Context:
I am a new mom (my baby is 6 months) and my MIL moved in to help us out as we (my husband and I) both work from home. She and her husband now live with us and we’re so grateful for all that they do. She and I don’t have the greatest relationship but only because we have different personalities, besides that we get along okish.
For Mother’s Day my husband mentioned that he booked us a weekend away (an hour from our house) but his mom and her husband are also coming. When I mentioned that I wasn’t too fond of her joining in on my first Mother’s Day he kept saying he can’t leave his mom at the house and “She’s my mom and it’s Mother’s Day”.
I honestly feel defeated and like I can’t win at this point. I do not want to share my first Mother’s Day, point blank period. I don’t.
How do I get my husband to understand this without him feeling like I don’t appreciate what he has planned?
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That really sucks. Can you ask what the accommodations are like and maybe it will be more private than you expected?
You simply tell him. How many Mother’s Day has he spent with her? Surely she would be fine with him skipping out with her to celebrate HIS WIFE on her first Mother’s Day. His dad should be planning something for HIS WIFE with your husband giving her a card/flowers.
Don’t go
“Your mother has had X amount of years of Mother’s Day being about her. It’s my turn now, and it’ll be about me until my child is a mother/has a wife who is a mother. You can see her before we leave, but I would appreciate it if we spent this time as a family, just us and that is my wish. Otherwise I’ll go on this getaway and you can stay home with your mother and celebrate her.”
“It’s my first Mother’s Day, I am one actively parenting, and I want to spend it with my nuclear family. I don’t want to share every single milestone with your mother, and it is weird and inappropriate to invite them. If they are going, I’m not.”
And why didn’t he invite your parents? By his logic shouldn’t your mother be there too? (Assuming she is around)
Don’t go. Book a different trip with your baby. Even both of you go stay with your parents. He can go spend Mother’s Day with his mom. He doesn’t get to tell you how to spend YOUR first Mother’s Day. Or any Mother’s Day moving forward.
I think in our 18 years together I’ve spent 2 Mother’s Day with my mother in law, and it wasn’t my first one. One was when my mom was ill, the other was the Mother’s Day after my grandmother died and my mom just wanted to be alone.
Normally I go to my mom and my husband goes to his. No muss, no fuss.
Maybe ask him how he would feel about you planning his first Father’s Day around your dad?
Maybe ask if you can talk about what kinds of traditions you want for your family, your little one won’t remember this one, so you have time.
Honestly, it sound like until your kid’s pre school teachers prompt them to make you Mother’s Day presents in few years, you will likely be set aside for his mommy, given how this first one is shaping up.
Why didn’t he invite your mom (if she’s in your life)? Or does only his mommy matter?
Tell him you understand his wanting to honor his mom on Mother’s Day, but you don’t want to share all of your Mother’s Day with her much less your first one. Then go through scenarios where his Father’s Day or birthday are celebrated in ways YOU decide arbitrarily but he doesn’t actually enjoy. Guess who gets to go get a mani/pedi and Brazilian wax in April!!!
Better set the standard now. It will be Christmas soon enough. Let me ask a question, if your hubs hadn’t planned an excursion you would have been home with them anyway? What would you have done then? Could you guys take separate vehicles that way you can limit the time spent with the in laws?
Once the baby is born, she gets Grandparents’ Day in September.
“Honey, I don’t want to share Mother’s Day with your Mom, point blank, period. I won’t be going away if she goes, I need a break.”
Why can’t you send his parents away on a getaway and you 3 stay home?
I think your feelings are understandable but they are also a bit short-sighted. Your in- laws allow you the convenience of working from home with your baby nearby. If you make it known you do not wish to celebrate your MiL (being your husbands mother and baby’s gma), you might drive a wedge into your convenient situation. Assuming you do not pay her/ them, are you prepared to cause hurt feelings that might affect your arrangement?
It seems you have a bit to lose.
Maybe consider having a brunch with them and then plan a separate outing.
Let your husband know you have decided on a compromise.
What’s the point in a weekend away with the very people you’d be wanting to spend time away from? Your husband is basically establishing that it’ll be this as the standard for every fkn trip, holiday or special moment between you two.
His mother has had DECADES of Mother’s Days with him. You get your first one as a new mother away from people who aren’t close to you. That’s it.
Let him know he can go on the trip with his mom and you will go on a trip with yours (or a friend).
He wants it both ways (credit for being a good husband and a good son) but wants them at the expense of what you need/want/requested…the natural consequence is he gets the one he chooses to put first…and you know where you stand in the marriage.
He’s got mixed up priorities. YOU are his WIFE & MOTHER OF HIS CHILD. He’s his mother’s child but when he becomes a parent, he can acknowledge her but NEEDS to focus his celebration of MD on the mother of his child – that he helped to conceive. It’s your first MD – he should be there & more caring about you vs mommy.
His mom
Had decades of being the mom celebrated.
This is your first and you should not have to share
Nup. Mother’s Day is for those doing the active mothering.