u/kokomo318

My husband and I are looking at options for when we go back to work. We're in the US so I get my unpaid 12 weeks off (or some pay with potential short term disability) and he gets 4 weeks paid. We were thinking of him going back to work right away and I tough it out by myself for those 12 weeks, then he takes his 4 weeks when I go back. Although we would nix this plan if I end up needing a c-section.

After that we have his parents but I have a strained relationship with them. We also have two dogs and they're secretly afraid of dogs. They don't know how to tell a dog no, out of fear of retaliation, although our dogs have never given them a reason to be fearful. I just have a hard time trusting them with two dogs and an infant at the same time - I think someone would end up neglected. Or god forbid they misread the dogs' body language and something happens with the baby. (My mom is dead and my dad lives in an rv which doesn't support a car seat, so no help there)

There's a daycare in our area that we'd get priority enrollment at. It's $36,900/year for infants and toddlers and the baby would be 8 months at the time of enrollment.

We've also considered looking in the area for a responsible college student or recent college grad who could nanny but we worked out that cost to be roughly $42,000/year if we paid lower on the scale at $18/hour. I'd feel a little guilty not being able to offer the more generous $25/hour like a lot of families do.

Does anyone have any advice? Are nannies more beneficial than daycare? Is it worth biting the bullet with my in laws?

We're visiting between July 5th-July 10th. My husband will be working some days so if anyone has any safe solo excursions/activities for me to try out, I'd love to hear them! I'm pregnant so wine tastings are off the table haha

I'm fine without museums and sight seeing. We've been once before (to Siena, Rome, Florence) and did a lot of sight seeing, so I think I just want to sit back and absorb the culture for this trip. Also being pregnant in the July heat, I'm ok with sitting out from walking around all day.

Also this might be a shot in the dark but does anyone know any gluten-free friendly spots in Siena and/or Tuscany? My husband has an allergy and it'd be great to know ahead of time.

Do people still send out mailed birth announcements? I know social media is common for this but I do feel like a mailed card might be a little more special.

But is that a little ego centric? I mean babies are born every day and obviously our immediate families will know almost immediately. I could see some people raising an eyebrow at anything beyond a group text or a facebook post.

Is a card too bougie?

Apologies in advance for the length. I don't even know how to approach a TLDR here.

A little background: My dad (68) and I (30F) have a difficult relationship. We've both been through a lot of shit (generational trauma) however I've been in therapy for years and have accomplished a lot of growth. He only started in his 60s and hasn't attended consistently. His apologies always come in the form of "I'm sorry for what I said when I was triggered", and never "I'm sorry for what I said" - He never takes accountability. He always assumes the worst of my intentions whenever I ask him any question at all or come across even mildly confrontational. We've been no contact several times over the years and it always breaks by my initiation in hopes of a better relationship. He and I did family therapy for a few months but we ended it because he stormed out of a call and told me he didn't want to do it anymore.

Anyway: Here's the situation at hand. My two sisters (we'll call C[34] and B[32]), my husband (30), and I are traveling south on a 9 hour trip to visit family. We will be leaving on a Wednesday and returning around 2am on Saturday. My husband and I were going to drive all four of us.

My dad is not coming with us (he has beef with this family we're seeing) and he told me he could watch my two dogs and my cat for those days. He committed to this last month.

B works in the service industry. B doesn't have her license. She's recently back from rehab and is anxious about her standing at work, although they've assured her several times she's got her job and everything is fine (they know her situation). She didn't put PTO in on time (she's known about this trip since January) and was struggling to find coverage for her Wednesday shift. She didn't want to miss her Wednesday shift because she didn't want her coworkers to "be mad at her", so she told us out of the blue that our dad offered to drive her down on Thursday (a day he committed to pet sitting).

I reached out to my dad and asked him if he's still available to sit that Wednesday-Friday evening. He said "Yes!", I responded with, quote: "B is saying you're driving her down Thursday. Is that happening?" (Mind you, even if he went straight there and back with 0 stops and 0 traffic, that's 18 hours my pets would be alone).

He responded with: "No, B hasn't made up her mind. I made that offer so that she would feel more comfortable asking off from work, but I also encouraged her to go with you guys for the full trip. Whatever plan develops, [the dogs] will have a caretaker. My plan is that will be me. Please try to be more open when we talk about these things - it's difficult when I'm made to feel a little like I walked into a trap. If you have any concerns about plans I'm trying to make, just let me know and be prepared to talk it through with the intention of cooperating for the best outcome for all. I made the offer to B in order to make it easier for her to see that traveling with you and C could be healthy for all of you, socially now that she's sober. I'm pretty sure it's unlikely that B will accept my offer, but if she does, that's when the cooperation becomes important."

Meanwhile, B's text to our group chat said: "Dad is going to take me down on Thursday. Does that work for everyone?" So to me, it sounded like she'd accepted this offer and now I don't have a sitter. - Communication before making this bluff offer would have been appreciated because now the only person who's screwed is me.

