Negative Family Response - advice

My husband and I have been preparing for our Homebirth, had our assessment, gas and air arrived and midwife has done home visit and Hire pool should arrive this week etc. On Sunday we were asked at a family gathering by my mum, sister, brother in law where we were going for birth. We were honest and said decided to have Homebirth. This wasn’t well received. My sister got snippy. My mum asked a lot of silly questions so as to insinuate it’s a flawed idea. I found the whole thing entirely upsetting. I was really tired so wasn’t up for debating my choices with anyone. I would have happily not said anything, but my husband felt best to be honest as it’s hard to hide having it at home as such (which was pre discussed). We anticipated the conversation coming and still it was the hardest and most awful thing. My sister / BIL ended up leaving. We got more silly questions from mum. Then we ended up leaving too for our own sanity. I would not mind people asking questions if it was from a positive and genuine enquiry / interest but none of this was. I don’t feel it’s our job to educate people on how it works / justify our decision. I don’t feel I deserve an integration on a process that should be precious. We have done so much research and not taken it lightly to commit to this preference. I feel so knocked back and upset. I’m 38 weeks and didn’t need their attitude at all. I feel if anything doesn’t work out it will be a big told you so. And I feel like shutting them out now too. Please any advice from a heartbroken FTM. Thanks if you got this far 🥺
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I’m sorry they had that reaction to your plan. I’ve had two home births and I’m planning one more in May/June. It’s not received well by most of my family/in laws either. It’s absolutely not something you can let get to you. If you go into it with doubts and negative emotions, it can go worse for you. Labor is highly a mental thing so thinking about “what if something goes wrong” might cause your body to stress out more. Home births are completely natural and if you have no complication up until this point then there’s no real reason in deciding against it. This is a choice for you and your baby- not to please anyone else. Keep your head up 🫶🏻

@Mary thank you so much 🥹 with your home births, did you find you kept your distance from family / any negatives in order to protect your mental space? X

Actually, no not at all. I don’t bring up the topic much but I’m very firm on my stance and they’ve accepted it after I went through it twice already. The first time around was the hardest for sure but my husband was a great support system and he stood his ground when talking to them too because they went behind me to tell him we needed to use a hospital. Having confidence in your choice actually helps them calm down too

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