Monday, October 8, 2007

Future Grandparent vent

So this post is probably totally stupid & not appropriate but here goes anyway. I have to vent about the future grandmothers. I am 13 weeks pregnant & they are already getting on my nerves. My mother & my mother-in-law are setting up nurseries in their houses for my baby. My MIL already bought a crib for “when she baby-sits.” I haven’t even done that yet. I was very mad that she did that & has planned to set up a nursery in her house. I think she just wasted her money because my SIL won’t be letting her baby-sit & we probably won’t be having her baby-sit often either. My mom has been basically buying everything Cletus would need for the first year already. She sent me home on Saturday with a huge bag of clothes & blankets that she got. I had to fake enthusiasm while inside I am saying “What the hell am I going to do with this stuff?”

The baby-sitting is really bothering me though & I am not sure why. My mom told me on Saturday that if she is still not working when I have the baby that I can bring it over & she will watch it if I need a break. My MIL has already brought up babysitting twice now & Rich’s step-mom has mentioned it as well. I understand that Rich & I will need a break every once in a while, but really I think WE will want to spend time with the baby when we aren’t working. I am coming back to work after we have Cletus. Financially & emotionally for me I think that is the best decision for us. I have a hard time letting other people watch the dogs because they are used to how certain ones behave, how am I going to deal with them baby-sitting our precious little one? I would rather friends baby-sit then relatives, how sad is that? I know that when we have baby-sat; we follow the instructions to a tee. If you tell us to read 3 books, we read 3 books. If you tell us to walk up & down the stairs 3 times before bed, we will. We want to make sure the routine is kept & the child is comfortable. I am not sure the Grandparents will follow our rules. I have a feeling they will do what “they” think is right, not what we want. I know that is the way grandparents are, but routines should be followed & don’t feed my kid baby food at 3 months just because they seem hungry.

Rich said that I should just let them go & not worry about it. He said that they are just really excited because they have been waiting 7.5 years for this. In the back of my mind though, I am still thinking the gloom & doom what-ifs. What-if they do all of this & we still end up with nothing? I just keep thinking no one we know has had a c-section, so I probably will. No one else we know has had a still-born, so we probably will. I obviously need to make another appointment with the therapist. I am excited too, but I am cautiously excited. I still don’t believe that this is happening sometimes.

I am feeling very stressed out, freaked out & pressured with the grandparents. I don’t know what to say to them, but I guess I need to figure it out a lot sooner than I thought I would. I just wasn’t expecting the extra nurseries to pop up so soon when we won’t be doing ours until this winter.

In other, more positive news, I did wear maternity pants on Friday. They are from a friend so nothing I had to cut the tags off of yet, but it is a step in the right direction. They were really comfortable, but still a little big. I also bought bigger bras, but I am not wearing them yet. Although when I tried them on they were so comfortable, but a little discouraging. Going from a C to an almost DD in just 3 months is scary. What is going to happen later?

MY OB appt isn’t until a week from today. I think that I am in that in-between stage where I feel like I am just thrown out there to the wolves & I have no idea if everything is still ok. I have no reason to believe it is not, but the unknown is scary.

Rich, I think that Nome, Alaska is looking pretty good right now. Sorry that you have a crazy & emotionally unstable wife.

4 comments:

Rich said...

Wow, Nome, Alaska. What an old reference. I am not running away but would gladly go there if you went with me. I think your grandparent fears is a situation that can be controlled. If they are not given any direction, they will do what they think is best, or as Val mentioned, what they did when we were kids because we turned out fine. But if we give them direction, it is reasonable for them to respect our wishes. If they want to babysit really really bad, they are not going to go against our wishes and blow it. It's not like our parents are ignorant, disrespectful, neglectful, criminals, invalids, druggies, or drunks. We will still need couple time and they deserve Cletus time until they demonstrate the contrary.

Jason said...

We're dealing with something similar. Neither Devon nor I want to leave Bean with anyone and both our parents think that they'll have Bean for a weekend or longer at a time. We haven't told them yet that that just isn't going to happen. My sister has also mentioned "Bean'll have a new cute outfit after he/she comes home from Aunty Em's." The only time Bean will be coming home from Aunty Em's won't be after he/she's been there alone!

Although I guess our parents are doing a bit better since I'm not aware of either set making a nursery yet!

Julie and Greg said...

ok, only from MY experience I found that people have no clue that bad things can happen with pregnancies. i got the borrowed maternity clothes, the books, all kinds of baby stuff etc. even when I asked people NOT to buy they did. and look where it all is now...in a box somewhere hidden from me....
i think you need to just tell the grandparents (on both sides), " I appreciate how excited you are, but we are still a little nervous, so can we chill out with all the planning and purchasing!" I had to tell my mom that there was no buying until the we found out the sex. All the people that did buy for us felt horrible after we lost.
on the other hand feel blessed that you have grandparent issues and not all the other crap you have been through!

Val said...

I think the parent annoyance thing is common. I felt the same way too and still do. We are more comfortable with our daughter being babysat by younger friends than parents who did things totally differently years ago. I know they aren't stupid and our baby will still be alive after a 5 hour session, but they don't do things like we would. I think following routines keeps the child happy also which is why I'm thrilled to come home and see that you and Rich followed our suggestions. You two will need alone time and we will return the favor guaranteed. I can't even leave my dog with my dad and stepmom for a couple days because he comes home sick. My dad thinks it's ok to feed him potato chips and he chews on stuff outside. Stuff I've repeatedly asked them not to do or to be cautious of and they ignore it. I also think "how can I let them watch our daughter?!?!!?" I think part of it too is that we women have a fear that our mother/MIL is going to somehow do a better job. Maybe not fully aware of this fear but I think that is the underlying issue. I was not jealous when my friend visited during maternity leave and offered to do 18 different things to help me. Yet, my MIL asked to clean our microwave and I flipped. Like our microwave isn't good enough for her. Think I feel like a friend is helping and parents are judging which I'm sure is not the case at all. On your other subject, we also take our daughter to daycare and only have a few hours with her at night. As much as I do enjoy getting out occasionally, I want to spend time with her on the weekends equally as much.