That’s part of what I’m talking about, with him getting 100% on your side - if his mom tries to make him feel bad about his telling her something she doesn’t want to hear, he needs to say something like, “Look, mom, I’m sorry you feel that way, but Chipmunk is my wife, and that’s how we want it to be.” He needs to not only get on your side, but he also needs to make it clear to his mom whose side he’s on. I don’t think he’d have to do it very often before she’d get the idea that things have changed.
That said, I don’t want to attack your husband - just give you some stranger on the internet’s perspectives.
My mom sure feels like she is. (I’m single, and female, not that it matters). My brother is married with children, and the biggest issue with why the other grandparents get to see their grandchildren ten tims as often is geography. But still, it can happen.
That said, my parents were welcome when the new mommy and her babies came home from the hospital. Mom cooked up a storm, Dad helped with various home maintainance tasks . . .
New Mommy’s parents saw the babies first, but they couldn’t just take off a week to come stay. Daddy’s parents could.
And of course, the issue for this thread isn’t so much grandparenting, but the needs of the new mother, and while there are plenty of women who wouldn’t want their own mother around for one reason or another, if she does want her mother, that wish should be respected.
Only during that first couple weeks! Luckily, the recovery period for the new mother is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the grandkids’ lives, so if the MiL can’t accept that she doesn’t get to have exactly what she wants for even a couple of weeks, she’s an asshole.
OP, if you and your husband discussed what to do and the MiL was upset, he never should have even TOLD you that she said she, “felt sorry” for you if you couldn’t handle having guests. She pulled a judgmental BS guilt trip on him, and he passed it on to you when his entire job in dealing with his parents during this is to act as a buffer. Huge failure on his part, that.
There is the term “queen grandmother” which means what most people would guess, the maternal grandmother’s dominance over the paternal grandmother. There is a natural bias toward that situation since a mother will usually prefer comfort and assistance from her own mother.
But the key is, such rights and status should not be assigned by anyone except the person who gave birth to the baby, who is expected to breastfeed every 2 hours while recovering from major vaginal trauma and physical exhaustion compounded by chaotic raging hormones. If you’re not experiencing that, you don’t get to decide jack shit, you get to do what you’re told and be happy about it or leave the house.
For a week! Come on, can you handle being second fiddle for a week? (At least, that was the case for me. The OP is requesting a ONE NIGHT.)
My mother-in-law, by the way, was marvelous. She cooked and cleaned and fed the baby at 3am and said nothing negative about me staggering around the house mostly unclad and dripping milk everywhere. I am more grateful to her than I can say. And at this point my daughter probably likes her more n my mom But yeah, right out of labor, for that first week I wanted my mommy!
ETA: Act like my MIL and you will be venerated and your grandkids will grow up thinking you are a queen among women. Act suspicious and paranoid and not helpful and like your needs come before your dsughter in law who is recovering from childbirth and… Well , the chances are much higher that you will be treated as less than nobody.
As was said, she will when it comes to helping out the new Mom. And that often means that she will generally speaking, because women usually take primary parent duties, and women are more likely to lean on their own mothers than their mothers in law. There is something else working against Chipmunk’s MIL - distance. That isn’t going to help.
But, Chipmunk, you might want to establish the same sorts of boundaries with your own mother. Mine is wonderful, but when she throws out the “stuff I don’t need” (Really, Mom) or comes and takes my kids away with her for the weekend (“I have to come get them, we had plans”) it can be annoying. It can - don’t get me wrong - also be wonderful.
And I wouldn’t have my mother stay in my house overnight right back from the hospital - lactation consultant or not. She’d have driven my husband batty - it is his house as well. And all that stuff upthread about needing time as a nuclear family back from the hospital to say “this is US!” That would go double for my geographically close and somewhat boundary impaired mother.
