Would you be annoyed if your mil arranged a party for you one week after giving birth?

[Dramallama13]

Would you find it odd/unreasonable/annoying, if your mil arranged a party to show off the baby one week after giving birth?

Party consisting of all mils friends and family at her house in the evening. Without asking you if you actually wanted a party.

Yanbu - that’s ridiculous
Yabu - it’s kind and you should be grateful

You could go extremely Victorian and say you don’t want to socialise until you’ve been churched after the birth (obviously this was a misogynistic custom but it did at least act as a signal that the mother was now well enough to receive visitors - IIRC it was about a month to six weeks after the birth.)

She was probably still in hospital being looked after at 1 week postpartum! My mother was in 1985 after a perfectly normal second birth.

Of course you can’t plan to go to a party at that stage. One month, maybe. Three months, probably.

Hell no. I’d be a bit more amenable if it was just family but not random friends of your MIL. That is really just taking it much too far and at a week in you really might not be well enough to manage that anyway. I left hospital on day 5 with my first

i certainly wouldn’t be taking my baby to meet multiple people before having their vaccinations, too many bugs going round at the moment for a week old baby to fight off

I agree with the what would you think if your own mother did it test, but there's no way I'd be going to that no matter who organised it and if they'd tried to do it without speaking to me I'd be furious.

Tell her to enjoy her party but you won't be there. Your husband had better back you on this. I can't bear all that "She's just being nice, she's just so proud and wants to show the baby off". Get to fuck.

A week after giving birth I was half naked trying to breastfeed most of the time - this would not have been possible for me.

This. All of it.

Thing is, it’s much easier to ask your own mother if she’s on glue. You know the parameters of your own family’s madness and how to navigate them. Also, however loony she may be, your mother usually cares about you more deeply than your mil does.

This is exactly the time to stand by your boundaries.. And remind dh who he married....
Not my first dc but I got home(same day 12 hour discharge) and made a roast dinner for ils /dh and our other dc. Not one fucker lifted a finger.

Imo that was my first and only error with ils. And dh is long since been an exh..

I would focus on the unpredictability. You've no idea what state you and the baby will be in one week in. So making plans that involve a lot of preparation and people doesn't make sense.

Has she planned this for one week after your due date or is the baby here already? Because I was two weeks late so on her timeline, there wouldn’t even be a baby in attendance…

I need to know more details before deciding. I’ve never had an issue with anyone meeting my newborns. Whenever we visited either set of parents there would always be a little welcoming committee of Aunties and Uncles both related and unrelated who wanted to coo and give a gift for the baby etc. I actually preferred it to having all those people drop in to my house as and when it suited them. I didn’t have to make any drinks or tidy up and could just go home when we’d had enough, plus PIL and my parents fed us so no cooking either.
Edit to add the timing might be a pain, two of mine were still in hospital or just out at a week old.

Yes. I wouldn't want anyone to do this, not my MIL or my mother.

I've got a few kids and post partum wasn't ever a walk in the park and I just wanted to recuperate in peace. I appreciate others may have different opinions but that's my two pence.

I’d just say no, not yet. But then I didn’t see anyone other than DH and the HV for nearly a month after DS was born.

Utterly deluded. Your baby is not your MIL's property to show off. A week-old baby has a very vulnerable immune system and needs cautionabout exposure to other people. MILs can be lovely but occasionally need reminding that the baby's actual needs come before her imaginative desires.

I would say that is really kind but can we leave it a month?

I wouldn't be annoyed, but I would be baffled and definitely would not attend. If it was my mum I'd feel the same way.

Loads of people came to meet my DD when she was tiny, but in my house on my terms and it was 1 or 2 people at a time. A room full of people would have been way too much for me!

My MIL arranged a family bbq when my first was 6 weeks old I wouldn’t have gone to anything before that.
Like someone else has suggested just say you’ll pop in if you feel up to it, then don’t go if you don’t want to.
Or if you really don’t want to go and say it’s too early after the birth.
My MIL wouldn’t have done anything without checking though. I find that the most worrying aspect.
Another option depending on how your are feeding is to send your DH with the baby for an hour so everyone can say hi (depending on how far away MIL lives) and then he can leave. Obviously he may not want to go either but then he can decline the invitation.

Why is she pretending it’s for you? Don’t go. Baby business.

Or she could advocate for herself and say it doesn’t suit her to MiL?

I’d tell her she can have a party if she wants but you and baby won’t be attending.
Your newborn isn’t a game of pass the parcel

@Dramallama13that's a hard no on every front. Knock it on the head now. MIL from hell!

YES I would be fuming. In the evening your baby could potentially be over tired and over stimulated (although at a week old s/he may not know what time of day it is but you will!) and you should not be having to entertain MIL's friends with a one week old baby. That would be a hard NO from me, those first few weeks with your baby should be about you and your baby bonding with support from family to help you do that.

Yes, but my MIL would absolutely know that this shit would never fly. 😂 She was our first guest to meet baby when we had our eldest and that was at 10 days. If she’d even tried (which she wouldn’t), Dh would have put an end to it all very quickly.