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Mother-in-Law Problems

The audacity haha, dreading our trip

I don’t understand where people get off thinking that they can just walk all over the people that are nice. I announced our first pregnancy on Thanksgiving to my husbands family, his sister, his sister in law, and his brother. For this story we shall call his brother and sister in law Jacob and Jackie. His mother will be called Diane. Now backstory, when we told his parents that we were pregnant, the first thing that came out of his mothers mouth was “this is ahead of schedule” and the second “you are going to have to be super cognizant and respectful of Jacob and Jackie’s feelings since they struggle with fertility.”

Now, side note, I don’t know what it’s like to struggle with fertility, I can’t imagine or put myself in that persons shoes. But I will say a persons feelings, jealousy, and emotions are completely validated 100% until that person starts being mean.

Fast forward to thanksgiving, my husband and I are driving down to Jacob and Jackie’s house. Diane is texting me the entire way to ask if we are going to tell them tonight. I say yes, if the timing is appropriate. So it’s like 8:30 at night, my husband goes and gets the ultrasound pictures and tells me to stand up. I’m immediately uncomfortable because I know 1000% it’s going to be awkward. We tell them we are having a baby due in June. Jackie cuts me off and snippily goes “I knew it, as soon as you said you were bringing down sparkling cider you were pregnant.” So she gets up, it’s 9:00 at this point and starts angrily chopping random vegetables in the kitchen. Now poor Jacob was very nice, I will say, he was trying to over compensate for Jackie’s behavior. The rest of the family was just sitting there like bumps on a log not really celebrating this news. Keep in mind this is the first grandchild on my husbands side of the family, the seventh on my side. My family had this huge celebration, while his family acted like ehh…that was the vibe. So we are there Wednesday to Friday. The entire time Jackie is making comments like “wow you sure have bought a lot of things given how early you are” and “you throw up really loudly….” Just being awkward basically. On the last day, everyone was talking about “mistake babies, and babies that were planned” so I chirp up in my innocence, not trying to be disrespectful at all and say “I got exactly what I wanted.” Now you don’t know me, but I am a people pleaser by default, I will allow you to draw me through the mud before I would ever stick up for myself, I would never purposely say something that would hurt someone’s feelings, ESPECIALLY HIS FAMILY. I have a long history of emotional abuse by them haha. So I say I got what wanted, just being honest and excited, Jackie looks at me and the contempt and anger in her voice was completely apparent, she says “we know you got exactly what you wanted JESUS CHRIST” and gets up and slams the door. I immediately get bright red, uncomfortable, and I’m frozen in shock. The entire table no one says anything and I walk away and go cry in the room. I’m absolutely mortified. My husband comes in and says he heard what she said but “I’m sure she just let it slip, she didn’t mean anything” so I look at him and say when are we leaving. We say our goodbyes and it’s completely awkward and uncomfortable. We leave and I just am obsessing and mortified. At the time I was upset that she was mad at me, because I would never want someone to think I was being insensitive and inconsiderate of their feelings. So now it’s Thursday this week, we are set to see them on Saturday, we are flying down for a “family” Disneyland trip.

His mother, Diane, called me over the weekend. And told me that Jackie called and said that she doesn’t think she can go to Disneyland because it’s too hard to be around me. So Diane calls me and says “you know we’ve spent a lot of money on this trip, it’s our first big family trip and we don’t want it to be ruined by drama, I think it’s best if you just don’t talk about the baby AT ALL while we are there, let’s just go to enjoy Disneyland.” So here I am, now, having to stifle literally the greatest most exciting thing that has ever happened to me, so that we can continue to reward someone else’s bad behavior. Diane stated “oh Jackie wants to be an aunt, it’s just really hard for her right now” again, your feelings are validated, but what about my feelings? What about my baby, and the excitement that should be surrounding him and his arrival. I almost feel like I’m going to have to hide myself out of shame or she’s going to freak out and blame the trip being ruined on me! I don’t know how I am not supposed to talk about him at all, and just pretend I’m not pregnant…..we leave on Saturday morning and I’m literally just dreading the entire trip. I wanted to take his baby book and have all the characters sign it, but of course I’m sure that’ll make it look like I’m insensitive, I wanted to get bump photos with the characters too but I’m sure that’ll be unappreciated as well. I’m just hurt and wanted to vent about them all. I’m hoping some Disney magic will give me peace and I can be excited that this is his first trip to Disneyland and whether I talk about him or not he’ll be there with me getting his nutrients from churros and Carmel apples 😂 plus when we told Jackie and Jacob were were pregnant we thought he was a girl, surprise the sneek peak was wrong and he’s a boy. Guess they will find out next year when he’s born since we cant talk about him 🤷‍♀️🤰