u/qweenofsus

This is a doozy.

Medium background: I have always been the center of my dad’s world. In a way that’s normal because of course your kid is the center of your world to an extent. But it’s something that had in the past even affected the relationship of my father and mother. For context my mom is not my bio mom. My dad is my bio dad. My mom adopted me when I was 2 when she married my dad.

This would present as him not encouraging my independence (never encouraged me to get a job or taught me skills to be independent- basically said I can live at home until whenever and saw me living at home well into my 20s), him confiding in me but not in my mother about personal struggles, and him talking crap about my mom to me and complaining about personal relationship things to me for years. My mom started doing the same thing as well. All this affected their relationship quite badly obviously when your parent comes to You for marital advice or is constantly complaining about your other parent. I remember I use it to wish that they would get divorced when I was in high school and I never got along so well with my mom when I was younger and I think this was a big contributing factor. But my dad and I used to be super super close like best friends in a way. When I visit, he always jokes about my flight getting cancelled and me staying forever. Etc. And when they visits me his relationship with my Mom changes and all of a sudden he’s really cold to her and obsessed with me. Since I moved out and changed countries, his relationship with my Mom has never been better. They were so so happy together and it’s been amazing watching them thrive in this really healthy relationship.

The brings me to now. It’s always been somewhat of a problem but managed by the fact that he was with my Mom and able to focus on her and their dog. Well, the dog died four years ago. It took him three years to move the dog food bowl out of the house. And that was with my Mom support. Flash forward to 5 days ago, my mom suddenly and unexpectedly died in a horrific car accident. My dad is completely and totally destroyed and distraught. He’s turning me into his coping mechanism and his main focus in the world. I know it’s early but at the same time I saw how he processed the dog- or did didn’t rather. I can 100% promise you he will still cry if you start talking about the dog.

So now he’s calling me every day for 40 minutes sobbing telling me he doesn’t know what to do and saying that I’m the only good thing in the whole world and that he’s gonna quit his job and quit everything he’s ever loved and just move out to be with me where he knows nobody.

And I’m about to have a baby in two months. They were supposed to come help me. But now my dad just wants to come and make my baby his entire focus in the world, (he has said this. He wants my baby to be his number one accomplishment which is just fucking weird) and is not OK with me.

I need my Dad to figure out how to cope by himself without using me and my child as a coping mechanism. And the thought that he’s gonna come here and treat me like a psychiatrist while I’m postpartum is giving me extreme extreme anxiety. Because he’s already doing this. He even said something crazy like maybe my baby is a reincarnation of my mom. And when I said absolutely not, he took it back. But I can’t emotionally cope with my dad quitting his entire life and having no hopes or aspirations for the future and moving out to my town and taking my life as if it’s his own and forcing me into this position of knowing that I am my father’s only joy. He has started to see a therapist but I just feel so stressed and emotionally responsible. I’m flying out to the memorial to where our family lives which is not where my dad lives. He wants me to fly out to where he lives for the other memorial and I said absolutely not. I can’t handle doing this in person right now with him and seeing where my mom died while I’m seven months pregnant.

It makes me feel extremely guilty and extremely scared and it makes me want to escape. All this and I’m trying to wrap my head around my mother’s tragic death and I feel like I can’t because anytime my dad calls me I have to support his emotions and I can’t express any of my own. And it doesn’t help to try to cope with the situation when your parent is saying some crazy shit to you and trying to make you into their coping mechanism.

How do I set boundaries without destroying him?

How can I protect myself?

What should he do?

**\*\*TL;DR: My dad has always been overly emotionally dependent on me, and my mom died suddenly 5 days ago. He’s devastated and now wants to make me his entire support system, quit his life, and move to my town to be near me and my baby, who is due in 2 months. I’m grieving too and terrified of becoming responsible for his happiness while postpartum. How do I set boundaries and get him to find support outside of me without making things worse?\*\***

\*If you read all that thank you. I’m used AI to make a small TLDR just so I don’t have to (pls don’t hate me for that)\*

I used to be super fit pre pregnancy - power yoga every day, 15k steps a day. Basically just SUPER in shape. Now I’m about 6 months pregnant and due to various circumstances (ivf, illness, ankle sprain, traveling, more illness, summer heat, traveling again, MORE ILLNESS) I went from daily yoga and walking to not doing yoga in almost 3 months and just tryyyying to get as many steps a day as possible.

Well i bought myself a new Lulu yoga mat which I was super excited about. My cats tore up my other one (ofc it still works but) and I thought a new mat would be exactly what I needed to get back into it. So cue yoga yesterday and today. It’s just so shocking and frustrating to start doing yoga again with this new body that’s also so out of shape. I feel like I’m not even the same person at all. I’m weak and so heavy and there’s extra fat of course at my hips and so I feel this pressure when going into lunges of my skin folding which I never had and I can’t go as deep. I’m not anywhere near as flexible etc. out of breath with a downward dog. Can’t do a side plank anymore. Got stuck at the floor with chaturanga and I couldn’t push myself back up and instead had to roll over like a whale to get up.

But of course I pressed on and then I suddenly got a Charlie horse in both sides of my hooha when standing up from a forward fold and immediately started sobbing. My husband is so supportive and was so sweet to me 🥹

I guess- how do I get back into shape?? Im not trying to lose weight or anything but I just want to be fit again for labour. I want some muscles back. I want to feel strong 💪. I’m actually ok with my body when I look in the mirror I feel beautiful and I have gained a lot of weight (like 14 kilos which is more than average 😵‍💫) but I’m ok with how I look. I JUST want to feel stronger again and I know I’m picking a hell of a time to do it but this is when I finally can. It’s just so much harder than when I first started 😢

Any tips or yoga vids etc are welcome. 🙏 I watch yoga with kassandra and I have a subscription to urban sports which lets me go to any class in my neighborhood (but I am LITERALLY SO OUT OF SHAPE rn I cannot keep up with a yoga class in person!!! 😭) help get me back into the yoga studio before I have the baby and cannot go for other reasons plssssss 🙏

Hi. I have a community tank with 4 red banded sumo loaches.

