Am a regular but have namechanged in case some family member recognises me.
Just to set the context: Mum took early retirement several years ago. Dad still works full time and as he loves his job is likely to keep going till he's 65 (another 4 years). Mum is (again in my opinion and she says as much herself) a bit lonely and in need of some company during the days. She does not have any structured hobbies and spends the majority of her time pottering about the house and occasionally meets up with other friends who are retired.
We live 200 miles away from my parents who live in a pretty rural area. MIL lives abroad. We have no other close family living nearby.
DD is now 20 months. During my pregnancy and while I was on maternity leave (and even now) my Mum talks a lot about us moving closer to them so that she can 'do her bit' (her words not mine). When I was a child my Mum's parents looked after me and my cousin as our parents worked very much full time. They lived close to us, had us every day before and after school, all school holidays and some evenings. My Mum therefore does not have any experience of what it means to arrange any other kind of childcare. That cousin had a baby just after DD was born and her parents are very hands on with their grandson - look after him 2 days a week, extra if someone is ill, etc.
I work from home quite a bit and DP has arranged his hours to suit our family so DD goes to a childminder three mornings a week and the rest of the time either DP and/or I are at home with her. This suits us very well and we are lucky to be able to arrange it like this.
Whilst I was on maternity leave and since I have returned to work I have made a big effort to take DD to visit my parents and extended family quite a bit. DP works some weekends so it's almost always just me and DD who make the trip. When we are there my parents are pretty hands off. I do everything practical with/for DD - bathing, changing nappies and clothes, cooking, feeding, clothes washing if we are staying longer, etc. My Mum despite her spoken desire to have us closer spends a lot of the time behaving as though our presence is interfering with her routine and obessively clean/tidy house. She spends most of the time following around after DD tidying up behind her - a thankless task as DD then turns round and undoes all the tidying - and will not listen when I tell her that I will tidy up everything when DD goes to bed, but there's really no point in doing it constantly as you would spend your whole day doing nothing but that. Even when we haven't seen them for weeks on end, the first thing she does after we arrive is immediately start tidying up - barely even picks DD up for a cuddle. Her idea of playing with DD is to stick Cbeebies on literally from the moment DD is awake until the time she goes to bed. I am beginning to find it pretty stressful and sadly think our visits are going to have to be spaced out even more. She's not like that when she comes to visit us thankfully but that's very rare as she doesn't seem to want to stay here . Last year DP and I had a bit of a rough time with things what with one thing and another, he had some problems with his health and I was very down for a time, I still went to work and everything but was ill etc. At no point throughout any of this did my Mum offer to come and look after DD for a day or two, in fact she even cancelled one weekend she had planned to come and stay, Mum and I had planned on going to some event and in the end we couldn't go as DP was too unwell to look after DD so told me that she didn't think she'd bother coming after all.
I am an only child and my Mum simply cannot understand why anyone would want more than one child. She talks a lot to me about the negative aspects of having more than one - expense, sibling rivalry, etc. She is the middle of three girls and has a superficially ok but deep down very problematic relationships with both her sisters. It's becoming a bit like a stuck record now the way she goes on and on about how difficult it would be to have more than one and I am starting to think that's why she is not more hands on with DD - almost as though she is trying to 'prove' to me how difficult it should be so that I won't want any more. I really don't understand it. . When DD grew out of her Moses basket my parents offered to store it at their house as we didn't have enough room at the time. I casually asked my Mum to make sure it was somewhere dry as we would hopefully need it again sometime in the future and her response was 'if you think you're bringing two here in nappies, you can think again'. I wouldn't mind but she has probably changed DD's nappy about 3 times in 16 months so it's not as though she's elbow deep in nappies constantly. And I was pretty miffed as the reason I take DD there is for her to have a well-developed relationship with her grandparents and aunts and uncles, etc. not so that my mother can change her nappy ffs.
Anyway, what has made me particularly fed up at the moment is that our childminder has just told us that she will be going into hospital for a minor operation probably in October and will be out of action for about a month. We had planned a 2-week holiday in the summer but now it looks as though we might have to change our plans, use our annual leave separately to cover the time that the CM will be unavailable. I mentioned this to my Mum today - I was not expecting her to offer to help or anything - but her response was to sniff and then say, 'and you think you'd be able to cope with two'...am feeling pretty hurt at the moment.
All the talk about wanting us to live closer and to be honest I've got no idea why as she behaves like we are such a bloody burden most of the time.
It's such a contrast with MIL who is constantly asking when we're having another and when she is here is hands on to the point of obsession won't let me anywhere near DD at all. Sigh. Families.