Revealing Our "Non-Secret" To My Mother

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, The Prince and I have decided that, for better or worse, we will tell our boy at a very early age that he was conceived through the use of donor eggs.  Obviously, he will be told subtly and in age appropriate terms, but we never want there to be one specific day on which the “secret” is revealed.  We want our child to feel like he has always known and there is nothing to hide because there is nothing wrong with how he was conceived.  We realize this may be a risky endeavor, as we could face (or worse, our child could face) ridicule or uncomfortable questions if the information is made common knowledge in the wrong forums.  But, I have looked at the research and it seems that children who grow up not associating egg donation with any negative stigma rarely blurt out the information at inappropriate times or places.  To them, it isn’t really that interesting, so there is no reason to tell people.  In contrast, children who are told later in life may feel like the information is a secret, questions why, attach guilt or shame with the information, and be more compelled to “share their secret.”  (I use the term “research” in this area loosely, as I have come across no studies beyond self-reported anecdotal information).  Still, The Prince and I have made our choice and we are committed to it.

As part of this “gradual reveal” process, we decided to tell close family members and friends about how the baby was conceived.  We are hoping that by portraying the information as “no big deal” early on in the pregnancy to family and friends, the information will not seem significant enough to warrant further conversations after the baby is born.  We want the focus to be on our child as a person…not our child as a donor egg-conceived child.

The one exception that we carved out in our strategy was for my mother.  As I’ve previously mentioned, my mother is mentally ill and she has a knack for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.  She thrives on drama and is incapable of caring about how the drama she creates hurts others.  I’ve gotten to a point where I truly believe it isn’t her fault.  It is just part of her illness and she has spiraled to a point where she couldn’t’ control the behavior even if she wanted to.  But, you can imagine how her issues could become a problem for our child in the context of sharing the egg donation information.  The Prince left it up to me to decide what to do about my mother, after we listed the pro’s and con’s of telling her versus not telling her.  I had initially decided not to tell her, but eventually decided that by telling her now and riding out the wave of her likely telling people who have no business knowing about how our child was conceived (because the information will be the closest thing to “juicy gossip” she has to offer), she may be bored with the information by the time the baby is old enough to be effected by any insensitive comments she might make.  My nightmare scenario is our child telling her and her saying something cruel directly to our child in response to the shock. 

Even after making the decision, I haven’t been able to actually bring myself to tell her…until last week.  Last week, during a telephone conversation with my mother, she was (again) suggesting that I might be lying about being pregnant, was actually adopting, but was ashamed to tell people that I was adopting (I guess she thinks I faked the ultrasound pictures we’ve given her).  Anyways, I told her we had tried something new with our last IVF, and it worked.  Of course, she wanted to know what the “new” thing was and she asked if I used someone else’s sperm to get pregnant.  I said “Not someone else’s sperm, someone else’s eggs.”  She said, “What do you mean?  How can you do that?”  So, I explained to her how egg donation works (scientifically speaking).  She listened and after a pause said “I wish I had known about that.  I could have been selling my eggs all of this time and not had financial problems.”  UGGGGHHHHH!  I know that there are a million worse things she could have said, but I have to admit that it was frustrating to have her immediately jump to making things about her.  She then asked if The Prince was okay with it, as she could imagine that it would be upsetting to him to have a wife who couldn’t’ get pregnant with her own eggs.  I was shocked that was her first question.  Everyone else we have told seemed to understand that the decision to use someone else’s eggs was hard on me.  My mother was the first person to jump over my feelings and assume that The Prince would be put off by having to use donor eggs.  I explained that he was all for the idea long before I was okay with it.  My mother then asked if the donor looked like me, and I replied that we wouldn’t be mistaken as sisters, but she looked enough like me so as not to raise any questions when people look at me and our child together.  She wanted to know information about my egg donor and I explained that I wasn’t giving any information I had about the donor to anyone.  Someday, when our child is ready, I will have a book with the photos of the donor and her profile available for our son to look at.  He will decide what to do with that information…no one else.  I explained to Mom that I was hesitant to tell her about our use of a donor because she sometimes “forgets” to keep private things private.  I told her that I believed she loved our child already and that she would find a way to make sure that our child’s conversations about his origins are with The Prince and I, at the time of our choosing.  My mother claims to understand and she wasn’t as melodramatic about receiving the information as I thought she would be. 

I have no confidence that I won’t, at some point, regret my decision to tell her.  But I also believe wholeheartedly that I would have regretted not telling her now, as well.  When I struggled with the idea of using an egg donor, I never even considered these issues.  I was only concerned with the immediate issues of letting go of the idea of my baby sharing my DNA.  Now, the DNA issue seems so insignificant and I realize that I have a lifetime of hard choices ahead of me…a lifetime of trying to balance what I feel is right and the protection of my child’s feelings and self-esteem.  I’m up for it and our baby is worth it already.  But still…a selfish little piece of me is irritated that I have to think about these things at all.

