After a long journey to parenthood, my daughter was born on Oct 18, 2017. The recovery from a medically required c-section for my wife was more challenging then expected. Our daughter is the first and likely only grandchild for both of our parents as my wife and I have both have older sisters who aren’t married. We are older first time parents (early 40’s).
While I am a true believer of “it takes a village...” and I am super grateful and realize we are blessed and fortunate to have loving and supportive grandparents and sisters / sister-in-law I am struggling with the overall in-laws and sister-in-law overbearing presence. I also have seen signs where it seems that my mother-in-law favors my sister-in-law over my wife related to the baby. Possibly because she isn’t married and doesn’t have kids that she has to make glowing comments about my sister-in-law being an aunt with all the baby photos (Facebook) and no comments at all with photos of me or my wife with our baby. ———yes, I’m sure I’ll take a lot of heat for what I’m saying but I just being honest and it truly is a struggle for me and I’m here to seek advice.
Overview
1) My in-laws live within 2-3 miles from us from May/June - Oct/November.
2) My sister-in-law lives 6-8 hours away by car or 1 hour by flight and has decided to visit every two weeks since our daughter’s birth.
3) Culturally maybe my mother in law isn’t used to a hands on son-in-law as in our culture maybe the men usually don’t do as much with the baby etc...
3) The past six weeks (without my in-laws living here) have been the best (although a bit disruptive every two weeks on the weekend with sister in law visits) as my wife is recovered from the c-section and is healing. She loves everything about being a mom with the baby, it is so beautiful as the first few weeks was hard since she couldn’t hold the baby as easily and couldn’t do everything she would want to do etc... we also got to connect and bond as a family of three over the past six weeks.
Birth
From the first week my mother-in-law acted more like a mom and not a grandmother as my wife needed help as she recovered. Because my father-in-law was going to be traveling my mother-in-law moved in for about 3 weeks. Before the baby we generally got along and I’ve know my-in-laws since 1999 and have even traveled on family trips since 2000 and married in 2004. No major issues in the past.
Transitioning to parenthood / grandparenthood etc...
Seems to me the moment the baby was born and once my mother in law moved in is where friction began. Comments to me such as:
1) After dinner, I’ll was the dishes and I jokingly said. Now I get my reward I get to play with the baby...
Mother in law: she’s sleeping don’t bother her
2) I’ll let our dog outside by opening the front door and screen and step back and stay inside and open it to let the dog back in ——10 seconds of total baby expose to cold.
Mother in law: what what are you doing (frantic) it’s cold she’ll catch a cold.
I explained I’m letting the do out, and closing the screen and only a few second of baby exposure to some cold and letting the do back in etc... to me normal and will need to do a few times a day with or without the baby in my hand every day etc...
Note: we don’t live in a truly cold or snowy environment. At the time it was November highs in the high 60’s and lows in the 50’s.
3) before leaving for work or grocery store I want to say bye to my daughter. A quick peck on the cheek or touch her hand.
Mother in law: she’s sleeping don’t bother her
4) my wife asked me to warm up some of her breast milk that was pumped and in the refrigerator and I let my mother in law hold the baby. I come back to get her.
Mother in law: stares at me, mumbles something about handing baby off or something,
My reaction: I step back, put my hands up and back away like uh, ok if you want to bring the baby to “insert wife name”’you can.
Going out to Eat
If the baby gets a bit fussy and she is in the car seat on top of the upside down high chair at a restaurant my mother in law immediately wants to hold the baby. While one could argue she is being helpful what if I or my wife want to hold the baby? She really wouldn’t let us with the statement if we will trade off.
Without the in-laws (past six weeks) we’ve gone out to lunch or dinner a few times and we hold the baby and eat fine and it works... something I think we both enjoy as well.
Open discussion with Mother In Law
About six weeks ago my sister in law tells my wife and I that my mother in law feels miss treated as she feels like we treated her like a maid. First overall I was be ordered around to get the baby bottle and warm up milk as opposed to letting me do any of the feeds when she was around. I helped with dishes and laundry. 90% if the time the mother in law was holding the baby and throughout the day and night. After I went back to work I want my time with the baby at night but it wasn’t easy and when my mother in law offered for me to hold the bay sometime I accepted other times I didn’t even though I wanted to because it was obvious she didn’t want me to or it was an after thought.
I realized my actions or reactions to the issues I listed above made my mother in law feel upset. —- it also made me upset but I’m not a poker player and likely my face said it all...
