Need some perspective: my brother's and my baby

[Sunland]

Hi guys, I am getting increasingly pissed off And need some perspective. I have a 7 month old baby. He has two uncles, my brothers who according to my parents are very excited to be uncles and ask them about him a lot. Everytime I speak to my mother she says how excited they are and that they have been asking about my son. This really upsets me as I don't understand why they aren't asking me about him. They have never really been close to me, rarely take an interest in me and barely talk to me (especially the oldest brother). I just feel royally pissed that they just aren't bothering to even text me to ask how he's doing, but instead asking my parents. I feel upset that having never put any effort into having any kind of positive interactions with me or barely speaking to me they feel they are now ready to be fantastic uncles to my son. At the same time I feel guilty that I don't want to cut my son off from a chance to have connections to relatives as we don't live near my in-laws. Anyway I would be interested in hearing advice even if it's telling me I am being silly about this.

Thanks

Thanks all. I think I am probably being oversensitive about it. I think on reflection it's upset me because I have felt very isolated in this pandemic with my baby. I would have liked some support from my brothers, even if they just asked how I was. I did up until a few months ago send regular pictures and videos and have asked them how they are but its always is very one sided. I guess they are under no obligation to give a shit about me. My mum said today that they have been ordering gifts for my son from Amazon. I guess I should just be grateful and happy for him to be thought of. I just don't want to be invisible anymore or just DC's mum.

PS sorry for the grammar error. I

Shouldn't go on about it but the thread title did make me go a bit 'wtf'....

@Sunland, how old are your brothers? I may be wrong, but I sense they may be teens and still living at home? Early 20s best? As others say, sounds a classic case of mum trying to smooth it all over, when younger people generally don't care much for baby news.

My brothers are in their 30s

@YoniAndGuy

Yes your mum is quite possibly over-egging.

Tackle it though.

'Are they? Lol, that one might just not work out if they don't seem the slightest bit interested in ever getting in touch with his mother, haha. Let them know we're about if they actually do ever want to get to know him.'

They won't have the option to bypass you, is the short answer, if you don't want that.

If it's a slightly more complicated family dynamic in that you do think that your mum would collude with them in bypassing you, because they have an issue with you - simple. Your mum doesn't get your son alone either.

YOU are in the driving seat here.

Please don't do this. It is passive aggressive and immature putting your mum in the middle.

You seem to want your db to have a good relationship with your son, if that is the case forget the messages your mum is giving you. You are all adults now and if you want that you need to fix your relationship with him independently.

Stop talking through mum, call your db up ask about him and his life, ask him if now restrictions are lifting he'd like to meet up and see his nephew. When you meet up drop into the conversation you love your ds having uncles for role models. Then build on it from there by keeping in touch and talking.

Agree with the others; it's what your dm would like rather than the reality.

Dm says: "Oh your brothers can't hear enough about your baby, they're always talking about him and how exciting it is to be an uncle."

Reality:
Brother 1 to brother 2: "Do you find that all dm can talk about is the baby? I don't think she even heard that I had a promotion at work because she was too busy telling me that the baby blew a raspberry for the first time last week."
Brother 2: "Yeah! I just say, 'that's nice' each time in the hope she'll talk about something else, but it doesn't work. Don't mind hearing a bit, but it's the whole conversation."

Surely you've had that situation before?
Someone's told you about someone, and then you meet them and the reality is not what you've been told. Proud grandparents can be particularly prone to this.

But if she's saying that sort of thing to them too, ("Oh! Your ds is so pleased you're uncles now, she's so keen to do everything with you) then you may want her to tone it down. Nothing makes me less likely to want to join in than being pushed into a role that I'm not sure I want.

I am guessing your brothers are child free. Up until I had a child myself, I honestly didn’t understand children, and even less so babies. I was really not interested in talking about or trying to get to know babies. Chances are that once your son is a few years old, your brothers will get more out of knowing him. I doubt they are asking loads about your son, but that’s pretty normal.

