Am I being too selfish? (Pregnancy/Family Dynamic Related)

In My Humble Opinion
61

My mother made this mistake. She was the one that called her mother in law to say “sorry, we already have plans” or make excuses. She was always the bearer of bad news. Therefore, my dad got to continue to be wonderful in my grandmother’s eyes - while my mother became “that evil bitch who won’t let me be close to my darling son.”

LET YOUR HUSBAND TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR HIS MOTHER AND THE MUTUAL DECISIONS YOU MAKE REGARDING HER. DO NOT BECOME “THE BAD GUY.”

Your husband should make sure to say plenty of “I feel.” Not “Chipmunk thinks.” “I want to make sure Chipmunk and the baby get plenty of rest and quiet.” “I think more people in the house will make it difficult for Chipmunk to catch a nap when she can.”

62

If your family’s local, perhaps his family could stay with them to save on costs.

63

Missed posts #7 & #10, eh?

64

Ah yes, I had.

65

I really feel for the OP. And even if your mother-in-law insists you don’t have to cater to her, you’ll still feel like you do, which will make you tense, which could make you overwhelmed when dealing with the baby. I don’t think you’re being selfish at all, and I really hope that your husband is being truly supportive, whether he understands or not.

Personal anecdote: I told my mom not to visit until two weeks after our firstborn was born, and it was the best thing I ever did. I wish I hadn’t asked for her help for our second, because by the time we got home with our newborn daughter, my mom – who was alone with my son – was hammered (it was just after noon). She was also very high maintenance the entire time, started sobbing when my son had a tantrum that evening and had to be disciplined (she insisted he didn’t need it, but rules are rules, new baby or not), then screamed that she “couldn’t take it anymore” and stormed downstairs to her room.

I then had to comfort her later. The only thing I had asked her to do when she visited was to make my son feel special – lavish attention on him when I couldn’t and keep things sane. But she spent most of her visit cooking or sitting on my couch watching TV and was furious that first night when none of us would come to dinner (I was breastfeeding my daughter and my husband was dealing with our son’s tantrum). I wound up asking her to leave early. She was extremely offended, but I just couldn’t deal with her anymore.

The whole experience was a nightmare that will NEVER be repeated. My sister is due in January, and I told her that she really, really shouldn’t have mom there any earlier than one or two weeks after they have their son.

Of course, I hardly think the OP’s situation will turn out like that, but I can tell you that before it happened, the air was just thick with tension. I wouldn’t want the OP to have to deal with any such tension as well a firstborn when you’re just getting used to what having a baby feels like.

66

This is what I am afraid of. She has never been the type to be helpful when she comes to visit. To be fair, I have never asked her to help out, but generally their visits involve a lot of mess making (big meals, spreading their stuff all over the house, etc) and me doing a lot of clean-up. She has never offered to help in those situations. I don’t know that she wouldn’t this time, but I think her idea of helping is much more along the lines of cuddling with the baby. Not that that is bad, just not the kind of help I think I will REALLY want.

Fortunately, My own family is very good at the kind of help I think I will want so I believe they will be around to do that sort of thing. Unfortunately, that just means more people hanging around in a situation where we might want some alone time.

As for my SO talking to his mom, I am not sure how much of a united front he presented, but I would never expect him to talk to MY mother about something he wanted, so he doesn’t expect me to talk to his. This works out very well for us. It is much easier for the child to stand up to the parent, I think.

67

And frankly, this is a fairly unique situation. If your gut says I want to be alone, indulge it.

68

If your MIL is the controlling/bossy type and your DH is the capitulating type, and she ends up staying with you against your wishes and better judgment… I would consider laying down some sort of law like “You don’t get to complain about anything if you’re going to impose yourself here after I specifically asked for some privacy in which to bond with our baby.”

A friend of mine had a planned C-section. After a few weeks – just a couple – several family members (who were all local) descended on her one afternoon to see the baby. She was far enough along in her recovery that she went along with it. After they had overstayed her still-recovering endurance and she finally got 'em all out of there, she nearly passed out trying to walk up the stairs to go to bed. Her DH caught her and put her to bed and took care of the baby for the evening. The result: she’d overestimated her recovery progress and had done too much. You will need your DH’s support to not allow that to happen. Baby needs a healthy and as well rested as possible mama.

In your conversations with MIL, I suggest focusing on the little sprog’s needs, not the adult’s needs to coo and cuddle. It’s not about them.

69

Oy. That does put a rather different spin on things if she’s a shitty house guest. My suggestions were based on the assumption that she hadn’t been raised in a barn.

