I mostly just need to vent and see if anyone has any advice on unsolicited advice during pregnancy. I’m not confrontational and have mostly just handled these situations by creating space between us while I’m pregnant.
Im (F/27) 25 weeks pregnant with my first baby after suffering a missed miscarriage last October. This pregnancy has been declared normal and healthy and not high risk (thankfully).
My older sister (37) has had 3 children, all extremely complicated pregnancies and labors, and the last one that resulted in an emergency c-section with a necessity for a corrective surgery that shes been putting off for a year.
Every time my pregnancy comes up, she seems to be insisting in the worst case scenario. In april i spotted one time, lightly, and went to the hospital to be on the safe side. She insisted id lost my mucus plug and was going into early labor and was going to lose my baby due to stress (my mother in law was dying and she thought i was too stressed out helping my grieving husband). It turned out to be an extremely minor uti. I had to take antibiotics for a week and got a clean bill of health for me and the baby. (Compliments even from the drs about how active she was in my belly at the time).
My mother in law passed away and at the request of his family we decided to do a last minute gender reveal days before the funeral. (We went back and forth on whether or not it was appropriate and if we should just open the envelope ourselves, but his family said it would be a happy thing to take everyones mind off of their grief for a moment). It was planned the day before and my sister couldnt make it because she had to work the next day and lives 45 mins away. I offered to have someone facetime her so she could still be a part of it and received paragraphs of text messages about how i was specifically excluding her and how she couldnt imagine not having me at her gender reveals.
The topic of my birth plan came up and i told her that i wanted to give birth naturally, but that I’m leaving the epidural decision to the me in the moment because i didn’t want to guilt myself over the decision and want to do what feels right in the moment and she went on a tangent about how i don’t have a very high pain tolerance and wont be able to handle birth and that i should just plan to have the epidural because if i say no to it ill regret it.
I kind of shut it down and we got off the phone but this seems to be an ongoing issue where i feel like she’s projecting her experience onto me. When i had the miscarriage she was pressuring me to take norcos and pain medicine saying the same thing about my pain tolerance. I don’t really take pain medicine so i kept declining it. I hemorrhaged and lost too much blood It was the most painful experience id had to that point in time and i didn’t accept pain medicine until after it was over, and even that was because the nurse poked it into my IV.
Shes not the only one trying to pressure me into the epidural, but shes the loudest about it and insinuates she knows my pain tolerance better than I do when I don’t really tell her whenever I’m going through things. She keeps telling me that because I complained about my periods growing up and occasionally had to miss school that she has a higher pain tolerance than I do. (I have scoliosis and other issues that made lower back pain really bad when I was pmsing.)
I think part of the reason its getting on my nerves so badly is because I’ve been open about not being opposed to it. Like, I’m not saying no. Im just saying that I’m leaving the decision to how i feel in the moment and that ideally, id like to give birth naturally but that I understand that my mind might change later on. I just don’t want to count myself out before I’ve even had the experience, especially when I know id like to do it sans epidural if I can.
I want to have my big sister to lean on, especially since our mom is gone, but I feel like she’s judging every move I make during this pregnancy and the unsolicited advice is driving me crazy. I’m nervous for how these conversations will happen when I’m in the hospital or home with my newborn.
Any advice? Am I just over thinking it?
Im (F/27) 25 weeks pregnant with my first baby after suffering a missed miscarriage last October. This pregnancy has been declared normal and healthy and not high risk (thankfully).
My older sister (37) has had 3 children, all extremely complicated pregnancies and labors, and the last one that resulted in an emergency c-section with a necessity for a corrective surgery that shes been putting off for a year.
Every time my pregnancy comes up, she seems to be insisting in the worst case scenario. In april i spotted one time, lightly, and went to the hospital to be on the safe side. She insisted id lost my mucus plug and was going into early labor and was going to lose my baby due to stress (my mother in law was dying and she thought i was too stressed out helping my grieving husband). It turned out to be an extremely minor uti. I had to take antibiotics for a week and got a clean bill of health for me and the baby. (Compliments even from the drs about how active she was in my belly at the time).
My mother in law passed away and at the request of his family we decided to do a last minute gender reveal days before the funeral. (We went back and forth on whether or not it was appropriate and if we should just open the envelope ourselves, but his family said it would be a happy thing to take everyones mind off of their grief for a moment). It was planned the day before and my sister couldnt make it because she had to work the next day and lives 45 mins away. I offered to have someone facetime her so she could still be a part of it and received paragraphs of text messages about how i was specifically excluding her and how she couldnt imagine not having me at her gender reveals.
The topic of my birth plan came up and i told her that i wanted to give birth naturally, but that I’m leaving the epidural decision to the me in the moment because i didn’t want to guilt myself over the decision and want to do what feels right in the moment and she went on a tangent about how i don’t have a very high pain tolerance and wont be able to handle birth and that i should just plan to have the epidural because if i say no to it ill regret it.
I kind of shut it down and we got off the phone but this seems to be an ongoing issue where i feel like she’s projecting her experience onto me. When i had the miscarriage she was pressuring me to take norcos and pain medicine saying the same thing about my pain tolerance. I don’t really take pain medicine so i kept declining it. I hemorrhaged and lost too much blood It was the most painful experience id had to that point in time and i didn’t accept pain medicine until after it was over, and even that was because the nurse poked it into my IV.
Shes not the only one trying to pressure me into the epidural, but shes the loudest about it and insinuates she knows my pain tolerance better than I do when I don’t really tell her whenever I’m going through things. She keeps telling me that because I complained about my periods growing up and occasionally had to miss school that she has a higher pain tolerance than I do. (I have scoliosis and other issues that made lower back pain really bad when I was pmsing.)
I think part of the reason its getting on my nerves so badly is because I’ve been open about not being opposed to it. Like, I’m not saying no. Im just saying that I’m leaving the decision to how i feel in the moment and that ideally, id like to give birth naturally but that I understand that my mind might change later on. I just don’t want to count myself out before I’ve even had the experience, especially when I know id like to do it sans epidural if I can.
I want to have my big sister to lean on, especially since our mom is gone, but I feel like she’s judging every move I make during this pregnancy and the unsolicited advice is driving me crazy. I’m nervous for how these conversations will happen when I’m in the hospital or home with my newborn.
Any advice? Am I just over thinking it?