Poor, pitiful, fragile me

To set this up, I need to say that while I feel that I am close to my mother and my sister, we do not talk as often as we should.  My sister works a crazy job with odd hours and she's seriously dating someone, so it's hard to get a hold of her sometimes.  My mom also works full time and has a boyfriend so she's tough to get a hold of too, although as a rule she and I don't normally talk more than once a week, we sometimes go two weeks without talking on the phone.  My mom checks my blog a lot so she keeps up with me that way and she's never really been the one to reach out and call ... I usually try to do that at least once a week.

ANYWAY, I was catching up with my sister a bit this morning and she told me straight out that my cousin is pregnant.  To me in my situation that's no big surprise because EVERYONE is turning up pregnant since I had my miscarriage ... Murphy's law, right?  Ha ha.  I'm at the point now where I'm ok with others getting pregnant 98% of the time, and the 2% of the time when I'm pissed off at the world tends to *coincidentally* happen when I'm: a) on a PMS rager; or b) so tired that even eating seems like too much work (for me that's pretty much blasphemy because when I don't eat, someone dies).  I'm intentionally pursuing healing in many ways.  This blog is one of them.  I have also been making an effort to share what has happened to me with more people.  Don't worry I don't go up to random strangers on the street and announce, "I had a miscarriage!! What do you think about that??"  When the opportunity has presented itself naturally, I have made the choice to share it with people.  I have been so surprised to hear many immediately share that they have also experienced miscarriage, whether themselves or their spouse or someone very close to them.  It has been very healing.

But I digress.  My sister went on to share that my cousin (whose family we grew up with and are very close to) and my mother had TALKED together about my miscarriage and had decided TOGETHER not to tell me about her impending pregnancy because it "might upset me."  My sister felt that I should know before I show up at home for Thanksgiving dinner and OOPS! there's my cousin sitting there visibly pregnant.  I AGREE, information that is VERY useful.  What irritates me the most is that my mother felt that she had the right to share with my cousin WITHOUT TELLING ME that I had a miscarriage.  When it happened, John and I decided that we were not going to announce it to the world.  We told the people who knew that I was pregnant -- a very small immediate family and close friend group -- and we asked them to keep it to themselves.  Of course, my sister and my mother immediately BROKE my trust and told their boyfriends.  I'm pretty sure my mother has also told most of her close friends.  I have tried to be understanding that other people have felt a loss because they were expectant grandparents and aunts and uncles but DAMMIT.  This probably also means that my aunt and uncle and my other cousin know, and who knows, probably their spouses too.  The holidays are already stressful dramatic interesting with my family so now it'll be just plain awkward. GREAT.

First of all, it's my news.  If I want to widen the scope of people who know, then I should make that choice.  I should have at least been informed about who knows because when I see my mother's friends and my relatives I just assume that they don't know because: #1, I haven't told them and #2, no one else has told me that they know.

Second of all, am I not an adult?  Good grief I'm nearly 30 years old.  I realize that my miscarriage does not stop the world from turning and other people in my vicinity from getting knocked up.  Give me a break!  My SIL and my best friend were BOTH knocked up within weeks of my miscarriage.  If I can't handle other people's pregnancies by now, I probably need COUNSELING and DRUGS in LARGE DOSES.

After a long morning of THINKING I've narrowed it down:  Because I trusted my mother and I opened up to her about how hard it was for me MONTHS AGO when everyone was getting pregnant and that I was wondering if it would ever be me, I'm now being BITTEN ON THE ASS.  I'm not blaming myself, don't worry.  My mother and I have had an impossible rocky interesting relationship since I was a kid.  We don't communicate all that well.  I understand that her intentions were to try and protect me from getting hurt even more.  But I'm not twelve years old.  I deserve enough respect to be informed of when my business is getting blabbed to everyone she knows (even if she can't respect me enough to maintain confidentiality).  I also reserve the right to know the truth and to get upset about it if it upsets me.  There is not a dang thing wrong with that.

So I called my mother and left her a message and I'm hoping she calls me back during her lunch break so we can hug it out.  I've decided already to take the high road and explain to her very nicely that it is ok and necessary for her to communicate with me.  Because if she doesn't I WILL POISON THE TURKEY AND TAKE CARE OF THIS WHOLE THING RIGHT NOW.

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To end on a happy note, my sister-in-law's baby is MOST CERTAINLY a boy, as I predicted.  There's nothing I love more than BEING RIGHT.  Yay!

Comments

[rachel]

I hope your Thanksgiving goes well and you are able to make up with your mom.

More people know about my miscarriage than I originally intended. It has turned out to be very freeing for me. At first I wanted no one to know, now almost 9 months later, I don't really care who knows.

[KATHY V]

Hey Manda,
I know exactly what you mean. Part of the reason I had to untell so many people I was pregnant is because my mom told everyone she could think of even though we were only telling family. About the miscarriage, it is your business to share and tell as you desire. I have found that the more people I told the better I felt but I felt it was a betrayal of trust when everybody else was talking about it around me and I wasn't included in the circle. Plus my sister was already pregnant (had baby in July) so I got all the ignorant people asking me when I was going to start reproducing children. I eventually told people to start telling me things about everybody turning up pregnant or whatever because even though it hurt my feelings I didn't want to be lied to. I would have felt more hurt if all of a sudden I get notice that so and so had a baby and I was not included in the shower and pregnancy news because then I feel like you are lying to me. It has taken me a while but I have just realized that other people can be insensitive but we have to tell them when to tell us stuff and when to keep their mouths shut because they don't know what is happening inside our heads. Good luck with everything. It will get easier. I promise.
Kathy V

[K]

I'm sorry your mom is tiptoeing around you -- that is really frustrating, even if she means well.

I live in the alternate reality in which no one in my family knows, so no one can tell anyone else and no one can act in a way that might spare my feelings. I feared being where you are, as my mother most definitely would have told everyone she has ever known and would have banned everyone alive from talking about successful pregnancies around me while encouraging them to tell me their sad tales of loss. That said, I'm not a huge fan of where I am either, as I am regularly bombarded with the "exciting news" regarding the pregnancies of my cousins, including when they started showing, what the doctor thinks about when the baby will come, what the sex is, what the name is, how excited my aunts and uncles are to be grandparents, etc. Eventually, we'll probably tell her, if for no other reason than to make her feel bad for never considering that not everyone decides to have a baby and then has one nine months later.