I've name changed to try to avoid being outed so my story may siund familiar as I've posted about this before.
DH & I married at 22 and I had a reasonably good relationship with my inlaws until I fell pregnant with my first DC just after my 24th birthday. What became evident is that the only reason we got on is because I'm a people pleaser and on reflection, they loved this. Anyway, once I fell pregnant, they began to have loads of opinions on everything. The first conflict was over our choice of godparents which they were unhappy with. Once DC1 was born, the problems worsened. I chose to breastfeed and it was extremely tough as DC1 was very colicky and would often feed for comfort but she would also throw up whole feeds so I fed on demand which meant i spent a large amount of time feeding her. She gained weight perfectly though and had even gained weight by 5 days old. MIL was calling DH and telling him I needed to FF as I wasn't producing enough milk. She was calling him all the time saying this. I basically quickly realised that I was never going to be able to please them unless I did everything the way they wanted and there was no way I would do that. MIL was doing things like lifting my baby out my arms and at one point took her off me about a minute before midnight at new year. I didn't ask for her back because I thought, she wouldn't do this. Surely she knows I want to cuddle my firstborn at the bells, surely she'll give her back, but midnight came and she did not.
Anyway, there is so much more to the story but I think you'll get the gist. Basically DH called MIL and FIL and told them about the things that were happening which were upsetting us. This is when everything went south. FIL was devastated by my husbands phone call and MIL went off the phone and refused to contact DH for a whole month and when she did, she just acted like the phone call never happened. They took no ownership of any of the issues and we were just expected to move on without resolving anything.
That was 3.5 years ago. Basically his parents have been very cold to me ever since. We live in a different county to our families so I've continued to take DC to see inlaws when we visit, even though it's not the nicest atmosphere to put myself into. They are civil to me but there are still many problems. They undermine our parenting frequently but DH pulls than up for this. We now have more than one child and my parents have a bigger house which massively accommodates us better. I have a chronic illness where stress is a contributory factor so while we're visiting this time, we've decided to stay at my parents.
My MIL called DH and said she was hurt we wouldn't be staying with her and if we have a problem with them we should just say. DH said it's because of my health and moving from house to house with DC is harder work but we'll do lots of day trips. They aren't happy about this.
I find it a bit of a joke that she's said we should just say if we have a problem. We tried that and it's made everything worse.
I want DC to have a relationship with them, despite how I've been treated. Should we just try to not stay at their house again but continue to visit and never really have a sit down conversation about our issues? I think if we try to sit down and explain things with them, it'll make everything worse and could result in DC never seeing their grandparents and DH never seeing or talking to his parents again and I don't want that to happen. Is that the best way forward? When they question why we're never staying should we just say it all boils down to my health, which is true, and just not mention all the other stuff?
I really appreciate your help with this.