AITA for not wanting to tell my mother about my pregnancy?
Hi Charlotte and all the glorious sassy potatoes here. I’m a long-time follower and thought I’d post as I am needing some advice. I apologize now as this is a long one due to back story.
On NYE 2025 heading into 2026 my fiancé(M29) and I(F36) found out we were pregnant with our first, we are very excited (due mid September). To say the least the first trimester was a tad bit of a roller coaster, I was pretty sick throughout. Come week 15 and I finally started feeling myself, woohoo! I work very casually and was planning on jumping back into more work this year, however this very much halted that. Luckily my fiancé has a great stable job.
We are very private people, and I am very adamant on keeping my peace throughout this journey. We told his family and some very close friends in February. However, I have not told ANY of my family.
I grew up without a father, just a mother (21 when she had me), I was an accident and also felt like one, she also never had any more children. I didn’t have the best relationship with my mother, and this has consistently deteriorated as time goes on. I strongly stand by the fact my Gran raised me. I also wonder if my gran is the only reason I'm here, as it's pretty clear that my mum wasn't meant to be a mum. Now we weren’t a conventional family growing up so our household consisted of my Gran and her 3 children: my uncle, aunt and my mother being her youngest. My mother worked during my entire childhood through till about my early teens. Late primary school my mother met her partner and shortly after my gran kicked my mother and I out as she was spending all her time with him and none with me, gran thought this would fix this, spoiler alert it didn’t. During this time, I rebelled a lot and developed a not-so-great coping mechanism. My mother and her partner would travel up and down the coast a bit in either a bus or caravan whatever they had at the time, but they would always leave me behind even when I’d say I wanted to go with them. My mother and I would fight quiet a lot, and she said some things that in all honestly, I can’t forget and sometimes also relating to my coping mechanism. I ended up running away from home and living back with my Gran. After this they officially left to go out west. Safe to say we didn’t communicate much during this. I officially left home/my grans at 18.
Once I hit my late teens to 20s it came very apparent my mother kind of just used me for things when she needed. To say it nicely the first ever holiday I had with my mum was in my early 20s when we travelled to spread her late partners ashes… since his passing she got worse in general and moved back to my grans. I believe she needed therapy but that never happened. Once my mother’s best friend had kids, she would constantly be involved with them and doing things for them especially once her best friend and her husband divorced. She has a habit of making everyone else’s problems hers and injecting herself into things she doesn’t need to be involved in. She also over shares things that isn’t hers to share. Safe to say that besides the fact that she is my mother she is not the type of person I wish to associate with. My gran sees this, but I do keep the peace with my mother for my gran’s sake.
I moved from my hometown roughly 7 years ago now and met my amazing fiancé. He is the most supportive and beautiful person. Last year my gran and mum came for a visit and stayed with us. During the visit my mother stayed with us exclusively, but my gran did go see other family. During that time my mother managed to piss both myself and fiancé off in our own home. She was super lazy the whole time, when I took her out, she embarrassed me, my fiancés brother came over briefly and she just sat on the couch and barely acknowledged him (this was the first time meeting him), honestly the list goes on. She also has a habit of calling me angel, baby, child etc. like wtf? I am a 36-yr old woman. I feel like she is now trying to be a parent but as far as I am concerned, she is at least 20 yrs too late. She also makes comments like how are my puppies (we have 2 dogs a 16yr old and a 1 yr old). Girl they aren’t yours, only ever enforced bad habits and used to over feed the 16-yr old when we lived in the same town. She can very much be a Karen, seem overly entitled and has a bit of a victim mentality.
I suppose what I’m thinking is at the end of the day she was just never a mother to me and I really don’t want to deal with her bullshit during my pregnancy, nor have her inserting herself into it or telling people that really don’t need to know. I can just see her being too much and overstepping boundaries. The only thing is because my mother lives with my gran, it also means that if I tell my gran my mother will find out and it really hurts me because my gran means so much to me. I honestly don’t really know how to feel as this will also be my grans first and only great grandchild. Part of me just wants to be like, surprise look what we made, after baby girl arrives. Has anyone else been in a similar situation, any advice would be appreciated. AITA?