Moving home
A couple of days before my mother in law moves home (across county) for a month before visiting us this week she literally starts to cry as she is so sad to leave the baby. —I’m not trying to be insensitive as I realize she has nothing but love but I also realize it is likely because she has been doing everything as she wants to do etc...
Christmas card
They want to take photos at the beach, we all go. My wife takes a selfie as she has long arms and mother-in-law holds baby in the shot. I mention maybe we can have someone take our photos as well and suggest my wife hold the baby. We take photos as a group.
Christmas card arrive in mail from grandparents
Front photo: family shot grandma holding baby
Back photos Grandma and grandpa holding baby Baby alone (thank goodness not of my sister in law and baby without us)
I know, who cares it is their Christmas card not mine but something irritated me about it like maybe it would be nice to let her daughter hold her baby in the photo to honor her daughter from become a mother through our long and tough journey.
Facebook interactions
I don’t use faceback much but maybe two posts since the birth of my daughter and one out of the two was a shared post from my wife. The second was a collage of my daughter with one photo of me holding her (a new year message). —I was expressing my love of being a Dad and how hard it was to imagine that she was 10 weeks
Mother in law comment:
“So sad I can’t hold her she is growing so fast”
Wife’s Facebook Post
My wife doesn’t over post maybe 3-4 photos over the past 12 weeks. None of her posts with the baby get any comment from the mother in law.
Sister in Law Facebook posts
My sister in law has likely posted 8-10 photos of her and the baby. Each photo gets at least one glowing comment about how cute she looks with (insert baby name). Or how comfortable (insert baby name looks with her etc...
My frustration: Sure makes me feel that my mother in law for some reason loves to see the baby with my sister in law but could care less that we are the parents and is only sad that she isn’t here to hold the baby on my photos or no comments at all on my wife’s post...??? Okay nit-picking but my gut almost feels like she wishes the baby was my sister in laws. Or maybe she is sad for my sister in law since she is older, not married, not dating etc...
Whatever it is it doesn’t make me feel good. My wife has stayed silent and don’t want to bring it up. However, I know my wife notices as she and her father don’t have the best relations and she has commented in the past in why her Dad comments on her sister’s post and never her posts. Sometimes my wife goes out of the way to post a photo of her dad holding the baby and he never acknowledges her for sharing etc...
Reality and Advice
Okay, many of you would say get over it and who cares... which is what I’m trying to do and realize it doesn’t matter and I should be happy to have such loving grandparents.
My concern: my in-laws are visiting in a few days and I have a business trip and board meeting for a week. At the end of the week my parents are holding a celebration with family and friends of the grandchild.
For the few days I’m home before being gone for a week (already feeling sad) I will have next weekend but am 100% sure we will be spending every hour with the in-laws. The only good thing is for the few days I’m home they won’t move in our house they will stay in their condo. Once I leave they will move in.
1) I have to pick them up at the airport and do dinner with them this week.
How to react, how do remain even tempered and positive with concern about the way the coming days will be likely 80-90% mother in law hiding baby, being at our house etc...
2) A bit concerned about them moving back in Ma/June for six months. I work virtually but have a co-working office space near the house. I’m Sure they will want to see the baby everyday. I’ll be ok with this (generally likely no choice) as I’ll just stop working from my home office and go to my office because I know I’ll be annoyed if they were at the house from 9-8pm everyday.
How do we set up boundaries? What is the right amount of time they should expect to see the grandchild.
I’m sure we will drop the baby off on Friday so we can eat dinner or a movie a couple of times a month in the summer which I’m sure they will love etc...
3) How to let what we established, created, or have as a new parents or a family of three continue with the in-laws being here so much in the Summer?
4) Am I waaaaay off base and everything I feel is just normal and I should just let my mother in law do whatever she wants whenever she wants?
5) I also am ok with the very two week visit me with the sister in law but that to is a bit excessive as sometimes we have friends that want to do something with us, we may what to do a quick trip over a long weekend, we may just want to be home as a family of three on the weekend as it’s my time off from the virtual job etc...
Ways to try to have the every two weeks less frequent without being a jerk?
6) Any overall tips, thoughts, opinions, advice, negative comments to me are welcome or PM me.
Submitted January 14, 2018 at 09:44PM by Imdakine1 http://ift.tt/2mCsqCe beyondthebump
No comments:
Post a Comment