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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I got pressured into driving halfway across the country with a three week old and if I had to do it again, I’d have waited until 6 weeks. It was too soon for me. The baby was okay but I wasn’t. And my ILs didn’t get this at all— it barely occurred to them that I was still recovering. They only cared about the baby and they wanted all their friends to come see her. They threw a big party with dozens of people even though I’d expressly asked them to keep things small for my sake. My MIL kept getting mad at me for “hogging” the baby (I was feeding her, plus holding her in those early days helped me with my PPD).

That visit did years off damage to my relationship with my ILs. I felt pressured to do it and then mistreated while I was there. I was still bleeding from childbirth and struggling with mental health. No one cared, they just wanted to look at the baby.

Do what feels right for YOU, OP. You are a new mom and need to take care of yourself. Especially if the people around you aren’t taking care of you.[/quote]

I could have written something very similar, right down to the part about it damaging my relationship with my MIL to this day. She made everything about her becoming a grandmother to her first grandchild, and treated me as a nuisance who was standing in the way of her snuggling her grandson. At one point she said “not yet, I’m not ready” when I asked her to hand him back to me so I could feed him- I was recovering from a C section and still in the hospital , so getting up and taking him back was not a realistic option. We also drove 4 hours to visit them when i was 3 weeks post partum - from a c section- and she said at the end of our visit “I know this was probably very difficult for you physically but it was all worth it to me to have my grandson to myself all weekend.”

She also was cooing at him once and cooed “when you’re older and you hate your parents you can always come stay with grandma.”

When the second one came along I was wiser, and she knew it, and she walks on eggshells around me now. But it’s too late .[/quote]

PP here and hard relate to ALL of this. My MIL was so rude to me our entire visit and it was incredibly hurtful. Obviously heightened due to hormones, but even that was treated in such an unkind way ("oh she's just hormonal, her feelings don't matter"). And yes, she really seemed to think everything was about her and only her, and she was obsessed with the idea of getting to be alone with the baby.

At one point she suggested my DH and I leave for an overnight date in a neighboring town so that she could take care of the baby on her own. I was a bit confused at first, thinking she was talking about a future visit (in which case that would have been a kind offer). But she meant during that visit. Again, I was 3 weeks post partum, still bleeding, hormonal as hell, and dealing with what at the time we thought were baby blues but turned out later to be PPD. I was not up for a couples retreat. I told her, gently, that at this stage it was hard for me to be away from the baby for more than an hour or so at a time because I was still figuring out breastfeeding/pumping and it was just easier to be nearby while we sorted through that. MIL took this to mean I didn't trust her with the baby and was trying to keep them apart. She pouted for the rest of the trip about this -- mad because we wouldn't leave her alone with the baby for a 24 hour period that apparently I was supposed to spend sitting in a hotel room pumping milk and crying so that she could have more 1:1 time with her newborn grandchild.

And people said I was the hormonal one. Ffs.[/quote]

Way to hijack a thread. Go to therapy. [/quote]

This thread is literally about in laws visiting newborn babies. It’s in the title. and therapy isn’t an insult to throw around, it’s something the majority of people could benefit from [/quote]

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