Change

Things change.  I’m an adult.  I know that is just the way the world works.  And change can be good.  In fact, it is probably ultimately good more often than it is bad.  But I’m not generally good with change.  I have a tough time letting go of what is comfortable and familiar to me.  It is hard for me not to see “moving on” as “leaving something behind.”   Lately, I haven’t been left with much of a choice.  Change is happening whether I like it or not. 

This weekend, starting on Friday, was a weekend of change.   The news we received on Friday changed my “Positive Polly” perspective into confusion and sadness.  Then, on Friday night and Saturday, my relationship with my family changed drastically.  My mother (mentally ill), brother (16 with cognitive disabilities), sister (we’ve discussed her previously) and niece (five years old) came to my house, uninvited, to spend the night.  I had a nice dinner and pregnancy announcement planned, but (not surprisingly) things did not work out the way I’d hoped.  My mother’s vehicle broke down about an hour and a half from my house and it had to be towed to a service station.  My husband had to drive the hour and a half each way to pick my family up at the service station and bring them to my house.  My mother told my husband that she would just have to rent a car the next day.  She failed to mention that she had no money with her, no money in her bank account, and she does not have a credit card because she declared bankruptcy a few years ago.  So, when it was time for her to make arrangements to leave on Saturday, you can imagine my surprise when she asked me for my credit card while on the phone with the car rental agency.  I told her she couldn’t have it.  Without getting into too many of the details, I explained that she cannot have hundreds of dollars of our money because: (1) we don’t have it lying around for her to take as needed; (2) we now have a baby on the way and need to save for what is going to be a tight budget;  (3) she already “owes” me tens of thousands of dollars that I have written off because I know I will never be paid back; and (4) she isn’t entitled to our money just because I am related to her.  She yelled and screamed and then went to the other end of the house where my husband was.  I heard her tell him that I told her to ask him for his credit card!!!  I couldn’t believe it!!!  It was like dealing with a teenager who is addicted to drugs.  How could she lie like that, and think she wouldn’t be found out?  The Prince and I had already discussed that my family was not to be given any money this trip (The Prince is the one who finally made me realize I can’t keep funneling our money to them because I’m not helping their situation, I’m just enabling them).  In my not at all hormonal state, I screamed at my mother that there would be no more handouts.  She is on mental health disability and I understand she is too crazy to hold down a job, but she chooses to buy $80 mail order “real life baby dolls” and new furniture at 26% interest rates.  Those behaviors are in her control and I’m not paying for irresponsibility.  She told me that she’s glad I’m pregnant so I will get to experience what it feels like to be stabbed in the heart by my ungrateful child.  I didn’t expect my family to be as awesome about the pregnancy as The Prince’s family, but I didn’t expect it to get that bad, either. 

The Prince barely held his tongue.  I told him we were stuck because we couldn’t give her money but we also needed to get my family back on the road and heading the four hours it would take them to get back home.  I was cramping and sick and couldn’t take anymore stress.  (I should add that my sister was incredibly kind and tried to act as a buffer during this ordeal…but she isn’t really equipped to stand up to my mother, so she ended up as sad and stressed as I was).  We ended up calling The Prince’s parents and asked to borrow their extra vehicle for my mother to use until her checks clear next weekend.  My in-laws are the sweetest people ever, so they quickly agreed even though it is an inconvenience for them.  The Prince and I are scared that my mother will try to keep the vehicle, as she isn’t going to have money to get her car fixed and she has no credit card (a requirement for most rental car agencies).  She won’t speak to me on the phone…and won’t acknowledge my existence while on the phone with The Prince.   I know she’ll speak to me again when she needs money, but she crossed a line with her comments this weekend and our relationship will never be what it was before this weekend.   I’m saddened by that change, but I’m handling it better than I usually do.  I now have a good reason to distance myself from my mother’s craziness and distance is what I need right now. 

