Congratulations Conker!
Springy, are you around? Are you ok?
Frekkles - be careful what you wish for.
I too am profoundly deeply grateful for feminism.
My parents left yesterday, leaving me with a line full of clean washing, a fridge full of food, and even a weeded flower border! It was lovely to have my mum's help and advice as she showed me what to do and did loads of domestic stuff while I made fat handed attempts to get to grips with baby care, but as V's first week went on it morphed from tlc from my mum to 2 days in a row full family for afternoon and dinner (between 11 and 15 people). I didn't have to do anything in theory but in practice I was feeling horrible about it all as DP had no sense of being a host, having had his house taken over, and my parents were sending vibes as usual (never words) that they were expecting things to happen that weren't, and I couldn't do anything about it. On Saturday night I could barely sit at the table because I just wanted to cry that my baby's first welcome had just become a stressful standard family meal with everyone milling about and my parents presiding and no one to smooth things over like I usually do because I just kept crumpling in doorways with my legs giving way and there was always someone shouting in my ear and my sister was trying to dish out my baby for cuddles. We were trying to toast the baby and no one had sorted glasses out and DP poured the wrong number and my dad knocked one over and my dad kept going off to do some other bloody thing while everyone else had been gathered to eat and my sister's kids were shrieking and I just ran away and sobbed and wanted to shout "THIS! THIS! THIS is why I am not married!" DP went down and said on our behalf that we couldn't do this again the next day as planned (NOT BY US), if everyone wanted to be at our house the next afternoon and evening could we just put buffet food out. This meant that the next morning there was a big almighty faff while my mum started preparing complicated sandwiches at the crack of dawn. Why does everything have to be about food?
My dad has been really horrible about BIL and I could see him thinking things about DP and it was doing my head in. They are so kind but have no flexibiity at all about cultural differences, ie, not everyone wants to spend 40% of their life sitting at a table eating formal meals and not everyone is even aware that this is going to be expected of them. I couldn't hostess, DP had no sense of being a host in his taken-over house and has not been brought up to do it in that way anyway, and it was awful. The worst thing - the thing that really killed me - was that I felt my failure to do this right had somehow done Veronica some sort of disservice, and that seemed terrible and sad.
A really telling moment: when my niece was whining at the table on saturday, "I'm tired" my sister said "I told you not to get up too early today, there is nothing I can do to help you with this now, we have come all this way to have this dinner and we are not leaving till it is finished". I thought: HAVE THIS DINNER? Sod the dinner! I thought you had come to see your new niece and me, not have a bloody dinner! It is so fucked up.
Sorry about the long rant, I am an ungrateful little sod and I don't deserve lovely parents like mine who make dinner and bring champagne. Good problem to have!
DP's family were chill.
Right can you believe lovely little V let me post a whine that long?