The problem is they’re fat. They steal all the food from everyone. It’s so hard to feed the tank without over feeding the loaches and feeding the rest of the fish enough. It’s starting to make my snail population grow again too in trying.

They ATE one of my tetras. Bit the tail right off of him. The poor thing. I’m thinking of potentially rehoming them but I’m not sure how to do in Germany. :/ also I don’t know if I can catch these things. It took the guy at my lfs 15 mins to snag them and he was working with a much easier setup to be catching loaches.

And it’s totally on me- I got them thinking that they would have the personality of gobies (my fave fish) boy was I wrong. Those derpy snake potatoes are lazy af. These are NOT

Any advice?

Thx

My male kribensis has Started showing these very strange and concerning symptoms the past few days. I’m very confused as everyone else in the tank is fine. He’s always been extremely vibrant and healthy. He is so weak I literally scooped him up with my hand and placed him into the breeding box to isolate him from the other fish. He pooped yesterday and I saw poop today. So I don’t think he’s constipated…

Parameters:

Mature cycled tank (over a year old)

190l

0 nitrites

20 nitrates

79-80f

I use reverse osmosis water from a filter under my sink - I condition and remineralise it. I can check the Gh and Kh tomorrow but realistically, I don’t believe that’s a problem.

I look forward to anyone’s help on this

I’ve been passively searching for Hebamme in Berlin using various sites recommended to me since I was around 8-10 weeks. Now of course I know I want Beleghebamme but I am having the hardest time finding one. I sent 20 emails today.

For hospitals I was thinking of DRK westend clinic but now I see you have to register by the 12th week… which I did NOT know :( so now I am looking at either st. Joseph, vivantes fshain or Charité. I’m really at a loss. At this point I am beginning to accept I will get whatever midwife on duty and not a Beleghebamme but how do I at least ensure I get the best hospital possible?

I am scared as a friend had gotten Episiotomy ✂️ 🐈 without her consent. And I want to make sure I don’t end up in a hospital with sadistic doctors who will violate my body without asking me in such a vulnerable time. I also want my baby to be in a hospital equipped to deal with any situation quickly for him which is so important.

Does anyone have any reccomendation? I am on the TK

Thanks

Hi- I just really started feeling my baby very recently. And I’ve been wanting this for yearssss. I’m so grateful to know my sweet baby is safe in there. This is a very wanted ivf pregnancy. It took me 5 embryo transfers to get here. I feel very reassured at the fact that all is well in there BUT I’m getting this anxious feeling when he moves (especially when he rolls which feels super strange) and it makes me quite anxious. Like kind of like I want to crawl out of my skin. This is obviously something that makes me feel terribly guilty. I think it’s the sudden realisation that it is REAL he is a person that is there and has his own mind etc. and I think maybe that feeling is just quite overwhelming? I’m not sure. It especially disturbed me last night when I woke up in the night and I had a hard time falling back asleep.

I’m just wondering if anyone else has had these feelings about their baby because at the moment I feel like a terrible parent and ungrateful when in all reality this is all I’ve been wanting for the longest time :( is this just a shock that I get used to quite quickly?

UPSETTING EMAIL ABOUT NIPT RESULT***

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your replies- after a strongly worded email from my husband after hours of crying, we recieved a reply back today on Saturday outside their hours. The explanation is it was in fact a typo. They did mein to type “Keine Auffalligkeiten.” Baby is 100% healthy- no anomalies. 😭

Hi- when I took the NIPT I was told that I would be called if there were any concerning or abnormal results. I have not received a call and I sent an email today to which I receive this response:

Sehr geehrte Frau __,

es gibt eine Aufääigkeiten im Prägtest, Den Befunde darf ich Ihnen jedoch erst mit SSW 14+0 senden. Woher dürfen wir diesen nicht herrausgeben da das Geschlecht vermerkt ist.

I am hoping it is a translation issue but this email made me so upset and now I am worried since now the praxis is closed during the weekend. I feel upset that they don’t clarify if it’s trisomy or a sex chromosome disorder and also that they don’t tell me the seriousness. I am super worried now and crying of course and feel like this is such an inappropriate vague email to send a pregnant person.

I am just asking for experience- is it true if it was a bad result they would call me regarding trisomy? Is this really common practice in Germany to send this sort of email or am I misunderstanding with the language. I was told I would receive all results except gender which I would have to wait for. Does this mean the flag is on a sex chromosome disorder?

I had an ultrasound yesterday and everything looks wonderful. I’m 11+5 today and I feel in my heart the baby is fine but this is such a terrible email to wake up to.

Hi all, I read on TK website that a midwife is covered by insurance and I asked my ob if she had recommendation- but she told me that midwives aren’t covered by insurance and that she doesn’t have any recommendations.

I’m a bit lost. Does anyone know how to find a midwife covered by insurance? Or is TK not exactly telling the truth…

Also I am from a country where midwives aren’t quite as common- will they help me with my plan and choosing the hospital etc? I also read that as part of the birth plan there are certain things you must ask for in advance, like gas and a pool. Would a midwife help me arrange this/ guide me on how to do it?

Thanks!! ❤️