FFFC 9/28

ladystout08

ladystout08

TB keeps eating my GIFs and words. Sorry y'all. 

kaf1788

I think I need to take a little break from my parents. I feel awful even saying that because they are lovely people and were great parents to have growing up (obviously nobody's perfect) but in times of high stress they have a knack for just making everything worse.  Everytime I talk to my dad he seems to make a passive aggressive comment about how taking the full 16 weeks of maternity leave is going to destroy my career as though half of my life isn't already spent stressing over how I'm going to manage being a full time working mom. My mom just really struggles with empathy sometimes (I called her kind of sad yesterday because I had just found out that neither of my two best friends would be able to make it to the baby shower and she was just like "oh good less people makes it easier for me"). I can't really fault her because she had a nightmare of a mother growing up and I really do think is doing the absolute best she can after never really experiencing a healthy mother/daughter relationship. But I had similar feelings approaching my wedding and basically had a breakdown the week before. I kind of just don't want anyone to talk to me until after the baby is born, but I'm going to start with just keeping some distance/not directly reaching out and seeing how that goes.

galactickates

Eta

tosh24

@kaf1788 I'm sorry. I don't confide in or lean on my parents for the same reason. I don't think they mean to be insensitive or cause more stress, but they just seem totally clueless sometimes and I got to the point where I've just kept my distance about certain things and only talk to them about the surface-level stuff. Like after my losses and telling my mom I wasn't continuing with treatments (because I was already pg but she didn't know that), she said "oh, well, that's probably a good thing. You have hard childbirth recoveries so probably best you don't have anymore children anyway". Um, thanks? I know she was just trying to find the "silver-lining" to make me feel better (I guess????) but, AYFKM!?!?!? I hope some distance between you guys gives you what you need right now.

ETA: Also, next time your dad stresses you out about taking leave, remind him of your Canadian friends lol! There are 4 of us women in my office all born in the same year. I am the only one with kids. I took 14 months off with my first and 8 months of leave with my second. All 4 of us work the exact same position with the same pay. I am no worse off because I took 22 months off to raise my kids over the last 12 years.