Yeah, new mom has veto power over everything. Heck, sometimes she doesn’t even want her own mother! My mother was in the delivery room with my sister in law (along with my brother) because, while my SiL and her mother are close, their relationship is such that SiL was worried she’d say something she regretted to her mother while she was in pain. Because my mother is nothing if not calm in a crisis, SiL asked her to be there instead.
I’m sure it bothered her mother (talk about feeling like chopped liver!), but since she’s an adult who accepted that someone else giving birth is not about her, she got over it.
Well. I think Cosmic Relief is mostly talking about the first weeks here, what with the “breastfeed every 2 hours” and so on. And yes, I naturally turn to my mom for comfort and assistance, at all times, rather than to my MiL, which I suspect she’d prefer, being only human.
And I have to admit that my mom does consider herself to have dominance over my MiL. But you know what? She’s not my child’s parent. And my child has two parents, both of whom get a say as to what is going on (again, after the first week, when my needs rightly took precedence). Of the two of them (my mother and mother-in-law), my MiL is the one who understands boundaries and doesn’t push herself on me (or my kid) and who respects our wishes. And she’s the one whose visits we get super excited about and who never gets anything bad said about her (my husband is really good about not saying anything bad about my mom in front of the Little One, and I try, but I don’t always succeed).
Oh, and another thing is that if a man is doing half or a majority of the parenting, the likelihood that his parents will be the dominant ones goes up a lot. Every so often my parents come over and we all go away for a weekend except for mr. hunter – because I do the bulk of the parenting and mr. hunter likes to be alone. We’ve never done this with my in-laws and my husband, but mostly because he’s not interested in doing that. (I’d totally love this, actually.)
(Of course, if your daughter-in-law is irrational or mean herself, all bets are off, but hopefully your boys will not pick anyone like that.)
My thoughts exactly. Under these circumstances, You are not selfish.
When we had our first we made it clear from the outset that we wanted two full weeks by ourselves. So far, they have proved to be the best and happiest of my life. We were able to adjust to being a family and work it out for ourselves.
When the dust had settled we had family down and all was sweetness and light.
Now we are the type of people who like our space and we have always made that clear to our families. We don’t do family christmas or similar things so that edict coming from us was not surprising. It maybe that similar boundaries have never previously been set for your in-laws. It may be tough to do that now…but if not now then when?
Also, If this is your first child then you may well find that there is actually a lot less work to do than you think. You’ve already said your hubby is a good 'un so I’m sure you can get food prepared and the house tidied well in advance and then all you have to do for those first weeks is concentrate on you three. The house can fall to wrack and ruin around you for a while and then perhaps MIL can come and stay for a while and pitch in. Hopefully by then you’ll be on an even keel.
It sounds like you want your space, I think you are right to demand it and your husband has a* duty * (most definitely emphasised here) to back you up.
Consider the following
**say clearly that you want to be on your own for “x” days. Ask if you can have you mother on speed-dial for 24hr breastfeeding advice, and tell your MIL you’ll call her as soon as you are ready for guests.
**
If your reaction to that is “oooo! that would be great!” then I recommend you do it and hang the (probably minimal) consequences.
I don’t think you will regret having an empty house, you may regret having a full one.
What if your children don’t want kids. With your existence just poof! Disappear because you don’t GET TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT GRANDMA.
jeez Lousie. Get over yourself.
Here’s a friendly tip: the grandparents who make the biggest show of jockeying for status and spend the most time complaining about how unfairly they are treated, end up being the more unwelcome grandparents. Funny how that works. The baby is not a some kind of wierd animate heisman trophy you get to put on a shelf so others can see how Important you are. It’s a little human whose needs should come before your own.
If “less than nobody” means “my wishes don’t come first or second”, yes.
However, the cream has a way of rising to the top. In our home after the twins were born, we had a full-on reversal of the queen grandmother roles. If you can pull off the miracle of creating time out of thin air while appearing invisible, you’ll be drawn more closely into the circle. If you bring drama and baggage, expect to be pushed out.
