New here – read through a lot of the posts and it honestly has me a bit worried on what to expect with getting pregnant + post baby since MIL has been dropping hints since we got married three years ago.
I (33F) and DH (31M) are going to start trying soon and I need any advice on setting boundaries. All comments up to this point about me and DH having a baby have been centered around how amazing it’s going to be for my MIL & FIL. To make matters worse my MIL was a child psychologist 20 years ago – currently a therapist – and thinks she knows EVERYTHING about raising a child. She has started to go back and watch all the baby videos they took of DH and has been telling me how in some of the videos she realized she should have ‘done things differently’. She couldn’t quite explain exactly what she ‘wanted to do differently’ other than say that she felt like she was over engaged with DH as a child. My FIL chimes in and tells me that his friends tell him that being a grandfather is the best experience ever and continues to just stare at me. Us having a child now gets brought up every time we see them (which is frequently now that we live closer). Our dog has also become a surrogate child to my MIL – she calls the dog a baby – and asks if she can hold him and take out back for bathroom breaks, and says goodnight to him + tucks him in when we are staying with them.
The above behavior worries me for what it will be like if/when I get pregnant and have a child. Any advice on setting boundaries would be amazing.
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You need to decide how it will be handled when she breaks the boundaries. Will DH call her out on the spot and assign consequences? All you can control is how you react. She is going to break them.
She knows everything (or thinks she does) about raising a child 20 years ago. Things have changed a lot since then!
From reading these posts, an information diet is a good start. Don’t tell them about the baby until you are ready and prepared for the deluge of questions, “helpful” suggestions and general annoyance. Don’t tell them too much. Certainly don’t tell them the due date or gender (unless you want to).
And tell your pervy FIL he won’t be watching you breastfeed (sorry, I may have picked something up from what you said that you didn’t mean).
Good luck for the future!
You need to figure out a way to back them off a bit with future children, but let her baby that dog. Dogs need tucked in and held while they poop too
Turn the focus back on you and your husband. When they bring becoming grandparents up, talk about how monumental becoming a mom will be and how excited you are to become first time parents with your husband. How you can’t wait for the early days of becoming your own little family just you, husband and the baby. How you looking forward to the bonding time just the 3 of you. Throw in how grateful you are that they love your dog so much because he/she will need the grandparents to watch him/her when you go into labor and at least the first few weeks until you’re settled and ready for visitors.
Keep reminding them they are secondary. They become extended family when they become grandparents.