I have no other sitters I can call on to take his place, nor is it in my budget to pay for a service. The only person I had available was my sister in law who knows nothing about dogs and my dogs are very quirky and need close attention to avoid resource guarding hostility. The last time she watched them she was out with her friends for 80% of the weekend, leaving my dogs in their crates the whole time. After another fluke with her sitting that forced us to cancel our plans, I banned her from watching them.

I let him know that if he is driving B on Thursday then my husband and I will have to cancel our attendance and stay home from the trip. I told him I would be disappointed but I wouldn't have another choice. He told me I was getting ahead of myself. I just politely asked him to let me know as soon as possible what B's official choice was so that I could plan accordingly. He told me I was close minded and acting over the top.

C called him trying to fix the situation which was a huge mistake. He immediately got defensive and they got in an argument. C texted me apologizing in advance for making things worse.

This was my dad's text to C and me:

"You both initiated communication with me today about the trip. That gives me permission to do my best to mediate. When you both clearly state B's importance is somehow lesser than yours, that's wrong. You both are using your reaction to argue with me. That's not fair to me.
You are both jumping to conclusions terribly and not giving me any support, and I can't mediate this while there is so much unwillingness to compromise. OP, [dogs] will be fine no matter what, if you can't believe that, I was never a good choice to care for them. C, I don't know what to say to you, as in, I really just don't know what words to use at this point.
You're both insinuating that somehow I'm putting B ahead of you is wrong and very hurtful.
I hope you can work this out somehow, hoping you can do your best to be considerate of each other."

(Btw he never even told me any backup plan at all he would've had for my pets. He just kept telling me not to worry about it. My husband's theory was that he was going to pack my dogs in his car with him and bring them along for the 18+ hour drive. However this wouldn't even work because we have a cat too.)

My problem with this situation is not that he went back on pet sitting and put me in a difficult spot, my problem is that there was no communication about this before he made this offer to B, this gamble of an offer had no potential loser other than me, he immediately assumed my initial text was hostile and argumentative, he accused me of "clearly stating" B is less important than me (I never said this or remotely hinted at it), and he's taken no ownership of the situation he created. He claimed he was mediating but offered no solution and told C and me to work it out.

My husband suggested leaving at 5am Thursday morning and take B ourselves to just get everyone to stop fighting. When I offered this to B she said she'd found Wednesday coverage. So all of that for nothing. (But now she "just needed to find Friday coverage")

However at this point, my dad had already made hurtful accusations and he's done things like this multiple times in the past. I told him B is coming with us on Wednesday but that my sister in law will watch the dogs instead of him - Due to his hurtful words and accusations, I want no communication with him. (We made very clear to SIL that the dogs have to be out of their crates for at least 16 hours of the day and she assured us she will do so. But I'm very nervous.)

I consider my dad to be someone "in and out" of my life because of our dysfunction. I'm currently pregnant and I told him unless he can work out how to be more honest and take accountability for his hurtful actions, that he won't be allowed to be in my child's life. An inconsistent family member is not a healthy one for a child. And that unless he can find a way to meaningfully apologize, I won't be giving him another chance.

This situation was sort of my last straw. He also told his friends about my pregnancy when I'd specifically asked him not to yet, he angrily trespassed on my property resulting in me having to call the police (and then left as soon as I hung up so I completely wasted the cops' time), he's constantly making these little plans behind everyone's back and insisting everyone fall in line, and he put me through hell as a child via domestic violence with my mom/screaming/slamming doors/etc. and I haven't seen any improvement (besides maybe the domestic violence, because my mom is dead and he's single, so who knows) - I don't trust him to be a safe person around my kid.

*Exhale* AIO?

Some background of my situation: My grandma lives about 45 minutes away and I barely speak to her. It's a long story but she really fucked me up when my mom was in hospice, when I was 15. She's incredibly self centered and an alcoholic. I keep in touch through the use of a text at Christmas, sometimes mother's day. If I don't reach out to her, she never reaches out to me. I invited her to my wedding and she didn't come and she didn't send any gift (which is fine, obviously not required) or even a card. I got a heart emoji on the day of, that's it. It would've been nice to at least receive a card, even if she didn't sign it.

I really don't want to tell her I'm pregnant. But she would inevitably find out through facebook and I don't want to deal with the narcissistic wrath that would ensue if I didn't tell her directly. Do I suck it up and tell her? She doesn't have any other great grandchildren. I just want to do what's morally right.

Sorry for the trauma dump.

Edit to add: Plus, selfishly, she's led on that she has a decent amount of savings. I think if I keep it a secret from her she'll write me out of the will. And in terms of saving for our baby's college expenses, I don't know if we could afford to lose that support. I feel shallow saying that but it's just the unfortunate reality in the US that you have to start saving as much and as soon as possible.

Don't get me wrong, I love names like Fern, Willow, Forrest, etc. but the first half of our last name is the name of a common plant and the other half is "Man" (think [Plant]man). I don't want my kids to get bullied, although I know those names would be cool as hell when they grow up and they have the self confidence that comes with a fully developed brain.

But what are some names that aren't too naturey/won't sound too "crunchy"? Bonus points if they don't end in -y or -ie

I'm definitely on the hunt for girl names because we think we've settled on a boy name, but I'm open to hearing boy names too! We tend to lean towards vintage names.