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3rd Trimester
I'm ready to strangle my mother! (kinda long)
Okay, so long story short...my mom abandoned me when I was little, bounced in and out of my life whenever she felt like it until I was a teenager at which point she decided she really did want to be my mother and started trying to make up for lost time. (holy run-on sentence)
Fast forward to now...I don't really speak to my mother due to the aformentioned reasons (among others) so I haven't really spoken to her since I found out I was pregnant. She had been calling every.day. and I basically told her that I didn't need her trying to be mother of the year now that there was a grandchild in the mix. I'm fine with the way things are because she made her bed so to speak. Well...evidently she has been calling my cousin (who is mildly MR and doesn't really understand why we don't speak) and getting all the details about my pregnancy from her!! I tried to politely tell said cousin to please not inform my mother of anything related to my pregnancy which only upset my cousin to the point of near tears, so I just let it go. So now I've had to tell my aunt "Please help Sarah remember to not give details of my pregnancy to my mother." What a mess!! And all because my mother wants to try and make up for lost time and be mother/grandmother of the year when it's not possible. Thank God she lives an hour away and has no means of transportation or this would be a lot uglier.
Am I the only one in the world who has a certifiably insane mother?
I prayed for this child, and the LORD has granted me what I asked of him. 1Samuel 1:27
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Re: I'm ready to strangle my mother! (kinda long)
My story is similar. I was put up for adoption (she was a drug addict). I searched her & my birth father out @ 18. Once I realized she had not changed, and never would I ceased contact with her. I did, however; develop an amazing relationship with my grandfather (her dad) and my aunt (her sis). Most of the family has no contact with her, but she still calls my grandfather for $$$, cars, insurance, rent, etc...
He has been telling her about the pregnancy & he wants me to call her. (I ignore her calls). I have no desire to have her be any part of my life. I have 5 wonderful children who only know her name. She will never change, so why should I bother trying to talk to her???
DH doesnt talk to his birth mom either and she has been prying around for info about our baby
. It sucks that you have to deal with that but I sooooo feel your pain.
My re-occuring pregnancy nightmare has been psyco mil showing up after LO is here while DH is at work or something. Im so terrified about it that I absolutly refuse to open the door unless I am expecting someone.
My mom is pretty nuts too.
I've started to vent about her once or twice on here but I just didn't even know where to start. All the bad history aside, my mom is also trying to hijack my pregnancy. She wants it be such a great bonding experience for us and thought that my being pregnant would tie me to her in some way. Um no way. Now that I have mother-feelings I would not put my kids through what she put me through and it only makes me more upset that she thinks that we can have this all in common.
I totally understand your "please keep mom OUT of the loop" conversation--when I first married, I had to warn DH that any time my mom would speak to him alone she'd try and weasle personal things out that she could use as emotional leverage to get in on my personal life. Sure enough....Fortunately, that stopped pretty quick because she's found out he's a brick wall.
So here's another question for you gals. Do you worry that your child will feel about you the way you feel about your mother? I know I'm going to be 100% better as a mother than she was, but I still have this deep fear that DD will hate me in the end.
DH says that's crazy talk and reminds me of the reasons why I hate my mother, but still. I guess it's just paranoia.
Your LO will think she hates you some days as a teenager! I have an awesome mom, and I still had some rough times during those years.
Honestly, learn from your mom's mistakes. Find other ladies who you can look up to as mothers. Your LO will love you. Most the people I know who have crappy relationships with their mothers have a VERY good reason.
im kinda in the same boat. my mom left my dad when i was 3. my dad had no clue how to care for a 3 y/o, and i really dont know how i made it. he still to this day is what i consider a child. she did the bouncing and then when i got kicked out of my sophmore year in high school thats when i became important.
i joined the service and moved to FL. she did not get here until 2 weeks after my DD was born. now that im getting married in january, thats all she worries about. she totally avoids the fact that i am pregnant. she has taken on the responsibility of planning some of the wedding. i make all the final decisions, but we are having the wedding in my home town and i am not there. all she does is ask me questions about the wedding, never about how i feel or when is your next doctors appointment. she is making me sick. im about ready to tell her no more wedding talk until my DF gets back from deployment. its not like the wedding is next month. i think she should give me some time to consitrate on having a baby.
