I hope some grandparents here can share some insight on my situation! Hoping for a different perspective than what I might receive from mumsnet.
We are one of those couples that have been married for 10 years before entertaining the idea of having a child, as such we’ve lived all over but are currently 100 miles away from both sides of our families. As you’d imagine after 10+ years, we’ve gotten to know our PIL well and we’ve never had any problems. The dynamics between all our relationships started changing immediately after we announced the pregnancy and our daughter is the first grandchild on both sides. This in itself has probably made things tense as we are all learning how to navigate parenthood, as they are all also first time grandparents.
Where do I start?! Whilst pregnant there was the battle of buying baby essentials and I felt as though my PILs were trying to buy our child off of us, they were too generous but insisted on certain essentials, which we are immensely thankful for. However, they continue to spend a pretty penny on our daughter to a point that it’s OTT, it’s almost like they intend to buy my daughters affections when she gets older (she’s only 6 months at the moment, but I’m forward thinking the situation as some of their intentions will cost them 100s). They have also never asked us as parents what she might need or if certain things are ok with us, which is really the main thing that’s bothering me. Am I being too reserved here? I have no qualms with them spoiling our daughter (as grandparents do) but I definitely feel they should be asking permission for certain things when she’s older... (forward thinking here).
On the other side of things our relationship with my PIL has been quite tense, whilst pregnant my FIL said I had grown fat and was only an incubator for their grandchild on a few occasions and my MIL always comments on my weight with along the line of, “you look better than last time I saw you...” things have gone down hill from there. Apart from assessing my appearance they seem to think I’m invisible, in the sense that they used to call me but now only want to talk to my husband, not once asked how pregnancy, birth or post-birth was whilst my MIL loves to talk about how amazing and perfect her experiences were 35 years ago.... I am often talked over and I feel ignored. My husband is also quite bad at staying in touch with them and he doesn’t share information with them on our daughter readily so I email them every week with pictures and updates, which is more than a 5 min weekly conversation my husband provides. I don’t feel as though I’ve done anything wrong!
Nothing verbal has been passed between us but the itty bitty things have built up over time to a point that I sense a dislike towards me that wasn’t there before pregnancy and I’ve no idea why!! They don’t live close by so we only see them in person once a month for a weekend and during those visits they make my postnatal anxiety peak (which they also have no idea about as they do not appear to be interested in my well being). This is also linked to them doing things with our daughter without first asking us, personally I feel there is a lack of respect towards me as a mother.
My husband would prefer to move abroad so he wouldn’t have to deal with either parents.
Am I being irrational in how I am perceiving the situation?
How do you acknowledge Easter.
Good Morning Good Friday 29th March 2024
Shall we reboot our cartoons thread again? 😁