It would probably still be nice if you called her, though (assuming she’s a generally reasonable person and not some histrionic troll.) It’s generally considered good form to apologize for inadvertently hurting someone’s feelings, and it sounds like you probably did genuinely hurt her feelings. I don’t know if her feelings are hurt because she feels rejected by not staying in your house, or if she feels rejected because you think of her as “company” instead of “family” (that’s a huge distinction for some folks), or because she feels kind of left out of a lot of the action compared to your family due to distance, or because she’s offended you’d assume she was going to impose on you at such a time, or one of ten million other possibilities.

It might be something you guys can improve between the two of you, or it might not. You’ll never know unless you try. And either way you get brownie points for the apology, if not from her, then from karma.

70

I was recently a new mom, myself, and I agree with pretty much everyone that those first few days can be very stressful, and both you and your husband’s comfort should come first. It looks to me, though, that even though your husband agreed to talk to his mom, he’s not entirely on board, and that strikes me as a problem.

First of all, I wonder how you explained your request to him. Given that he’s very close to his mom, and hurt that you’re not as close with her, I imagine you might have tried to make it all your “fault”, as in: “I’m just afraid that I’ll be too tired and busy to be a good hostess to your mom, and I would hate to inconvenience her.” If so, it makes sense that he would reply as he did, “Oh, don’t worry about her, she’ll just make herself at home!”

But it sounds like that’s exactly what you’re concerned about: that MIL and BIL will act like they’re at their own house rather than yours, and end up being in the way and/or making more work for you. If so, I think you need to say that to him. Don’t say, “I can’t be a good hostess,” say, “I’m not worried about having to entertain them; I just want to be able to have privacy if I need it, or to have some time alone with the baby, or to take a nap. I’m not worried about having to cook and clean for them; I just don’t want to try to grab something to eat and find that there’s no food in the house, or that there are no clean dishes.” And so on. Explain to your husband that it’s not personal; you would feel comfortable telling your own family to leave, or to clean up after themselves, but that you don’t feel it’s your place to say these things to his family. And perhaps, offer that if he’s willing to be the “bad guy” in that regard, then you could be more open to them staying with you.

The thing is, if he’s not really on your side, then that may well come through (either explicitly or implicitly) in how he presents it to his mom: “Chipmunk just doesn’t feel like she can handle having guests. I don’t know what her problem is; I tried to tell her she shouldn’t worry about you… etc.” I also think that he shouldn’t be telling you anything about her reaction, other than perhaps, “She’s not thrilled, but she’ll go along with it.” No good can come of you knowing that she said she “felt sorry for you”. He should be presenting this to her as, “This is what we want,” because if it’s not what he wants, then he shouldn’t have agreed to make the request.

And I’m curious about your statement, “My husband sounds like he wants her there and it would certainly make things easier for him.” How so? If she’s actually going to be helpful to him in some way, then you (both) need to take that into consideration, and weigh it against the fact that she’ll also be a hassle in some ways. But ultimately, it comes down to baby’s needs first, yours a close second (ahead of and not tied with your husband’s only because you’re going to be going through a lot more physically than he is), then husband’s, then everyone else’s.

71

Then welcome her at the door by saying “thank God you’re here. Can you do a load of laundry for me?”

You don’t have to treat her like a hired servant, but nobody in their right mind expects a new mother to entertain guests, let alone maintain a house within shouting distance of clean and organized. That’s what grandmas are for.

Yes, you can certainly intersperse a bit of cuddling the granddaughter while you take a nap, but if your MIL shows up expecting you to play hostess, a list of chores for her may be useful in disabusing her of the notion.

She’s been a mother before, successfully. Play on that - “I know you remember how exhausted you were after you gave birth to DH. And this is my first!”

Like i say, nobody expects you to be the cook and waitress right after giving birth. If they do, keep them busy enough to clear up that misconception.

I am coming off a different set of experiences - my mother lives for this sort of thing, by which I mean descending on the house and cooking meals and washing diapers and offering tea and sympathy to the new mommy as well as not letting her grandchildren touch the ground for the first year or so of life.

For heaven’s sweet sake, don’t play the hero. If your mother-in-law shows up, and you look at her with big, dewy eyes and say in a half sob “I’m so tired and so exhausted and I am so worried I will do something wrong - can you help me? You raised the man I love, and I want your granddaughter to love you like he does.”

What you want is for your MIL to go home and tell her friends - “the poor dear was so overwhelmed - but I got her settled down and taken care of. I’m sure she will be OK from now on.”

Sob on her neck when she leaves that you don’t know how you could have survived without her there.

Trust me, it’s hard to lay this on too thick.

Regards,
Shodan

72

That’s my mother in law as well. For years her idea of helping was to come over and cook a big meal where she’d throw gravy in the gravy boat that she insisted I own and has to be washed by hand. When I don’t want to do any work we eat takeout pizza using paper towels and throw away the pizza boxes, pop cans and paper towels at the end of the meal. She’d make MORE work because now I had more pots and pans to wash then I usually dirty in a week. But she felt like she was being very helpful because she made us all dinner.

