- Pregnancy
- Baby & Toddler
- Parents
- Getting Pregnant
- Baby Names
- Product Reviews
-
Registry
- Community
-
More
Want a personalized experience?
Download the free app
Blended Families
mikkigold
member
new here, need some advise
mikkigold
member
i am newly pregnant, and though i wanted to wait to tell SD we went ahead and told her anyway. then tonight at her school performance she went and told her mom (XW) I made sure to tell my SD in the car on the way home that we don't planning on telling the world yet as we are only 4wks along. but DH felt as though i was being hard on her, and she was just excited.
Later in the evening I spoke to him in private about this and explained to him that i didnt want to tell everyone this early in case something went wrong. I also made a point to tell him that it made me feel uncomfortable for him to keep bring up XW and her pregnancy every time we discussed ours!
please let me know what you think, and if i was/am wrong?
This discussion has been closed.
Re: new here, need some advise
I usually just lurk and don't post much here as I don't have a blended family but I think this not really just a blended family thing. Honestly, I think 4 weeks would be really early to tell a child, regardless of blended family or not. Now that is just me and in my circle friend I would say most everyone waited until the first ultrasound before telling their other children. I would think would extremely difficult for a child, again regardless of family situation, to keep it a secret, even an older child. They just get so excited. So really I think the cat is out of the bag if you have told her and it will be very difficult to control. How old is your step daugther?
If you dh pushed you share when you weren't ready and is commenting on his ex wife's pregancy, than I say dh probem and that would not be cool with me either!
When I was pregnant w/ DD, we did not tell DS until I was 13 weeks & we'd had a couple ultrasounds.
Because like you said, something might go wrong. And 30+ weeks is a long time for a kid to wait.
First and foremost, your SD telling her mother about her impending sibling is not the same as telling the world. This is her mother. The other parent who will now gets to deal with any of the fall out from this VERY momentous event in this child's life.
Even in intact families, siblings bring changes and emotional upheaval to the current children. So even THINKING that your SD is going to not be affected and therefor not need to rely on her mother for support is so shortsighted of you.
HELL, what happens if you lose this pregnancy? Is your SD now not allowed to tell her mother her feelings of loss because you dont want the world to know?
Second, you never ever ever ask a child to keep secrets from their other parent. That is actually part of parental alienation. Not discussing the day to day events in the house is one thing. Keeping a new sibling or a move or a new live-in SO or the loss of a job is another.
If you did not want the world to know, YOU should not have told your SD, PERIOD.
Third, of course she is excited. YOU opened the damn bag and now YOU need to be ok with it. Because if YOU put a damper on her excitement (something that YOU caused by telling her early) YOU can very well start to create the "new sibling" issues we all know and love (sarcasm).
Do not squash her enthusiasm or you could have some serious jealousy issues in the end.
As for your DH and the "i've done this rodeo" thing. I get it. I lived it. But I also realized that my DH was not comparing (as in one is better or worse or equal to the other) but trying to offer up valid advice to help my pregnancy go smoother.
Do you discount your mother's, aunts', sisters's or friends advice immediately? No, you take it in, like any of the other information you receive and make informed decisions.
SO I would approach it that way. Ask him to keep the comparisons down and only bring up advice. Because guess what, he is also the parent and has the right to make decisions on how he wants to parent. HIS decisions are based on HIS past, just like yours.
THAT took me a long time to wrangle with too.
We told SS and SD about our pregnancy at 5 weeks. Don't let anybody make you feel bad about telling kids that early it is your and your DH's decision nobody else's. however when you tell kids you have to be ready for everybody to know. Kids can't keep secrets and shouldn't be asked too.
I had to tell my DH also that I didn't appreciate the comparisons to BM's pregnancy also. Just talk to him and he should get the point. It was easier for my DH as nothing about this pregnancy has been like BM's. she is normally crazy and went even worse when pregnant like beating DH with a belt in the middle of the night kind of crazy. Needless to say he was pretty scared of how I would react during pregnancy.