Also, after writing yesterday’s post about the comments made by my friend, I received a message from her that she was none too happy with my post and that our friendship was essentially going to be placed on hold, as I don’t appreciate her efforts to stay friends with me even though my pregnancy causes her some sadness.  I understand where she is coming from.  In hindsight, posting about the insensitive comments she made instead of addressing them with her directly was bad behavior on my part.  I think I was afraid of the confrontation that would ensue and so I took the passive (if you can call it that) approach.  But here is the thing…I’m not sorry that our friendship is changing.  I have a couple of friendships that I’ve made throughout my IF years that I really value but also realize that I have to really work at.  This friendship was one of those…I think we were both working really hard at staying friends.  A couple of my friends make comments that hurt my feelings on a regular basis, but I’ve been afraid to address the issue with them because I don’t want to lose them as friends, or I’m afraid that our friendship will change into something stiff and awkward.  But what I realized, reading my friend’s message yesterday, is that our friendship already had changed…I just wasn’t acknowledging it.  We are in such different places in our lives and our journeys, and we have been since even before I got pregnant, that we would be better served appreciating each other for what we are – two amazing strong women who have gone through IF hell - and not trying to make our relationship something that it just isn’t anymore.

So, in summation, there are some changes happening that, while uncomfortable, are healthy and ultimately positive.  You can try to swim upstream, or you can turn over, put your feet up and surrender to the current....it's going to keep flowing anyways.  It’s sad that, as usual, it has taken me so long to grasp a concept that is so basic…but at least I’ve got it now.  And while I am certainly not a “go-with-the-flow” kind of girl yet, I’ve got potential.

The First Announcement

The announcement to The Prince’s family went really well.  I had to fine-tune the ideas discussed last week, to make it match the “twins” theme.  That included modification of the poem for the grandma and grandpa-to-be, and changing the card idea a little.  The card given to his sister had the ultrasound picture of Baby 1 on the front, saying “My belly-to-belly cell phone service stinks!  Please tell my cousin Taylor that I am available for play dates in January 2012.”  Then, on the inside of the card it had the ultrasound picture of both babies, with Baby #2 saying “Me too!  Me too!  Tell Taylor that I am available for play dates too,”  and Baby #1 saying “Okay, okay.  Tell Taylor that we both are available in January 2012.” 

The Prince’s sister read the card first, before seeing the onesie (Option A…the choice that won the vote).  I was worried because she seemed to sort of rush through without reading everything…but then she said “There’s two?”  And his Mom immediately threw her arms around me and started jumping up and down saying “There’s two!  There’s two!”  There was lots of crying as his sister took the onesie out of the bag.  The Prince even got teary…I think because his Mom was crying.  I gave a framed picture of the modified poem (it was harder to work with plurals than you would think) to The Prince’s mother and father (the father had come out of the kitchen at that point).  They looked at it, but didn’t read it.  The Prince’s Mom was so in shock, and so happy, she couldn’t stop hugging us and cheering long enough to read it (she Facebooked me last night to let me know that she had read the poem when she got home and it made her cry happy tears again).  It was so great.  I waited so long to make that announcement and it couldn’t have gone any better.

Any worry I had about the timing being awkward for his family was unfounded.  They were thrilled for us.  The only tough thing is that The Prince’s Mom is a lot like him.  He makes me open my Christmas presents the day he gets them, because he can’t wait until Christmas to see my reaction.  I’ve learned to just go with it.  I didn’t realize his Mom has the same impatience.  She wants to tell his extended family at the shower next Sunday because the family never gets together and she thinks they should get to hear the news in person.  I’ve asked her not to and explained that we don’t want to have to “untell” anyone if something changes.  I also pointed out (outside of the earshot of The Prince’s sister) that we absolutely do not want our news intruding on her day.  His mother brushed that off, saying “She doesn’t even want a shower.  Her mother-in-law is forcing her to have one.  Trust me.  She won’t mind.”  But I stuck with my insistence that the shower wasn’t the right time to tell people.  I’m hoping she can be convinced, but I have a feeling there might be conversations behind my back with a “don’t tell that I told you” addendum.  I won’t be angry with his Mom if it happens.  I adore all of The Prince’s family and I am thrilled that his Mom is so excited.  She’ll be the one having to “untell” people if she tells them behind my back, so I guess it is fine if things go that way.

My family announced to me, early last week, that they are coming to my house for dinner this upcoming Friday.  I was perturbed because I wasn’t asked if it was okay.  I was just told that they were coming from four hours away and that I could just not open the door “if I hate them that much.”  Grrrrr.  I do NOT feel like cleaning the house and entertaining.  But The Prince thinks it is fine and that we should just make the announcement to my family while they are here, so everyone is on the same page and they feel included.  I’m not thrilled at the prospect of telling my family.  I know insensitive and stupid comments will be made by my mother.  But…I understand The Prince’s position and he understands that any “untelling” of my family will have to be done by him because I would be waiting to tell them if it were just up to me.  We’re bracing, as a united couple, for what might happen on Friday.  At least it will be over then, and I will not be concerned about whether my family’s feelings will be hurt if they find out “through the grapevine” that I am pregnant and didn’t tell them.