? Maybe not, ha ha. She doesn't listen to what I say I want or need and she does what she thinks I *should* want or need. The two don't often coincide.

SparkStillLit, YESSSSSSS! My mom doesn't understand that doing the thing she feels like doing isn't helping. And she overpromises what she will do. And she's draining to be around to the point that even if she did some good, it's outweighed.

I think coming down and watching the kids is really about spending time with her grandchildren, getting reassurance from me and feeling good about herself. It's not about helping me at all.