AITA For Restricting My Parents Access To My Kids After They Received IVF Knowing How I Felt About It
So this actually happened a couple of years ago but I’m finally ready to share and it’s WILD
I 30F have 2 children (F&M) with my husband (30M), both under 5 at the time this happened. Specifically our youngest was under 1, I was in the final year of my degree - which may I add I smashed through despite young children, pregnancy and birth - and it was the year I was graduating, an immensely proud moment for me. My kids had a good relationship with my parents, they had them regularly, we had some teething issues with my son because there was some overt favouritism to our eldest that we addressed, this is an important factor to this story.
Another important fact to note, before I was pregnant with our youngest my folks had told us they were getting IVF but they’d failed some necessary tests, not getting into that but they were refused it in the country we live in as a result by the clinic, at the point this happened THEY WERE TOO OLD TO GET IT DONE HERE! Now I already have a sister who’s a couple years younger than me so it’s not like they didn’t already have kids and when they told me I was understandably furious about the whole thing mainly because what are their plans when they are inevitably too old to look after a child (one over 60, the other late 50s) but it all went quiet and my husband, sister and I naively believed it was all put to rest. We were so so wrong.
Their treatment of me during my second pregnancy was honestly awful, I was told to lift my shirt when I was around 10 weeks along after a colleague commented I looked like I had a small cute bump showing and their response was to have me turn around and say “well I see no difference” and dismiss me from the room. We’d gone away with them when I was past halfway and I was napping while hubby and eldest were out playing and was woken up to being screamed at, told to “fuck off” and called a whole host of names I won’t put here. The reason? Hubby had taken eldest swimming in the pool and they wanted to be there to see the first time 🙃 this was the THIRD pool of this holiday (we moved around to a few places) and they’d been out for 4 hours when they’d said 1, try keeping a toddler cooped up that long when they don’t need to be. These are just some of the worst examples.
Two weeks before my graduation, I had the tickets for my parents, sister and husband, childcare sorted etc. My husband is working and my folks ask to meet, nothing abnormal there. We go to a cafe, I’m there with the kids and they drop the bombshell “WE’RE PREGNANT”…tumble weeds. My shocked butt is just like “congrats I guess how far along?” 14 weeks - 14 WEEKS 🙃 fury was building, and I’m flabbergasted, they had travelled to a Baltic state to get it done, I thought they’d just gone on holiday, I quickly run to call hubby who thinks I’m having him on before he realised I was crying.
I somehow leave with the kids and they think all is okay, I kind of blasted them on our group chat and they call to ask to have a conversation. Hubby comes as mediator though he is just as angry and upset over the whole thing, however, much better at keeping a level head. There’s a lot that happens in this conversation but the second I say I am disgusted by what they’ve done, mainly because I could not fathom doing it to my own children, mother runs away and proceeds to call my sister. Nothing is resolved because how can it be? But that pone call she made accused me of causing her so much stress she’d have a miscarriage 🙃 purely because I thought what they’d done was disgusting and selfish now my reasons for this:
- They believe they’ll be fine and won’t ever need anyone to take the child so therefore have no plans in place for this. It’s something even my husband and I have in place but it’s obviously more likely for them.
- They wanted to lie to my kids about the relation and say the baby was a cousin, absolutely not. Zero consideration on long term impact for them with that narrative.
- There was zero consideration on the impact of our (hubby, sister and mine) decisions going forward because even if they were naive enough to believe everything would be fine we were realistic.
- No consideration for the child who may have to watch their parents die at a young age or the medical issues that may arise from their ages.
Safe to say it completely ruined my graduation experience, I nearly revoked their tickets but decided not to, however, she just complained about how hard pregnancy was, ya don’t say. The timing of them telling us felt very significant because they knew how I felt and they still went ahead and told me before I graduated, something I had worked incredibly hard for and made about them it completely dampened the day for me, my sister being who she is did her best as did hubby but I struggled to enjoy it as much as I should have. We left with minimal celebration.
We minimised contact with our children because we honestly no longer trusted their decision making and we no longer felt comfortable letting them have them without supervision, we didn’t know how to address this with the kids and we needed to decide how to manage that without them running their own narrative behind our backs.
Unfortunately baby’s birth was incredibly complicated, mum had to remain under 24/hr monitoring for a week after, baby needed surgery asap to build something that hadn’t formed and will need ongoing surgeries for the rest of his life to manage it. I hold no resentment for the baby, I live him like my own not as a brother, I no longer see my parents as parents, though I’m not sure what now. I get calls asking for advice which is ridiculous really.
On a more positive note they really understand boundaries now, they’ve earned back access to the kids because I don’t want to take away from my children unnecessarily and the initial concerns about narrative are gone now. I can’t really fault them as grandparents, as parent yes, but grandparents not really. My relationship with them will never be the same and quite frankly I don’t want it to because they’ve destroyed trust in a way I never believed possible. Honestly hubby and myself have felt for a while they’re constantly competing with us, which is so stupid, but any win typically gets “well we’ve done this blah blah blah”.
So yes this is my ridiculous story, my best friend makes the joke that my life is a soap opera that she would honestly watch on TV with how ridiculously dramatic it is. For those reading, don’t be them, you’ll wreck the relationships with your current children, we are too forgiving I think because many I know say they would have gone scorched earth, I’d be interested in your thoughts about this and what you would have done!
I think I need to add some clarifying points after confusion in the comments:
- They were always allowed access whenever they wished but after pushing for a false narrative and the previous point about one of my kids being favoured over another they weren’t trusted to be around them alone until these were addressed, I won’t allow anyone I don’t trust around our kids. With standing respect for our boundaries, their treatment of me and my son improving has allowed them their access back.
- The health conditions he has were as a result of the age of my mother this was an area of tension before he was born because I knew it was likely but they refused to accept it, they also have continued to refuse that’s why when we were told by medical professionals.
- Although their “we wouldn’t expect that from you” sounds lovely, the reality is our family is incredibly small. No one else could take him, the other alternative is care which they knew we’d never let happen. So although they said that the reality is they knew it would fall on us, they didn’t care about our lives in this. Our decisions since have had to always take this into account.
- I stated about the way they’ve treated me so that you understand what his life will likely look like, we’ve remained very prominent in his life so that he will always have a safe place to land.
- My concerns about the future are incredibly valid and this is something I should have mentioned but no woman on my mothers side has lived past mid 60s due to a hereditary condition, my concerns about his life and whether they will be around are valid and based in fact.
- They have the belief they’ll never die, they’ll never get sick, despite the fact they’ve had multiple scares since and haven’t put anything in place for him. The competing part comes from them knowing we were buying a house, they chose to buy one that was bigger and needed significant work because “well you are” they’ll be mortgaged till they’re nearly 80. The house didn’t have a functioning bathroom or kitchen, the bathroom was finished about a month ago, the kitchen hasn’t had any work done yet but somewhat functions with a microwave and a sink with an air fryer too. They haven’t ever really been happy with us having kids because it ruined “their plans” with having him which is another difficult thing to deal with when you’re in that position for us. We were expected to put our lives on hold.
I realise now I should have added these clarifying points before it occurred to me after some confusion.