I have not even come off the pill yet, though my husband and I are just waiting for me to qualify for full maternity rights at work and then we will start trying. But my mum, who lives a couple of hours away, has given up a place at university so that she can be around to look after my children when they are born. She did this without even talking to me, and to the detriment of her own career. She constantly tells me that I won't be able to work when they're born and that if I do it will be wrong for me to leave them with 'strangers' (i.e. using any form of childcare that isn't her). She smacks and shouts and threatens when she is angry, none of which I wish to do with my children. My views on discipline and behaviour are very different from hers. But she takes it extremely personally if I disagree with her over any thing - any tiny little issue at all, from what music I like to how I feel about my step-mother (as in, I don't think she's a complete bitch). Now she's looking at houses in my area because she wants to move up. It's not that I don't want her help - it's just that I don't want her taking over and making me feel that I have to bring up my children her way, and that I don't think this level of control is healthy. I like it that there are two hours between us! We have a good relationship most of the time but underlying it all is her desire to control me - a desire that she will never admit to, and which is a product of her insecurity that I will form other, stronger relationships with other people. I can't tell her not to move near me or she will be devastated forever and our relationship will never recover. I just don't know what to do.