I had a baby 7 months ago. SIL hasn’t met him yet. SIL lives 5 hours drive away. We haven’t been down to visit yet as we can’t afford a hotel and we can’t easily stay with relations at the moment as it is unsuitable for various reasons. I did tell Sil before she is welcome to visit us anytime and we would love if they came to visit.
Last week I heard from another relation that SIL had visited my city for a shopping trip and stayed overnight in a hotel about 30 minutes drive from our house. She brought two of her grown up children.
AIBU to feel a bit sad that she made the effort to travel for a shopping trip but never made the effort to visit the new baby? We haven’t fallen out or done anything to upset her so i feel a bit sad about it. I suppose I would be ok if she just hadn’t got around to visiting us yet as I could tell myself she might be busy with work or something - but the fact she found time for shopping in our ciry but not us is what makes me a bit sad.
We used to travel to SIL’s town almost every month before we had children - when her children were young. We used to take her children on days out and spend time with SIL which we all enjoyed. Also, there were lots of celebrations over the years were SIL made it be known that she really wanted us to make the effort to travel to her home to attend and we always did. We had SIL’s son stay with us for a week as well while he was attending a course. And SIL did come up to us a few times in the year before the baby was born as she had some meetings for work in our city and stayed overnight with us a few times.
I know DH will want to visit his family at Christmas but I almost don’t want to bother going with the baby if she can’t be bothered to travel to us.