How do I bring this up..

So me and my partner had a rough time when we had our first child due to his mental health/anger issues and his family sticking their noses in (i feel if his family hadn't acted how they did we would have been ok)
Everything we did they had somthing to say
*Why cant we kiss baby - baby needs germs and needs our love
*why is the babyseat not forward facing
*why arent sil and bil godparents
*you shouldn't take baby hospital without asking for advice from us first (had rash that wouldn't disappear on glass test)
*why are you (me -mother) with baby all the time
*we need to see baby without mum there
*why are you still breastfeeding

This was all done very nasty towards me and they tried to turn my partner against me and made him question what I was doing (they know full well what his mental health/anger is like - so they did it on purpose)
They played victim all whilst trying to break me down as a new mother and my partner was in the middle and he was so hard to live with at times, I would cry my eyes out in secret but be trying to be strong and not back down to my inlaws.
Anyway we are still together and trying to sort his mental health out (he's on waiting lists for meds/counseling)
Relationship with inlaws is strained and me and my daughter dont see them often but I can feel they dislike me because I told them no.
My mil even had the cheek to make a comment to me a few months back "well it was covid times so im sure you were under more stress" it was nothing to do with covid it was them trying to take over!
I love my partner alot and want to always be together and he wants another baby as I do but im scared of it all happening again.
I want to sit him down but I want to approach it without him getting defensive over his family!
Any advice on how to say this i would be very greatful

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I would personally wait for his MH to be stable/have support before bringing another child into the mix. There are bigger stresses then just a newborn as you have your eldest to consider too.

I agree with I wouldn’t be bringing another baby into the dynamic when the household needs support first.

First priority is his mental health and anger issues, that’s not the best environment for any new baby, new mum or toddler to be in.

Baby 2 is a whole new thing to juggle and if you’ve got little to no support from the family or need help with childcare for your eldest, you need to feel secure that you can trust them with her.

I would simply say “I think we need to make sure you are okay and feeling at your best, then we can discuss it. We need everyone on board for this decision especially when I’ll need extra support looking after two kids. It was hard for us last time and I didn’t feel like we were supported and we can’t do that again”.

Definitely wait until MH is stable and you've had a good period of wellbeing before you dd pregnancy stress and new baby stress. If he can get some counselling too, he may even be able to address the toxic parenting and his reactions to them before you forget ahead with adding more love and stress and outside interference without having resilience and being fully together with a plan to mitigate his parents behavior this time - because that won't change their narrative was you and other external factors were the problem, they'll never have self reflection, accountability.

You need to be a clear and solid team.

Hope this helps. I had both the situations you described and my ex wasn't able to get a handle on any of it and it was the end of us.

Controversial opinion but if you want another baby, have another baby. You know what your getting yourself into. If you can't rely in your partner just make sure you have other support systems in place. In terms of speaking to your partner about support, do you generally have open conversations with him? How do they go? Again, you know how best he communicates and if it is worth having the conversation with him.

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