No. I won't be physically or emotionally abusive, and I couldn't be as self-centered as she is if I tried.
My mother won't even admit to things she did in the past - so when I inform her that I don't require her babysitting services, she will sound shocked, and say, "You know I'm a good mother, look how good you turned out!" Sure, I'm fine... thanks to living with my grandmother till she died. After that things were harder since it was my mother, but at least I only had six years of that before I moved out on my own. My poor half-brothers though, on the other hand... she made them so dependent on her they won't leave her house till she keels over, because she doesn't want to lose them since I "abandoned" her.
Im sure there will be times that LO will hate both DH and I, probably during the teen years, but that is normal. The hate and disgust that DH has for his birthmom was from years of her treating him like trash, making a slave out of him, and exposing him to things that NO CHILD should ever be exposed to. As a grown man, the only time Ive ever seen him really cry is when he was thinking about the way that his mom used to treat him. That is different and I know for a fact that my child will never ever have to feel like that.
I haven't been through half the crap you ladies have been with, but in the end my mother and I just don't click because I am not the daughter she wanted and she still hopes that one day I will turn out to be. We haven't gotten along for as long as I can remember, and while there aren't as many all out screaming matches there are many a conversation that I just choose to end in order to avoid the fight.
I fear the same thing though. I know my mom didn't get along with my grandmother and it's because she tried to control her. It's exactly what my mom did to me, (even said that my wedding day was about her and I, umm, where does DH factor in then?). I don't want to continue the cycle. I don't want my DD to know all of the details of my relationship with my mom, and I don't want her bad influence around DD.
I've told my DH that I worry about a lot of these things, and he tells me that I don't have to worry about it, because I'm not her, and that I won't be like her because I won't do all the things that she did to me, to our DD, but I still worry.
I plan on telling my mom when she comes to visit after DD is here (5 days, shoot me now), as soon as she starts something, or makes one of her famous comments, that this ends now. She can say those things to me on the phone if she wants to, but while she is in my house in front of my children that those comments aren't welcome, and I will not have her negative attitude around my children.
I just want the cycle to end. I just hope she doesn't take advantage of that, which I also fear she will.
I'm paranoid too. Even more than the fear, is this a sense of loss because I think that it would be so wonderful to have a mother who I could have a good relationship with and share this experience in a normal, healthy way. Some of my friends moms have said the most helpful, inspiring things to me about motherhood and all I can think is wouldn't it be great if I had a mother that could help give me strength instead of taking away whatever emotional stamina I've managed to produce that day.
My relationship with my mother sounds very similar to yours. She was in and out of my life until I was around 20, and then she decided she was ready to become a parent. By then, I no longer needed her or wanted her in my life. Of course, now she is desperately trying to get back into my life and has decided that this pregnancy is her ticket back in. She calls constantly and buys the baby stuff. She still can't understand why we aren't close, and it is extremely frustrating. Plus, this pregnancy has caused all my old memories of her to resurface and make me more angry. Ugh!!!
I don't worry too much about my daughter hating me because I know I would NEVER do what my mom did to me to my child.
My worry is that I won't be a good mother because I never had a mother figure.
Never. Mine are 17, 13, 11 and 10. They will tell you I can be SO MEAN, but I love them, and they have always come first in my life.
Ugh, isn't THAT the truth. I think my MIL tries, but it would be nice coming from someone I've known forever.
I'm having this issue as well. It's very frustrating because I had thought that I could let all those things go. But now when I think of how much I already love DD, I wonder why my mother didn't love me enough to take care of me. I also feel a sense of loss because this is a time when I should be growing closer to my mother and instead she's a moron! Thank God I had a wonderful Grandma and still have wonderful aunts who have been helping me. I wouldn't have made it without them.