I (21F) babysit my almost 3-month-old niece Monday through Friday from 7-8 am to 6-7 pm. Sometimes my SIL (26 & her mom) picks her up early and sometimes later than 7 pm, depending on her job.
I love my niece and I love babies, but here is where I think I’m being the a**hole. I currently have a 2.5-year-old, an 11-month-old, and I’m 25 weeks into a high-risk pregnancy. Only my mom and husband know about the high-risk pregnancy since I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. At first, it seemed like I was fine, like in a normal pregnancy, but around 14 weeks I started having a lot of pelvic and round ligament pains, which is really common during pregnancy, so I didn’t think anything of it. Plus, it wasn’t really that painful, and it stayed like that for weeks.
Around 19-20 weeks, it started to get worse by the day, but I kept pushing through the pain since there’s nothing I can do. This is the time I started taking care of my niece. At first, it wasn’t that bad; I would even take all three kids out by myself and would help my SIL in anything she needed after she had my niece. At 24 weeks, I left to go to Mexico, and since I got there, the pain got worse. It gets to the point where I even start cramping and can’t even move or get out of bed.
Although that doesn’t happen every day, it still takes a toll on me, and since then, I kept thinking if I should continue babysitting since I just want to be sitting or laying down most of the time, and I feel like I can’t even take care of my two kids like I would’ve wanted to. For a bit of background, my niece is extremely needy and cries a lot. She just wants to be held and hates to be put down, and most of the time I don’t get anything done around the house.
My friend, whose baby is the same age as my youngest, was the same as a baby and just got worse as he got older, so I know how things are going to go in the future. I have felt bad for my sister-in-law since she’s a single mom and does stupid things 24/7, but now I feel like I’ve been doing/contributing too much to not really get anything in return. For example, I originally gave my SIL a bunch of my daughter’s baby clothes, boxes of diapers, and other baby/mom-related stuff. I didn’t know back then that I was pregnant, let alone expecting another baby girl.
I’ve been going back and forth helping my SIL in anything she needed, even when I was exhausted. I even charge her $35 a day to take care of my niece since I really thought she couldn’t pay for childcare. I also contributed a lot during her baby shower, and I spent a bunch of hours/days in the hospital with her, etc.
While that didn’t really bother me at the time, now that I’ve had time to really think about everything, I feel like I’m being played. Her family is expecting me to give a lot for them, but they never do the same for me. They have thrown baby showers to every pregnant woman for about 4-5 years except me, etc. So far, she hasn’t bothered to gift me anything or offer anything that her baby is leaving behind, and while I’m not expecting anything, I felt like she would since she’s a gift giver. I’ve been extremely nice since, again, I thought she was struggling, but turns out she never was. They can easily pay for childcare and apparently expensive gifts. So now I don’t know what to do. I feel bad for not wanting to take care of her anymore, but I feel like there’s more I can do. So AITA?