I have a four-month-old baby, and my parents live just ten minutes away from us. We only visit them with the baby about once every two weeks. The main reason we don’t visit more often is that my parents aren’t available during the week because they work 9-5 days and baby tends to go up to bed sometime around 7pm (a.k.a will holler like a banshee until you put her to bed and sometimes will still continue to do so for another three hours…). Plus factoring in cooking dinner and all the rest, it just isn’t very practical.
Weekends are really the only time my husband and I (also newlyweds) get to spend together with baby as a family, so we try to protect that time for ourselves if possible.
My parents, especially my mum, often express that they don’t feel like they see the baby enough and make comments that the baby doesn’t really know her (although she’s honestly the only other person the baby seems to recognise!).
They know they’re welcome to visit us at our house any time (I just ask they pre warn when they’re coming over so I can get dressed or whatever), but there seems to be this expectation that we should go to their house instead. Presumably because our house is small, usually a bit untidy (life with a baby…), and not as comfortable for hosting, though this has always been the expectation that I visit them since I moved out in my late teens.
I feel myself getting pretty frustrated when, again, my mum brings up something about how “baby needs to see them more”, because it feels as though the responsibility is on me to maintain the relationship between them and the baby, on top of everything else, and their expectations just don’t feel realistic right now. Or am I being unreasonable?
I’m just wondering if anyone else has dealt with this kind of situation with grandparents and how you managed it?
TLDR my parents want to see my baby more and act as if I’m keeping her from them because they expect me to visit them instead of visiting me
Comments
This is pure selfishness and you should tell them so.