My parents emigrated to Spain last October when my Dad retired, just as I found out I was pregnant with DC2.
They have never really been hands on grandparents - my mum is almost scared of my DD at times (i.e if I put my DD on the phone to her my Mum just goes silent, she can muster a hello but does not do toddler conversation), She's not maternal by her own admission, I am an only child - both my parents were career people and I had quite a distant relationship with them at times growing up.
Anyway this is how they have always been and although it makes me sad sometimes especially looking at DH's close knit family, I accept it, I'm 31 fgs! - So I was positive for them in emigrating at the time but then as my pregnancy has continued I have felt more and more let down by them. DH has his own business and it eats up all of his time - we are struggling financially as well so that doesn't help - but I have been very ill at times during the pregnancy - I had flu for 6 weeks, bronchitus where I was vomiting blood every half an hour, awful sinusitus where I was kept in hospital for terrifying brain scans as they thought I had a blood clot the pain was so intense........ And the whole time I was completely alone - DH always having to work (he works weekends too) or having to babysit DD when I was in hospital. There is NOTHING worse than being really ill, pregnant and in sole charge of a 2 year old...it just felt like I couldn't get myself better.
Anyway - it's my MIL who has been supportive during these times, not my own mum. My MIL is in Ireland by the way and it's about the same kind of journey time from there to London as it is from Spain. She came for 2 seperate weeks and has jumped on a plane the minute we asked, and i don't like to ask but I was desperate. I asked my own mum and to say the response was begrudging would be an understatement. They're totally wrapped up in doing up their villa, it feels like she's happy to talk to me about life and my DD and general other things, but then becomes really animated when we talk about her new life. That's all she's interested in. Even when I was really upset one day on the phone to her because of a variety of things she still just happily started trilling about everthing they'd done to the villa since I last saw it in November.
They have only been over once to see me since they went and only because it was of benefit to them (they had other reasons to be back in the uk other than seeing me or their grandchild)
They're coming over for the birth which is due 20th June. They're only staying a couple of days so as not to get in the way...fine.... so I had asked if they could come over a couple of days after the birth so that we could have all pulled ourselves together a little bit and I could be over that baby blues vulnerable stage......but no, because my Dad has a cricket match to go to on the 17th they're coming then and they'll just sit in my house waiting for me to give birth and then meet the baby and then go again and I'll probably not see them again unless I go out there. She was very prickly that I couldn't go out there in March/April (Ill, no money, pregnant....)
I'm expected to be going out there in August, alone because my DH can't take any time off, so I will have just given birth and will have a 2 year old and a newborn to look after by myself on the plane. Not to mention all the shit that comes with the early weeks of looking after a newborn when I actually get to theirs.
Maybe I am being really unreasonable/hormonal. I keep flitting between believing that they don't owe me anything and that we all have to stand on our own 2 feet in this life, to feeling so hurt that she couldn't be any less interested in me or my kids or supporting us a little by giving us a break from our DD now and again while DH makes his business a success. I feel like telling her to shove her fucking villa.
I'm a very different person and a different kind of mum than her I suppose and I look at my DD and it's my instinct to put her first before my needs and it probably always will be. I'd drop everything to look after her and her toddler if she was alone and incapacitated.