Please be kind because I know I sound absolutely awful but I'm looking for help to connect.
For some reason, when my DN was born (DH's sister's baby) I just felt so cold towards her. She is now 10 months. I made all the effort to ensure we saw SIL whilst pregnant, then as soon as baby was born (they live 2 hours drive away) and have seen her a few times. I feel so awkward. I thought that it was because I'm not maternal yet and it would come. But then my friends had a baby and I absolutely love him. I love playing with him, I love cuddling him, I love seeing him grow. So obviously there is some warmth in my cold heart.
I wonder if it's that I resent SIL and her DH, she hasn't necessarily done anything wrong but they are quite against my moral beliefs.
I am currently in therapy and one of my issues is 'rigid beliefs' which is what causes a lot of my OCD/Anxiety apparently. For example, they regularly make comments about nurses being unintelligent, not as good as doctors, they comment on ANYONE who is overweight for absolutely no reason, they make sweeping statements about certain religions / ethnicities (i.e. "I know that Nigerian nurses are lazier than British ones, just look at who has called in sick since coronavirus, it's an excuse, you don't see doctors doing that")
They have become uncaring towards anything in our lives or our animals who are our "children" (at present, maybe one day I'll have babies fingers crossed) - for example, they allowed them into a main road off lead when we were helping with the baby. They were lucky to not get hit by a car and didn't apologise. Our dog was attacked by another on the street and I was bitten when we went to get them groceries (to help out when they were exhausted as baby was just born), they didn't bat an eyelid when I came home covered in mud and bleeding. It was surreal.
I find SIL not particularly maternal so I cringe when they make baby noises etc, it feels so awkward. I then can't do it either because I feel awkward and cringe at myself. They tend to sit on their phones a lot and just let DN crawl around in another room until they hear a bang (last time we were there it was playing with bottles of wine that then smashed).
They're intelligent people, they love DN, they're good parents as far as I can tell (minus a few little incidents as above) and the first to have a child in DH's family. As a result there is a lot of attention on them constantly, for example, EVERY single message we send MIL gets a response with a picture of the baby. DH was always treated unfairly to his sister and it's caused a lot of issues along the way. For example, at Christmas everyone met up except him and he wasn't told or invited, they then denied it and said it was impromptu (his other brother lives in a different country).
Basically, I sound somewhat jealous(?), angry(?) but I really REALLY don't want it to affect my relationship with DN and I need to put it aside.
Has anyone felt like this before? DN has done nothing wrong and I want to be seen as someone she can rely on. DH is the same as me but doesn't particularly care about connecting.
I also don't want anyone to think I'm bashing SIL's parenting, I can't parent, I don't have children, I am just stating things that I think may contribute to my weird mindset.