Reply to In-laws being pushy about visiting.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP will be posting a year from now one of those every-other-day posts about how exhausted she is and how she has family nearby but they’re just awful people who won’t help out. You make your bed…[/quote]

I will not.  This is my third kid and I am well-aware of the challenges involved in parenting small children.[b]  None of our family is local.  [/b]The answers on this thread are absurd, but I guess that’s what I get for crowd-sourcing a personal challenge with anonymous keyboard warriors.

Really insightful to see how many people think the comfort, wants, and needs of grandparents should trump the wishes of the parents/health of the newborn infant, particularly in this day and age.[/quote]

This is key.  You already know that you don't have the family support so you don't count on it.  Everyone here is assuming the very worst of family.  You are seeing everything through a very negative and unkind light.  If grandparents want to see and cuddle the grandbaby that is een as being "pushy" and "selfish"  Why is that?  And if someone dares gently ask you if they could come and meet their grandbaby ...to give the baby love that is seen as pushing boundaries.  Even though for thousands of years people have been giving birth and welcoming babies with the support of their families.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that the families in any way impose on the new family and if they overstay their welcome or make more work for the new mom that is clearly wrong.  But, there has to be a balance between pushing family related to your child and allowing them to push over you.  Again, you are not the first person to give birth but, if you push people away expect them to want to stay away.[/quote]

Why is it that so many people see family in an negative and unkind light? Could it be because many families have people in them who are unkind and inconsiderate?

When my first was born and we tried to impose reasonable boundaries (masking when holding baby and socializing outside on our lovely screened porch in beautiful spring weather after they decided to stop isolating - this was pre-vaccine Covid days), they went crazy and accused us of terrible things. They said we didn’t want them to know their grandchild, they said we were paranoid and insinuated we were stupid, they accused DH of trying to shut them out of his life. It was honestly traumatizing to be attacked so viciously and unfairly in the first few weeks after birth. It became clear that my MIL in particular had harbored a certain fantasy of how things would be when meeting her first grandchild, and we were allegedly robbing her of that by asking her to observe a few precautions. Again, this was pre-vaccine when the vast majority of people were still in full-on lockdown mode.

I cannot unseen what I learned about them as people during that period. We do what we can to facilitate their relationship with my son because it’s important to them and I believe family is important, but I will never forget what they did. And as we prepare for the birth of our second, we are very stressed about whether or how to impose boundaries around visits (they are not helpful when they come). Not everyone is a reasonable person, not even those who claim to be motivated by love. 
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