And I would hope that she isn’t such a mama’s girl that she can’t do without her mother for eight hours.
If a girl needs her mom - her husband has also undergone a MAJOR LIFE CHANGE. And if her recovery is rough - if she is sleeping a lot, or in a lot of pain, or has PPD, he’s going to be looking to HIS mother (just like she’d look to hers) for “help me figure out this diaper thing” and “does this cord look ok, its really gross?”)
Her mother is a lactation consultant, lives close enough to go home easily if needed, will likely be helpful, and has mentioned that she only wants to be there if needed. His mother lives far enough that if she doesn’t book a hotel room, it might not be easy to leave, is unlikely to be helpful based on past experience, is bringing a 15 year old boy, and is likely to be offended if they need her to leave.
Even if the person recovering from a major physical event (and possible surgery) didn’t kind of have priority here, the personalities described by the OP make the two grandmothers vastly different in terms of how useful they are going to be to a new family.
These are practical considerations as well as emotional ones. As for the emotional side, the new mother is undergoing the vast majority of the work and trauma in the birthing process, especially if they’re breastfeeding, so she makes the call. If her husband pushed the baby out through his penis then fed it with his breasts, the call would be his.
This is true. However, truth and logic don’t always apply in emotional situations. If she doesn’t want her MiL there and then has her mom come stay the night there is no way her MiL isn’t going to interpret that as some sort of hatred toward her even if the mom is a pediatrician or something. For the sake of an easy next 25 years it might be in chipmunk’s best interest to have her mom come over for a couple of hours and then send her home knowing she is only a quick phone call away instead of asking her to stay and telling MiL that she can’t.
“You aren’t being selfish at all” is something I read several times. It’s not 100% true, but it is mostly true. In fact the OP here is being if anything, not selfish enough. She’s considering her hostess duties (an unselfish regard for guests’ comfort) at a time when most people would expect her to be thinking of her own needs. My advice (as a mother of a now teenager) is - be selfish. Not excessively so, but do what you need to, think of yourself - taking care of yourself so you can take care of your baby and recover your health.
After that, think of your husband. If he needs his mom, I think that’s legitimate. A parent can be very comforting. Becoming a parent yourself for the first time can bring on insecurities that are often best assuaged by the person who raised you. Yes, the mother has more physical impact, but people who completely dismiss the emotional and physical impact on a first time father are being ignorant (look up “couvade”). Our new baby was hard on my husband, too - being a father takes it out of a person too. In many cases, the first few weeks with a newborn are more debilitating than the birth process (not if there’s a complication or surgical pregnancy, but otherwise, it definitely can be). He is also going to feel he has to pick up the slack for the mother when she’s physically weak, and caring for a convalescent is also very stressful. So, disregard all the advice about “letting him have it”. It won’t help you or the baby, and might hurt your relationship.
Only way after all that is the priority of taking care of extended family members. Your mother and his mother will, with any luck, want to take care of you instead. I’d also strongly suggest to your husband that the 15 year old does not need to come. A 15 year old can in some cases take care of himself; if not, maybe one of your family members can go baby sit him while your mother in law is out of town? He can come visit his new niece in a few months, when there’s a school vacation and she’s old enough to be engaged by a teenage uncle. Perhaps if it’s only your mother in law, even the small residences of your relatives might be enough to house one person on a sofa or air mattress, especially if she’s at your place most of the day and only there at night.
It’s not just that she’s her mom, she’s a lactation consultant. Having a lactation consultant on the phone is not the same as having one by the bedside. There is no lonelier or more frustrating feeling than being stuck with a frantic newborn at 3 am and not being able to feed properly. I know, one bottle won’t kill anyone, but it’s not the point. I can only speak for myself, but I would have loved to have that kind of help from anyone, let alone my mom.
Just to show that everyone’s experiences with a new baby are different, I did have my mom stay over when our baby came home from the hospital, and I WISH LIKE ANYTHING she was a lactation consultant. She was pretty helpful anyway, though.