@HollowTalk

my brother's and my baby

Arrrgh if ever there was a misplaced apostrophe!

I think your mum is just being kind to you, OP.

I thought this was going to be a very different thread!

To be honest if they're not asking you they're probably not asking. Your mum might be telling you what she thinks you want to hear, or what she wants to be true.

If it makes you happy then carry on sending the occasional picture/video and brief update to them. Don't go to miles of effort and don't bother at all out of any sense of duty. Sounds like your mum fills them in anyway ...

I would hazzard a guess that both brothers look at the pics and do take info in about their nephew but just aren't excited or interested enough to request info or initiate contact themselves. That is ok.

Your mum is either consciously making it up completely that they're asking loads of questions to make you feel better, or is a bit deluded over their polite interest.

I have no brothers or sisters myself so don't know how i would feel about direct blood nieces or nephews, but going by DH (who has 3 siblings) his level of real interest in his DB's and DS's kids is quite small Even though he's a great dad to his own kids.

We, like your brothers, are quite happy with MILs constant updates about nieces and nephews and watching vids put on the family chat groups.

Your family sounds a bit like mine. My DM really, really wants us to be the sort of family where the siblings are good friends too. When we had the DC she really wanted my brothers to be involved as much as possible- she even expected that they would be godparents to them (the fact that we are not really religious did not stop her at all). In reality we are not at all close and they had no interest in my children. My DM was constantly telling me that my brothers wanted to see the children/had been asking about them/wanted me to send photos etc. I'm pretty sure she even bought gifts for the children and pretended they were from my brothers (whenever we visited she claimed one of them had dropped a gift off and asked her to wrap it) and got them to sign cards that she bought (the envelopes were always in her writing).

OP, my MIL does this to me every time i see her. 'SIL can't wait to meet DD' i called her out on it last time she said it. Oh really? i've not heard from her since DD was born 5 months ago, not even a congrats after the birth. She's stopped saying it now. It was her way of trying to get us to become closer Your mum probably means well, but i'd be inclined to ask her to stop saying it.

Definitely mum wanting you to feel close to your brothers. If they were bothered, surely they’d contact you directly?

Perfect eye-catching title there op
It's just wishful thinking on your mum's part. When she does this again challenge it.

Being charitable, your brothers might ask after you and your ds. I know I often ask my dm if she's heard from my db. We rarely phone each other just because we're busy and neither of us are chatty types.

I’m late twenties with a DB in his early twenties.

We have always been very close and in theory he adores my DS but since I had him last year my DB calls/texts me a lot less. Even less now Im heavily pregnant again.

At first I thought it was the pandemic but a few weeks ago I asked him and his answer was ‘mums always saying how busy you are and how much you’re struggling with no time to yourself. I don’t want to pull at you, I’d probably ring just as you’ve fallen asleep or in the middle of feeding/changing him and it’ll stress you out. I know if you had the time and energy to talk you would call me. So unless there’s a reason I try not to call you because you’ve got a lot going on’

Genuinely wasn’t expecting that at all. Maybe your brothers feel the same x

I think you've figured it out OP. It's more about how you'd like relationships to be and by the sounds of it your mum would too.

I don't think it has anything to do with them being childfree or not or their ages. Lots of us with kids don't really find it interesting to talk about kids..even our own much!

Many men are pretty shit at keeping in touch with family etc, and very often aren't in the slightest bit bothered about babies and all that stuff. I strongly suspect that they aren't going out of their way to ask your mum about your dc at all. I reckon that they chat on the phone and your mum happens to mention your dc and says "I expect you are really looking forward to seeing the baby aren't you?" and they say "Yeah".

It's not being passive aggressive. It's challenging something that isn't true.

Same with the amazon gifts. Ffs. That's where you reply 'Really? I've not heard from them. That's a shame they didn't get in touch, I could have told them what DS likes/what we need.'

Challenge it.