I’m reminded of a grandma who thought she was doing a favor by bringing… a pretty houseplant. And then she took offense 2 weeks later when it died. Don’t do things that demand time without bringing any benefit. Cook dinner. Better yet, bring dinner with a smile and then disappear. Your efforts will be recognized and your day will come.
Your sons may never have kids. They may marry women (like my father did) without mothers. (My mother’s boundary issues have a whole lot to do with her own mother being very ill when I was born and dying shortly after my sister was born. I think she resents her mother’s absence, and is making up for that with her own children/grandchildren.) They may live in another state from her parents - or from you. They might be gay - in which case the whole “primary parent” dynamic is up for grabs - Hell, they might be straight but your son takes the primary parent role which would make you the natural touchpoint for “Mom, what do I do, the baby won’t potty train.” Your daughter in law might adore you. You may discover that your grandchildren are little brats you can barely stand. You may discover yourself where my mother in law was - my brother in law married a woman who was such a bitch to his family that the relationship between her and her son was pretty much non-existent (they have since divorced and there were no children - thank god).
I have a number of friends where the grandkids are far closer to his parents than hers. Sometime due to dysfunction in her family, sometimes due to geography, sometimes just due to them being better at being grandparents.
Yeah, based on your posts here, I suspect you might. Not because you’re the paternal grandparent, though.
Self-entitled, whiny brats with delusions of martyrdom are unpleasant to be around and make crappy grandparents. If you choose to be that type of person, then don’t be surprised when your DiLs (and/or your sons) don’t want to put up with your crap.
If you’re going to do this, you’re just going to have to let the chips fall where they may. There just isn’t a way to tell an in-law they can’t stay in your house because you can’t handle having guests while simultaneously inviting a blood relative to stay at your house without it coming across as “I only want my real family around, not the likes of you. Ick.”
Now, if your mom was talking about sitting with you in the hospital and sleeping in one of those fold-out chairs, that would probably be less of an issue. There’s no hint of it being hospitality of any kind, for one thing, it’s enough of an imposition that it’s natural your birth family would be asked to do it rather than an in-law, plus it’s uncomfortable enough you mother-in-law wouldn’t want to do it herself anyhow so there’s no competition.
Or, as other people have suggested, have your mom offer advice over the phone and be ready to come over if need be, but stay at her own house. That clarifies and emphasizes that if your mom is there during the night it’s because she’s a lactation consultant, not because she’s your mommy and therefore is far more special and important than any mere mother-in-law.
Does it really matter if her mother is “more special and important” for a week or two? It’s still the recovering mom’s prerogative to get help that will actually be help, which id doesn’t look like MiL is going to provide. It seems silly for her to deprive herself of what might be needed aid in order to preserve the feelings of someone who obviously doesn’t give a shit about hers.
Also be VERY prepared to have your husband not understand THIS at all. HIS mother has to sleep in a hotel but YOUR mother can’t sleep in her own bed which isn’t far? What exactly is she going to do for you at 2am that he can’t or his mother can’t.
I know, she can help you try and move your boob into a position that the baby latches and try and tickle the baby in such a way to get her/him to suck. But your husband probably not going to get this, nor understand why this might be so damn important at 2am and can’t wait until 7 am. And she can comfort you in that way only a girl’s mom can. But, like he has to realize that you outrank his mother in terms of whose needs need to be met, he now gets to outrank your mother in meeting those comfort needs at 2am.
That he’s not already completely on his wife’s side in this is a massive failure. Getting butthurt by not acknowledging the reality that his wife’s mother and his mother are NOT equal in this situation would make him a ridiculous man-child. I’m hoping he’s not that much of a mama’s boy.
This is what I was trying to say, only Cosmic said it much better. There’s one grandma who is loved and respected and thought wonderful by all members of our household more than the other, and… it isn’t my mom. And it is not least because she thought of our family and what we needed and didn’t spend time worrying about being thought “less than nobody” just because people weren’t catering to her every whim concerning her grandbaby.