For me, sending her home at night wouldn’t have been as helpful, because I seemed to need the most help (with breastfeeding, with recovery, with personal care, with everything) at night. You’re really not going to know what your needs and preferences are until you are in the middle of it. It’s probably easier to send your mom home in the evening if you are feeling good than to call her in the middle of the night to ask her to come over if things are going poorly.
If you feel like you want your mom there, then have her. I don’t think you need to send her home at night just for the sake of form. It might be kind to frame it to your MIL as that you need a lactation consultant, but there’s nothing wrong with needing your regular old mom, either. When Mr. Chipmunk has a major medical procedure, he can have his mom come stay.
The only absolute I can see in this entire thread is that you do NOT want or need a 15 year old boy hanging out in your house, even if you have a great relationship with him otherwise.
Seconded.
Look, now is when you set the tone. If your mother-in-law is the type of person that is going to bear a terrible grudge and hate you for the next 25 years because she wasn’t invited to stay the night with you and your newborn, but your lactation consultant mother was, then let’s face it, you two were probably never going to be best friends in the first place.
When I gave birth, my mom lived 2000 miles away, and my mother-in-law was in the same town. My MIL assumed she would be invited to attend the birth. She assumed she would be phoned with hour-by-hour updates about how labor was progressing. She assumed lots of things.
I didn’t want her there at the birth. I didn’t have the time or energy to phone anyone hourly during the birth, and I needed my husband there with me for support, so he wasn’t available for frequent phone calls either.
She was upset, but she got over it. We’re not best friends, but we were never going to be best friends anyway. We get along OK. She’s a good grandmother and we’re on speaking terms. But she knows that when it comes to making decisions for my family, my opinion weighs a lot more than hers does, and she doesn’t get to have her own way just because she’s the grandmother. Some people reading this may find this a shitty attitude for me to have, or cruel or unkind, but it’s saved me a lot of angst and drama over the years.
Breastfeeding can be insanely difficult. Don’t make it more difficult than it has to be just to please a woman that you will likely not be able to please anyway. Don’t add unneeded stress to your first few weeks with your child just because you have in-laws with boundary issues. Be polite, but firm, and let them know that you and your husband get to make the decisions about what happens in your household, and you’ve decided that they may stay in a hotel if they like, but the house is off-limits for the first few weeks. Or however long you decide.
When I had my first newborn, I spent most of my waking hours wandering around the house with a half-buttoned shirt, stained sweatpants, and bed hair. If I’d had to look presentable or worry about keeping the house neatened up because I had a houseguest, I think I would have lost my fracking mind. Do not do this to yourself if you don’t think it will be helpful.
Whoever is the most supportive and considerate of the new mommy and the new baby is the best grandma.
Whether it’s your daughter or your daughter-in-law, if you show up prepared to do housework and cook and be pleased with everything, you will be welcome. At least in any sane household. Not that any household with its first baby can be described as “sane”.
Regards,
Shodan
And yet hundred of thousands of women do just fine with their lactation consultant a phone call away…most of us have a lactation consultant who won’t drop what they are doing and get into the car and come to our homes. We have to call - and they often aren’t available at 2am. And yet, somehow, we get through this.
I had TONS of issues breastfeeding - to the point that my daughter was almost admitted to the hospital for dehydration. I worked EXTENSIVELY with a lactation consultant to try and establish latch. If she is desperate at 3am, she can call her mother and her mother will come over. Having her mother stay over “just in case” is an amazing Fuck You to her mother in law and her husband now that she has told her husband that she doesn’t want his mother to stay over.
Yes, I know the reasons are different, but this is not a matter for logic. Mom can drive in if she needs help. Because her marriage is more important than one 3am feeding.
This times 1,000,000.
The 3 am feeding is more important than MiL’s ego, though, or should be. It sounds from the OP that the best thing for her and the baby might be to have her mother there rather than her MiL. Why isn’t the MiL’s top priority getting new mom and baby taken care of in the best fashion possible? *More importantly, why isn’t that her husband’s top priority? *
Is there any reason why MIL needs to know Mom is there at all?