She now does the cleanup if she comes over to cook. But seriously, it was YEARS of me giving gentle hints like “oh, gravy…we don’t bother with gravy because I hate the cleanup.”

Cuddling with a newborn baby is zero help. Newborn babies do just fine when you set them down. If you are planning to breastfeed, then feeding becomes a one woman job. What you need help with is LAUNDRY, making sure you and your husband are fed, and that the meals mess is cleaned up after. You need to make sure your trips up and down steps are minimized (either c-section or episotomy make the whole up and down the steps thing hard), which includes someone making sure you are getting plenty of liquids. You may want to spend hours in the bathtub (again, either c-section or epistomy they might tell you “lots of warm baths.”) You’ll want someone to run your errands for you for two weeks (groceries, more diapers) because you may find the trip from the Target parking lot painful. And you’ll need help keeping the house quiet for as much sleep as you can catch.

73

I’ll take it back one more step - your husband needs to fully, 100% understand that you are his WIFE, and you come before his mother. Hell, that’s even one of the things the Bible got right - children leave their parents and cleave to their spouse. I’m not getting that impression from what I’m reading here - he sounds like he still has a foot in both boats, and he needs to get fully into yours, Chipmunk.

I don’t think you’re selfish at all for not wanting to host guests when you are freshly home from the hospital with a new baby; I don’t want other people around when I have a headache, much less something as life-changing and stressful as a new baby.

74

When our first was born, my mom came down and stayed a few days. The first night at home, when the baby cried and cried (because we hadn’t figured out the difference between “I’m hungry” and “man, do I have to burp” (and that burping a baby isn’t itty-bitty taps on the back)), it was nice to have to a spare set of hands (once he had burped) to hold the kid while we got some sleep.

Of course, she didn’t bring a 15 YO male along, either, and was perfectly capable (and insistent) on cleaning and cooking.

75

Seconded. Not that you seem to be exercising veto power over anything (thus the thread), but even if you were, you’d damn well have the right to.

76

Yes, it would, I agree. If the one who’s giving birth and breastfeeding really wanted her mother or MIL to stay over and help out and the other parent said no, then the other parent wouldn’t get much support. That’s not actually sexist, though - it’d apply to lesbian couples too.

Agreed. I do have some sympathy for the MIL - she must be worried that she’ll get pushed aside, esp. with the other grandmother so much closer by. Hopefully your husband will be able to reassure her that she’s not being pushed out permanently.

But it’s not unreasonable to want to be able to walk around the house semi-naked for the first few days after giving birth, or at least the nights, and you can’t really do that in front of your MIL - and definitely not in front of the 15-year-old. Not having access to your living room while he’s sleeping in there does make having them stay seem a lot less practical while you’re getting used to a new sleeping/feeding/etc routine.

77

THIS. I made the mistake of once telling my mom “Oh, mr. hunter doesn’t want you to do X” and I will never ever do that again.

Also, everything Heart of Dorkness said (not quoting entire post for brevity).

I did. But if you don’t have the kind of relationship with your MIL where you can kind of sort of see doing that (which I do, although I would have been horrified had anyone told me that I would be doing that), then you’re better off with the MIL not around.

78

It doesn’t seem selfish to me because it sounds like you have kind of a small place and having guests, even if they aren’t demanding, is going to impact your level of comfort. If you were talking about a huge 6 bedroom/5 bathroom house I think it would be a little different and can see why MIL would feel a little insulted.

79

Responding to the OP without reading the rest of the thread…

You are not being remotely selfish. No one not resident in the home should be there when you, the mother, are bringing a newborn baby home for the first time unless you want them there. I cannot imagine going against your wishes in this. Hell, I can’t imagine considering going against your wishes.

80

Your experience also come from having picked up your kids at the airport (did you travel? I can’t remember.) As I recall, none of yours are bio, so you never had to put up with newborn baby, a hormonally insane wife with twelve stitches from a tear not being able to take any good painkillers because she was breastfeeding, plus your mother and her mother.

When my son arrived home, my mother in law was really helpful. Because a six month old baby does need entertaining and he took bottles. And he was jet lagged. I was tired, but I wasn’t exhausted, I wasn’t trying to breastfeed, I wasn’t in pain, I wasn’t hormonal, I wasn’t incontinent, I wasn’t passing blood clots the size of golf balls, and I wasn’t recovering from labor. It was easy for me to say “throw in some laundry, thank you - I couldn’t do this without you, I’m taking a nap because he is up all night” The bio kid was a whole different experience.

(Adopting kids is WAY easier.)