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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m a first time parent of a baby born very prematurely (26 weeks, to be exact).

I live about 40 minutes from most of my family and my mom was the only person who visited me while I was in the hospital for 15 days and while my baby was in the NICU for 3+ months.

And she wasn’t exactly the most empathetic and supportive person throughout my pregnancy and delivery. Examples: 1) she was upset that my friends came to visit me the hospital and 2) when she asked how she could help me while I was on bedrest, I told her I’d appreciate her helping me to do my laundry and straighten my house...her response was that she’s not my maid! 3) she called once I was discharged from the hospital and said she really wants to see her grandbaby but knew that I’d have to go with her and said never mind 4) she believes that I “bragged” about all of the support coming from my husband’s family when in fact, I was just trying to focus on good things happening in the midst of so much trauma 5) my father basically told me that he wants nothing to do with my family because I’ve hurt my mother.

It’s been a pretty traumatic and exhausting journey to parenthood and I am struggling to come to terms with the lack of family support. Even more heartbreaking is thinking about my daughter not having a relationship with my family.

When I try to create peace, my mother says that I need to apologize to my family for being so rigid about people needing to be vaccinated and not smoke around my baby (doctors orders). My father told me that she’s embarrassed when people ask about us because she can’t say that she sees us very often. He also encouraged me to post “something nice” on social media to make her feel better. She’s basically making herself out to be a victim.

This feels so crazy to me. I just want peace in my life and I would love to feel like my family is supportive of me, as I have been there for them.

Any thoughts on how to make things better?[/quote]

I haven't even read all of the many, many pages of this thread, OP...but this stuck out to me a lot:
If your dad has asked you to post "something nice" on social media, it is likely b/c it hurt your mom's feelings that you posted "something nice" (and maybe many, many "something nice"s praising your DH's family during this time.  Keep in mind that your father has to live with your mother and all her moods. So if she is unhappy and hurt...he is miserable. And he's just trying to make it better somehow. This is all he knows to do. And in his mind, it probably wouldn't kill you just to say something nice about your mom.

And as far as "bragging" about your inlaws...maybe you didn't mean it that way, but that's what it is when you blast it out on social media. "I can't say enough about how thoughtful my sweet mother-in-law is for bringing us lunch every day for 3 weeks while Larla has been in NICU. I'm so blessed to have you in my life, Dear MIL!" (To your mom, this reads as "Dear World, my MIL is a saint! Look how fab she is!" which would be just fine if the silence about her weren't so condemning!) You may be "focusing on the positive" OP, but how in the world can you not see what this does? It's passive aggressive at best. If you want to thank your MIL, then thank your MIL. But posting crap like this publicly on social media can be such a dig. It just sets people up for internal angst.[/quote]

+1.  This.  OP doesn’t get it [/quote]

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