Cut her some slack. Some kids from separated families CAN'T go to their moms for support when something good or bad happens on their dads side. My SD is not allowed to talk about her brother with BM because there's so much bitterness still there. So she knows she can be as excited as she wants with DH and I, and around her extended family on moms side, but even at 9, she knows she'll find no support directly from her mother.
I do agree, the cats out of the bag now, and you can't tell a child not to share exciting news with anyone, but I understand her anxiety about everyone knowing sooner than she wanted. I think the real problem is her DH telling SD when she didn't want him to. My DH could not wait to tell SD that we were expecting, I had to reel him in once or twice before our first ultrasound, but he did respect my wishes and waited till we were both ready to tell her, and have the "world" know, ie: BM.
How old is your SD?
As a BM and SM with 4 kids ranging from 4-11 and one on the way, I assume that any time I tell any of the kids anything that I should be prepared for anyone else to know as well. They're kids. They get excited about stuff - they want to share their lives.
And I agree with Illumine on the thing with your DH. He might not be "comparing" as much as just wanting to help.
my SD is almost 9. The problem for me is that i didn't think we should have told her so early and i NEVER asked her to not tell anyone until after XW came up to me and bitterly congratulated me. it wasn't until then did i explain to her that yes we are expecting, but it is really early and we have only told our parents, and we didn't plan on announcing yet. I would not and never have asked her to keep anything from her mother.
I am aware that yes, we told her and now we have to deal with it. my husband was very excited and wanted to tell her seeing as she has been asking about a sibling. she is an only child on both sides and this is my first, so needless to say we are all very excited
You are missing the point though. Your SD was not asked to lie - even a lie by omission - by one parent.
Once the cat was out of the bag, whether it was approved by the Stepmother or not, it is now up to the Stepmother to now tell her stepchild whether to talk about it or not.
That is a SURE FIRE WAY of creating some dissension between the two. JUST LIKE your SD feels with her BM. The stepchild is being made to feel like she is not really part of the family.
Now, if the OPs BM is a witch, then so be it. But at least the OP is not the one being the witch.
Yeah, I understand where you're coming from. I didn't want to tell the SKs I was pregnant until I was sure the pregnancy was going to work out so we didn't tell them until I was almost 6 months pregnant. Lol!!
My husband and I have had talks with them about this and they're really good about it now. They're old enough now to understand that what happens in our house is none of their mother's business. We don't ask what happens when they're with their mom. Their mother used to give them the third degree about everything and now they know to answer, "if you want to know, call and ask dad."
first off its a little rude to insinuate that i am being a witch. secondly my SD and I are VERY close, I've been with her since she was 4 and her mother recently gave up custody to only have her every other weekend, seeing as she cannot provide. my DH works evenings and overnight so she and I are always together. as i said she was NEVER asked to lie nor keep the news from anyone and I wouldn't want her to. so i do take responsibility for that. my question originally was whether or not it was wrong of me to ask her to not tell anyone and if I was being too hard on DH for not wanting to keep hearing comparisons to XW pregnancy.
I don't think anything Illumine said was meant to attack you. All of her points are valid and true. She was just laying them out there very bluntly.
I agree with everything Illumine said in her first reply about SD.
As to your questions now that you have clarified them... I would honestly not expect SD to keep this a secret at any age. I think asking her to keep it a secret will only squash her excitement, and start planting a seed to create problems that you are already going to deal with at some level anyway, sibling rivalry, jealousy, etc. Now that she has been told, YOU don't have to tell anyone else, but be prepared for her to tell her teacher, friends, family, etc.
And as for yH, just tell him exactly how you feel. Tell him you appreciate his advice, but it does kind of hurt your feelings when he reminds you that this is experience is not a new journey for both of you. It always made me feel so intimidated whenenver DH brought up SD's birth and first days home while I was pregnant. I really appreciated his experience once DS finally came home, but during pregnancy, it just made me cry. Did not make me resentful of SD or anything, but it did hurt my feelings. Pregancy can make you so sensitive to the stupidest little things. Just tell him that while you appreciate his experience, you would rather not have his XW in your daily life.
Good luck and congratulations.