WIBTA if I ask MIL to watch our dogs while I give birth, but not our kids?
I (34F) am due to have our third baby in the next few weeks. My mother-in-law (72F) already assumes she’ll be taking our kids (4M & 3M) when I go into labor, and loves to brag about it. Part of it is that she loves them of course, but the other part is that she loves the attention and recognition of being ‘needed’.
Aside from that, every time our kids are around her it’s like they forget how to behave completely and the following 1-2 days are nothing but tantrums (she won’t discipline them at all, excuses bad behavior with things like “it’s probably just the weather”, and lets them do literally just whatever they want including way too much screen time – simply said, our kids ‘wear the pants’ when they’re with her). The thought of navigating the first few days postpartum and newborn life at home with my older children in tantrum-mode honestly just stresses me out.
Not only that, but she lives 45 minutes away, is a terrible driver, and has an unfenced pool in her yard. I’m worried about having her come to pick them up and bring them back to her house knowing that, and not watching them close enough to keep them safe from the pool (she’s also in her 70s and doesn’t move very quickly), but at the same time we already live an hour away from the hospital so to bring them to her, move car seats over, and then go to L&D would take 2 hours minimum anyway.
It would also be an option for her to come to our home and stay with them here, but to be honest it just stresses me out to think about coming home to have her not leave for hours and the house be a wreck on top of it (she never has them clean up and as thoughtful as it is, she’ll do things like wash my dishes and then put them in the most random places and half the time on shelves I can’t even reach and it takes me forever to find anything in my own kitchen).
We’re leaning more on the side of having our kids stay with our best friends who live much closer and they would have a blast with (without the tantrums to follow), but if we did that we would still need MIL to take care of our dogs since I wouldn’t want to over ask our friends for help and MIL has watched them at her house before when we’ve gone out of town. I’m not sure how to go about that conversation with MIL though in explaining why we don’t want her taking the kids for those days, and am worried she’ll be offended by asking to take the dogs but not her grandkids…
So, WIBTA if I ask my MIL to watch our dogs while I give birth, but not our kids?
