FYI this is a long one and if you stick with it I want to thank you for listening. My LO is 5 weeks old and I’m mourning the newborn bubble I should have had. This is more than likely going to be my only child, and even if they aren’t I feel like my in-laws have totally ruined my experience and I feel really tearful and depressed when I think about it. Since my LO was born they have been overbearing and had next to no boundaries and I’ve started to resent my partner because of them. My LO was born around 4am and because I had to have an emergency forceps delivery I had to go to a recovery unit post surgery. At 8am that same morning my in laws were pestering my partner to come and visit in hospital. I was still in recovery at this point where no visiting was allowed but they kept insisting we ask the midwives to make an exception. I was probably feeling the most vulnerable I have ever felt in my life. My LO was fresh out the womb, I was numb from the boobs down, bleeding onto an incontinence sheet and I had a catheter in. Plus I was exhausted from a long labour. The in-laws messaged my partner telling him we were being malicious by not letting them visit.
I had to stay in hospital for 24 hour monitoring and that evening my partner gave in and allowed them to visit which I was not happy with. The next day I was discharged around 6pm. My partner had asked my in-laws to go to the house and put our heating on so we weren’t going home to a cold house. What I didn’t expect was for them to stay there until we arrived home. I was really quite overwhelmed at this point and went in the shower and just cried and cried.
My partner had 3 weeks paternity and I can honestly say his in-laws were over our house every single day apart from maybe 4/5 days. One of those days being Christmas Day which they wanted us to go over to them for but we said no. They then completely ignored my partner’s calls on Christmas Day because we kept it just the 3 of us in our own home.
My mother in law has zero boundaries, she keeps kissing my LO on the face even though I’ve asked people not to. One day as my MIL was leaving, my LO was on the breast feeding, she only went to kiss their head while they were attached to my boob! Thankfully I think she saw my face and decided against it!
She wears extremely powerful perfume and when I take my LO back off her I can smell it on them. I then bath my LO as soon as possible because I just think that can’t be good for their little lungs.
My sister gave me the pram my mum had bought her for my nephews and I’d planned on using that. My family are not very well off financially and my mum had saved along time to buy that pram for my sister so it was sentimental for me to have it and use it. But the MIL (who is well off financially and likes to show it) had to go out and buy this ridiculously expensive pram for us as a surprise. This also really upset me because now I’m stuck with this big bulky, impractical pram that doesn’t fit in my car properly instead of the pram that actually meant something to me.
They also ruined the naming our LO. We had two names we loved but we couldn’t decide which one we liked better, so we took our time. My in-laws kept on and on asking what they were until eventually my partner told them. Again, a decision I wasn’t happy with. The in-laws then decided to take it upon themselves to start calling my LO the name they preferred of the two. My partner then didn’t want to use that name because he didn’t want his parents thinking they had named our child for us. At this point all the joy had been taken out of the process and after we registered our LO my partner said he wasn’t sure we’d made the right decision. Again I was in floods of tears.
I thought my partner would have been a little stricter with his parents and I’m really quite angry at him as I feel this chapter of my life has been ruined. He also says to me that he thinks his mother loves our LO more than us which really upsets me.
If you’ve made it this far then thank you for reading. This is just the tip of the iceberg and I’m not really sure what I wanted to achieve by posting this. I guess I just needed to vent and get it off my chest.