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IT'S A POLL WORLD! 🙋🏽‍♀️

WIBTA if I don’t invite my siblings family to my baby shower?

I apologize in advance that this is so long. i’ve added a TLDR at the bottom.

I’m not far along in my pregnancy, I’m still in the first trimester, but I’m an over-thinker and like to have plans ahead of time so it’s not so last minute. I was speaking to my mom a few days ago about who would be invited to the baby shower, and we had a bit of a disagreement about who I need to invite. We’ll call the main person R.

R is my sister’s mother in law and has never made me or my husband feel welcome anytime we see her. She’ll only speak to us to say hi and bye, and she likes to make it known that she’s in a higher financial class than us. R has taken over our plans multiple times and made an effort to get my sister to cancel our plans and make plans to with her instead. For example, my sister invited me to a festival on a weekend my husband was working and I got very excited to go because I haven’t been to this festival in over a decade, and it would be the first time I got to go with my sisters children (I don’t get to see them very often, being that I’m an hour and a half away from them and typically see them for holidays and their birthdays). We had already made plans and set a date and time where we’d meet up for the festival, then my sister wrote me a day before to cancel because R decided she wanted to have sisters children over for the night, even though she lives 15 minutes down the road and picks them up whenever she wants. We’ve tried to have conversations with R and she almost acts as if we aren’t even speaking to her. I was going through my facebook list to get an idea of who I want to invite when the time comes, and I blatantly said to my mother that “I hope sister doesn’t invite R. I don’t want her to come. I’m not inviting her.” and my mother started talking about how R would have her feelings extremely hurt if I didn’t invite her and to “think about the gifts she’d be bringing”. I don’t care about the gift, I care about my people’s presence. I let her know that R makes my husband and I feel very uncomfortable and unwelcome anytime we see her. That didn’t change mother’s opinion. Part of my thing is, she has no relation to me, she never makes me feel welcome when she’s around, and no matter who, what, when, or where, she’s always given priority over my side of the family. Also, sisters MIL and FIL are divorced, and FIL has a wife, and if I invite R I would have to invite FIL and his wife as well so they “dOnT get ThEiR fEeLiNgS hUrT”, which then makes me have to invite my other siblings extended family, and then my baby shower is overwhelmed with people I don’t want there. I’m feeling pressured to invite people I don’t want there, and as I stated before, I don’t care about the gifts. If nobody showed up with a gift, my feelings wouldn’t be hurt at all. I don’t need people to spend money on us or the baby, I truthfully just want to gather around with the people I love and celebrate the fact that after years and years of trying, we’ve finally managed to create a family of our own.

Along with feeling pressured to invite people I don’t want there, we also got into an argument about when I’ll be doing the shower. I said Id like to do it around 7 months, and mother is trying to sway me to have it in the 8th month so people there can get to see my “huge belly” before I give birth because “nobody wants to show up to baby shower when you just look fat”. My thing with that is, we will be doing it at one of my siblings homes, because one of my siblings has a bunch of medical issues, and she would be devastated if she isn’t able to make it. Her and other sister live 10 minutes away from each other, so it’s about an hour and 45 minute drive to get there. I also have health issues, with some being chronic back pain from scoliosis and knee problems due to my knees not forming correctly in utero. I’m only in the first trimester and my back has already started hurting for three days now. I can’t imagine how it’ll be in late pregnancy. I don’t want to be huge pregnant and have to make a 4 hour drive total (considering that even in early stages, bathroom breaks are very frequent) and be extremely uncomfortable or in pain. By the way I’m being treated/spoken to about the decisions I’m making having to do with my pregnancy, not only do I feel as though my decisions are wrong and I have no say, but I’m also starting to feel like the biggest AH for not doing what others feel is “best”. I don’t know anymore. I’m trying to stay positive and remind myself that this is mine and my husbands adventure and everyone else is just invited along for the ride, but hormones are getting the best of me and I don’t know what to think anymore.


TLDR: Mother is making it out to be like I’ll be the AH if I don’t invite my siblings extended family (their MIL, FIL, SIL, BIL) when they make hubby and I feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, and also making it seem like I’m the AH for not having the baby shower in the 8th month even though I will have to travel almost 2 hours one way for the shower with chronic pain.