First year of baby's life: visiting grandparents?

[Anonymous]

We visited his folks at about 4 weeks (thanksgiving) and my folks at about 8 weeks (christmas) - his folks are a 7-hour drive away and mine are a 3-hour flight. Both were long-weekend length trips. I think I took her home to my folks one additional time that year, and ex took her home a couple of times. Both sets of parents came to visit several times in the first year. Traveling is actually easiest in the first year, I think - babies are generally better travelers than mobile infants, toddlers or preschoolers. But don't let the folks guilt you - they can come see you if they really want to.

[Anonymous]

OP, you sound like a very kind, thoughtful person, and you certainly don't sound like you're angling for free babysitting or help around the house from your in-laws.

One question here, I think, is what kind of relationship you envision your child having with your in-laws. I know I had a fantastic relationship with one set of grandparents in particular, and am forever grateful that it was important to my parents to cultivate that (even though they personally did not get along all that well with these grandparents). The grandparents lived across the country and we saw them as often as we could, and they also came to us. If your in-laws are not prepared to visit more than 1-2x per year, you need to decide, guilting from them aside, whether that's sufficient for you--or whether you want your DC to see them more often, for his sake. If you do, you need to make the effort.

And while I know that traveling with a baby or toddler is a pain, I really think 2 hours in the car is not all that bad. If you visit each set 2x per year that's one day trip, or one overnight, every 3 months. Maybe this is easy for me to say b/c for us, both sets of grandparents are a (short) plane ride away and it is a HUGE pain and expense to see them, DS is a disastrous sleeper when we go anywhere, and the whole experience is kind of a nightmare. Still, I confess it's never occurred to me to just say, screw it, you visit us 100% of the time. We first flew with him when he was four months old and at age 2, he has been on about 15 plane trips, most of them to visit various family members. We suck it up because otherwise we wouldn't see these people as often, or at all; and because it gives us the opportunity to celebrate some holidays with extended families.

Obviously it depends on how much you care for these in-laws and want them in your child's life. It sounds like, while their behavior is aggravating you--understandably, to some degree--you do care for them. Six months is still young but not a newborn, and I'd start thinking about planning a day trip or weekend trip and seeing how it goes.

[Anonymous]

My parents and my ILs live about 500 miles away from here. After DS was born, my ILs started giving me a hard time about coming up to visit because I had expected to spend a good part of the summer visiting them. I ended up having a ton of medical complications after DS's birth and was in and out of the hospital with multiple surgeries. ILs kept asking why we weren't coming to visit. Meanwhile, none of them had any medical problems, nor did they have a baby to tote around. Seems they could have come here and HELPED, but of course no offered. So we go up to visit when we can, but whenever we get the "why don't you come and visit more" plea from the parents, we say, well, we do our best, and you could always come to us since, you know, you don't have any kids at home anymore.

[Anonymous]

OP,
So there's a stepfather and a stepmother in this mix? That means the incentives are not the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP,
So there's a stepfather and a stepmother in this mix? That means the incentives are not the same.

? I'm not in this situation, but I'm not sure what you mean.

[Anonymous]

8:21 Remarriage changes family dynamics. Maybe the stepparents are not all that invested in the grandchild and it's a sell for the parents to go visit? I'm only speculating, but that could be a complicating factor. It is for OP. If there was only one set of grandparents on DH's side, she might be more willing to suck it up and go visit at least once.