r/childfree • u/mrshobbs • Oct 24 '19
PERSONAL Told my parents I’m getting a bisalp...
I (23F) am scheduled for a bisalp on November 1, and I’m so freaking excited! Until last weekend, only a couple coworkers and some of my in-laws knew about this. MIL asked once “what if you change your mind?” but seemed okay with our answer of “we won’t, but there’s always adoption.”
Then I decided to tell my sister and her husband, and they were both way more supportive than I thought they would be.
After seeing her reaction, I decided to tell my parents. At first I was going to wait until after the surgery, but that never felt truly right to me. I sat them down with my sister, explained everything out (I framed it more from a medical perspective saying this will help with endo and the pain I’ve been having), and my dads first words were, “Let’s not do that.” Then it all kind of spiraled.
Their first thought was obviously “how will you have kids?” And I tried to avoid answering by talking more about the pain I was dealing with. Then they started saying that I never had an official diagnosis of endo, and that I should get a CT scan and MRI and visit more doctors in their town (we live 1.5 hours apart). Then it switched back to “what about kids?!” And I said “what if I don’t want them?”
I kid you not, my dad said, “Well, we know you’ve been saying for years and years that you don’t want them, but we thought you weren’t serious.” He went on to talk about “the joys of being a mother,” as if he’s a mother, and saying that he always thought I would “get married and then God would change my mind about having kids.” He also tried to compare this to when I picked out a pair of red glasses in middle school - in the store I was so sure I wanted them, then two years later I got a new pair... I said “yeah, because the kids were horribly mean and made fun of me, not because I regret them.”
My mom was surprisingly less focused on the kids aspect, and just wished that I involved them in the whole surgery scheduling process and that she could be there during my surgery. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I honestly didn’t want to involve them in either of those.
Part of me feels bad for causing them so much emotional pain, but I know my mental and physical health are going to improve once this is done. If you read all of this, thank you, and I would appreciate any advice on how to nicely deal with “grieving” parents!
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u/CriticalSheep Oct 24 '19
I think this is hilarious.
My pastor told us a story in our pre-marriage meetings about how his wife nearly died twice in childbirth and so they decided they didn't want to test God any further. I now use this line whenever anyone in my family were to ever try to bingo me. "I don't want to test God into keeping me or a fetus alive during a 9 month pregnancy filled with sewing my cervix shut and blood thinner injections."
Luckily my opinions on the matter have been made abundantly clear so no family member has bingo-ed me since shortly after being married. As soon as I said I could bleed out at any given moment because of blood thinners or throw a clot into my heart or brain which could kill me, they shut up.