I'm a FTM, but DH's brother's child was born 9 months ago. I am very grateful to be able to sit back and be prepared for what is my MIL. When my sis-in-law was in labor (for 50+ hours), my MIL went to the hospital. She wasn't allowed in the room, but as soon as she started pushing went in. She stood at the bottom of the bed, made obnoxious comments, and watched the baby be born. She announced the baby's birth on FB.
She then would get jealous if others held her grandson. At my wedding, she talked shit non-stop saying she never sees him, everyone gets to hold him longer, even during the mother-son dance was bitching to my husband about it. With my family that didn't know her, she would refer to her grandson as "our baby." She was manipulative, drop comments that were inappropriate towards her DIL, and caused nothing but fights between her son and his wife.
She told people we were expecting before we announced it and heard a heartbeat because she felt "it's unfair that I could tell whomever, but she couldn't." When my DH fought with her about it, she said "fine. I'll just go to bed in die." I personally can't deal with her shit.
The way I see it, I won't sacrifice my happiness for her. I won't be fighting with my husband over her. She will not be at my labor, nor know that I'm in labor. If she wants to act the way she does, she'll be a "holiday grandma." If this makes me a selfish person, my B, but I don't care.
Post by purpleroses on Feb 5, 2015 22:55:15 GMT -5
I have a so-so relationship with my ILs. In some regards they are very thoughtful, generous, and nice, at other times they can be very pushy, obnoxious, and controlling. In particular, the bad traits tend to show up a lot surrounding things like our wedding, planning family events, and their expectations regarding how often we should be available for visits and family trips with them. My MIL also just never lets things go and will complain about the same stuff for YEARS even though it's clear no one plans to change their behavior (or is even really listening anymore).
Not too be Susie Sunshine, but I will say that, as much as my ILs can be annoying, they have been 10x better than I expected since we had kids. Our wedding planning process was so difficult that I actually dreaded telling my MIL we were pregnant with DS, because I was sure it was going to be instant, non-stop, unsolicited advice and manipulation. Although they still have their moments, she hasn't been too bad of a micromanager or constantly telling me I ought to be doing this, that and the other thing with our son or my pregnancies (the way she often is with other stuff). So, my first piece of advice is don't build it up to be too awful until you see how things turn out. Frankly, my mom is very self-oriented and can be quite thoughtless, but she has improved a lot since our son was born too. It really depends on the grandparent's personality, but sometimes having kids makes things easier, because people are often softer with kids than they are with adults and, if nothing else, the positive attention that my mother and ILs focus on my son often means they are too busy to critique and annoy me in the way they did before my son was born. I have other friends who have expressed the same thing.
Our approach with both my ILs and my mom is that we try to focus on big picture "rules" and don't sweat the small stuff if the grandparents don't always do things the way we would do them. Although that's ultimately up to you, I just don't really have the energy to go ballistic over grandparents spoiling DS or doing things that aren't jeopardizing his health and safety. Honestly, this has been a good philosophy for me in general, since DH and child care providers aren't always going to do everything exactly the way I want either.
I do believe in trying to maintain some level of equality between the families, although not to a ridiculous or unreasonable extent. For example, my mom lives locally and my ILs don't, so there's just no way my ILs will ever see DS as often or as much. However, it probably makes me a little more likely to accommodate some of my ILs requests for visits, trips, and requests to Skype/Face Time a little more often than I enjoy. My ILs aren't heinous people or so toxic I don't want DS to be exposed to them, so I really do try hard to get along with them and let petty stuff go, both for DH's sake and for my son's. I think you also have to recognize that people have different expectations on how their family should behave based on how they were raised. It is hard for a lot of people to hear negative feedback about their parents, but I know in my husband's case, although he's open to hearing about times his parents were truly rude or out of line, he doesn't even notice or care about many behaviors that would probably lead to a huge argument between me and my mom. In my case, my family was always a lot less involved in each other's lives, so although I see his family as overly involved, DH's perspective is often that my family members are distant or disinterested in our lives.
Then Comes Family, LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising
program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.