I wasn't sure what section to put this in, so I thought I'd post here as I'm currently pregnant - sorry if this is in the wrong place.
I'm due to have my first child at the end of the year and we live about an hour away from both my parents and my husband's parents. My mum is over the moon and can't wait for her first grandbaby. She's retired and my parents have already decided they'd like to move closer to us so they can help out/ spend regular time with their grandchild.
My husband's mother hadn't talked much about the future so my husband asked her about what her plan was for spending time with her grandchild once the baby is born.
A little context on both mothers: MIL doesn't like driving long distances because she's scared she'll get lost (she's not very tech savvy and doesn't like the idea of GPS or using google maps). She has never worked but, in her defence, she has raised 3 kids as a single mum for a lot of the time with is obviously the equivalent (or more!) of a full-time job (all kids are grown up and moved out now). She lives in a council house and survives month-to-month off her new husband's paycheck. She has always been very emotionally generous with us and is a very sweet lady but does feel a little hard done by in life, which I think is fair to an extent. My parents have worked all their lives and are by no means rich but they have saved up enough to be reasonably comfortable in retirement and have their own property etc. They are also very emotionally generous but are able to also be generous financially, where they can (they paid for our wedding, for example, which we were so grateful for).
MIL replied to husband's question with "well, you'll have to drive the baby to me at weekends". Husband was a little upset by this and said that would be difficult with a newborn to make the journey every weekend (2 hour round trip). Her response was "Well we're not rich like [my] parents, we can't just afford to move house!". Unfortunately, this resulted in an argument between the two, which wasn't very pretty and they've not been on good terms since. It basically ended with husband (who can be a little hot-headed and say things he doesn't mean) telling his mother that she'd never get to see her granddaughter if she was going to be like that. (Husband is close with my parents and I think was also a little offended by his misunderstanding of their situation).
I can kind of see things both ways. I will admit, my parents do have it very easy compared to MIL and I can see that she'd be frustrated. I can see that MIL wants to spend time with her grandchild, which is wonderful, and ordinarily, we always drive to her to see her but I do think it may become exhausting making the journey every weekend with a tiny baby. We don't want her to move, we just want her to come to us sometimes but she's refusing. Her comments about my family's "wealth" (hardly!) have made us realise that she does compare herself to my parents (which is natural) and so I'm worried she'll be upset if my parents get to see the baby all the time and she only gets to see her once a month or so, because of the driving distance. Husband and MIL don't have a fantastic relationship and I think this will really drive a wedge between them. I've tried to make suggestions that she will be included in her Grandchild's life, like when she was talking about her car, I joked about her having a car seat in there soon and she got a bit huffy with me and said "I've raised my children already, I don't need to raise yours too". I was a bit baffled by this, as I really did mean it nicely and that we would trust her with our child and would love for her to spend time with her, not like I wanted her to raise my child. I don't really know what to do!
In this strangely tense situation, what would you do? Do you have any advice for managing difficult relationships with parents in law and between grandparents?
Thanks for taking the time to read, I appreciate this is a long post!