Oooooooooo! there be dragons. You just know that MIL will find out. And anyway, why burden yourself with secrecy?
I do sympathise with the OP, there isn’t a sure-fire way of negotiating this without hurting someone’s feelings and making someone uncomfortable. So that being said, try and make sure that the mother-to-be is the one most likely to get what she wants.
I say be firm, state absolutely what you want and how you want it to be and be clear why. The OP does not need to make any apologies, nor bend over backwards. If she wants space then everyone has to go with that, non-negotiable. If family members can’t respond graciously to simple request for a few days space then they need setting straight on a few things, the sooner the better.
Well, that’s true, but there have been plenty of things in my life that I have gotten through, but would have been better if I had some direct assistance. Especially if it was so easily available.
I don’t think the OP, or anyone, has to make excuses or tiptoe around the fact that it is the most useful to have the people providing assistance be those with whom she is the most comfortable. That sounds like it is her husband and her mom, so her husband and her mom should be there.
Amen!
Yeah, you need to work with husband on setting some boundaries. But it would be better to avoid hurting his feelings in the meantime. He’ll probably understand better after the fact than he does now, anyway.
My feeling about the mom/MIL thing is, don’t make any definite plans.
Whenever you’re ready to send MIL home for the day, Mom can leave also. She lives close, right? That’s a great way to encourage slow guests out the door anyway. Time for everyone to go!
So Mom goes home for a bit, gets a chance to rest or whatever, and you/baby/hubby get a chance to be alone too.
Whenever you need Mom to come back over, give her a call. If that’s an hour later, fine. If it’s 3 am, fine. MIL doesn’t need to know anything but that you needed your lactation consultant, so she came back later. (If that, but info like this does tend to slip out.)
Another vote for telling hubby that 15yo doesn’t need to be there, also. Leave him home or with friends or whatever and he can visit later, when things have calmed down. No reason for him to sit around bored for days.
But the three am feeding is NOT more important than her husband’s feelings or worth causing resentment in their marriage. Why isn’t that HER top priority? One night of feedings is one night of feedings - if baby has problems with that, they should have been resolved before 10pm (and probably aren’t going to be resolved at 3am by a lactation consultant). Her marriage is suppose to last for the rest of their lives.
Chipmunk, talk to your husband about it. I would not plan on having my mother over - i.e. I’d say “if I have trouble breastfeeding, would YOU mind (not his mother) if my mother (the lactation consultant) stayed over.” That also reserves your right to tell your mother “yeah, but you know, I am going to give it a try at 3am and if it doesn’t work, I’m going to SLEEP and try again at 5am, and if that doesn’t work - we’ll try again when you get here.” But if your husband has a mother who is being difficult and a wife who delivers ultimatums regarding her own mother - he’s going to have fertile ground for the “your wife is a bitch who hates me” speech from his mother.
Ultimately, no matter what I do, I am going to offend MiL. I think I have to accept that. At this point I just want to keep her from laying it on Mr. Chipmunk when I do. I like the idea of having my mother go home but let her know that I will be calling in the middle of the night if/when I need her. That makes it seem much clearer that she is there because of her expertise. It is true that the baby would survive the night without a LC, but it is an advantage that I have available so I would like to use it.
I know my mother won’t be offended. She already told me that I could tell her to fuck off and she would understand. She will also be in the labor room and told me I could tell her to leave if I decided that was what I wanted. I guess that that is the advantage of having a mom who has been around a lot on new families. She can certainly be a bit overbearing sometimes, but in this situation, she gets it. I wish MiL got it the my mom does. It would make things much easier.
As for 15 year old BiL, I have planted the seed with Mr. Chipmunk regarding his staying home. We will see how that goes, but I honestly have a lot less anxiety about him being there. It is certainly a compromise I am willing to make if it makes thing easier. I agree that he probably won’t enjoy it much, but that is not really my problem. I am also hopeful that his presence will mean a shorter visit. (I know that sounds terrible, but there it is.)
See what happens when you have unprotected sex? Nosy inlaws and know it all dopers!
Seriously! I should start speaking at high schools 