OP here. They're a 30-60 minute drive away, and though we get along fine, we just don't have much in common and our visits are nothing to get excited about. It's more out of habit at this point, and I don't think I'll want to give up too many more weekend days with both of us working . I'm just not sure how kids might change that dynamic.

Anonymous wrote:Wow -- families are certainly different. I would have never thought of having to hammer out a written in stone schedule for visits, much less phone calls. GP ask if they can come and visit during a particular time and either it works or not. You call someone, either they can talk/facetime or not.
Do people really schedule phone calls?

We do. There's a three hour time difference between us and my in-laws. I work long hours. With commuting, my work day is often 12-13 hours. So if I get home at 8pm, I want to spend time with my kids before they go to bed. Then I want to eat dinner and re-connect with my husband. By then it's 10:30pm, which is 1:30 am in NY. Too late to have a phone call. So yes, we schedule calls.

Every day. Grandparents live with us and it's fantastic. Other set of grandparents probably once a month, and I'd welcome more. As long as you get along well, why not have them around as much as possible?

Wow -- families are certainly different. I would have never thought of having to hammer out a written in stone schedule for visits, much less phone calls. GP ask if they can come and visit during a particular time and either it works or not. You call someone, either they can talk/facetime or not.
Do people really schedule phone calls?

This is different for every family due to circumstances, distance and relationship. If they are helpful, you will love the free babysitting. If not, put some boundaries down now and begin managing expectations.

Depends if they're local or far away, whether they come to help or stay in guest-mode while visiting, etc etc etc.

My parents live across the country and come out to visit 2-3 times a year and I go out there 1-2 a year. Half their visits are just long weekends to see the grandkids, the other half are specifically timed to help us out during hectic times and they are indeed helpful.

MIL can be helpful, but FIL is not and when he's around, he stops MIL from helping and he wants it to be packaged deal with them. They also require that we pay for their international airfare for them to visit, so there are both financial limits to how often we can fly them out, as well as bandwidth limitations on our end to host. If we could get just MIL, we'd probably have her come out at least once a year and stay as long as she could manage, and would like, to be away from her normal life - probably a month or two at a time. For the time being though, MIL & FIL come out once every 2-3 years, for a couple weeks. I wish it were more often, honestly, but it's just not practical given FIL's behavior.

My MIL lives locally. We see her about 4 times per year. That is plenty. We see my parents between once a month and once every six weeks.

2-3 times a year, including us visiting them.

One or two times a year for my ILs, they live in CA. We have yet to see them this year and won't until July I think.

Maybe every other month for my parents. They are a 6 hour drive away. This year we have seen them at the end of January, the last month, next weekend, then we won't see them again until late June.

My MIL said she'd like to see us every other weekend after the first baby was born. I very politely said there was no way in hell. I counter-offered every 6-8 weeks, DH nodded in agreement and threw in Facetiming with the baby at least once a week and they wisely accepted.

We didn't regularly visit or Facetime my ILs much before we had kids. We saw them for holidays and things we might have traveled home for but we did not have regular visits and they hardly ever traveled to visit us. We never talked to them on Facetime. I did not get the memo that they were expecting Facetime a couple of times a week and regular long/extended visits after our first was born.

My parents didn't not have any desire to increase their frequency in visits, talking on video chat or really make much of an effort to get to know their grandchild.

I wish my ILs had been more upfront about what their expectations were before the baby the baby was born.

I'm guessing your parents will want to visit at least every month and if possible all the holidays big and small. I would talk to your DH and see what you feel comfortable with and then talk to your parents to see what their expectations are so you can find some sort of common ground. I wouldn't set much in stone because you might change your mind and what more or less help after the baby is born.

how far away do they live?

I don't respond to "offhand jokes" and neither should you. It's passive nonsense. If they want to visit more, they need to explicitly say that. Until then, no need to bother thinking about it. Keep the schedule as is as long as it works for you.

It depends on how helpful they are.

As of now, we see my parents once a month or every other month, which works well for us. From some offhand jokes, it sounds like they're expecting to see us a lot more frequently once our baby is born this summer. What's reasonable to expect?