I tried to couch the statement by sounding like I wasn't sure, because I didn't want to get her defensive. I was hoping someone would open up their phone and google, because France is now aligned with the US about drinking during pregnancy. My husband thought it was telling that my brother said that about drinking while pregnant in France unprompted, like maybe this wasn't the first time something like this had happened. When I was in England back in Sept, I got a text with some drama involving my brother and his GF, my husband called my mother. She told my husband the GF has a drinking problem. My mother thinks anyone who has more than one drink every 5 years is a raging alcoholic, so I take her 'assessment' with a grain of salt. But there might be a kernel of truth in there.
I think I remember you talking about your BIL's wife. If I am visiting someone with a newborn, I offer to watch the baby so the mom can get a cat nap in. My MIL came to visit us about 2 weeks after my son was born. I had postpartum depression, so I felt like I was drowning. I was hoping for more help than I got. She treated the trip like a vacation. She made breakfast for herself without offering me even a bowl of cereal. Then, she walked to the L station and went into the Loop to go to the Art Institute and do some shopping. She did this everyday. Obviously, she can do that, but it felt like I was a hotel. I didn't expect her to be in my apartment with me all day, everyday. The thing that made me the angriest was she scolded me for asking my husband to get the baby for me in the middle of the night. I had a really rough birth with forceps and I was in pain for a long time afterwards. I had enough. I called my grandmother and she picked my son and me up and I stayed with her. I was just struggling to keep myself together and the last thing I needed was a lecture about waking up my husband.
My husband didn't meet his niece and nephews until they were a few years old, too. I think that's common when your family is half way across the globe. lol
Wow, yeah, that does sound like she has an alcohol problem, though...if she drank a whole bottle of wine minus one glass. Once in a while, I'm sure it's fine. But when you're pregnant, it's absolutely not. Sad for the baby to come into that situation.
Yeah, my ex-SIL is a real piece of work. She really liked to be the center of attention and she wanted control over the whole situation. I think she really didn't want to come to my wedding because it wouldn't be about her and she wouldn't be able to control it. I think September 11th just made a nice excuse for her to skip it and keep my BIL away, too. If she could have kept my MIL and FIL away, she would have, I'm sure. I think she was kind of jealous. She was never an academic person and she never really had to work. She got disability because of her mental health issues, so she had an income without working. And I think disability is absolutely an important social safety net and I don't begrudge her that...she really did have mental health problems and was on medication. But she MILKED it. My BIL worked full time, came home and made dinner (and he can't really cook, but she just wouldn't.) and as soon as he came home she passed the baby off to him. She ALWAYS had a headache, or was so tired, etc. Well yeah...babies are a lot of work. But mostly, she would go to her parents house and let her parents take care of my nephew during the day, and then she'd pass him to my BIL as soon as he got home. When they got divorced, she would drop my nephew off at her parents' house and leave, and they would call my BIL and ask if he wanted to come spend time with him, after work and they'd make dinner for him and everything. He's still really close with her parents. That's very telling to me. But she wouldn't really let anyone else babysit. She would never have handed her baby over to me so she could sleep. I arranged within my friend group to take turns babysitting one of our friend's babies once a week because she had Post Partum, but my ex-SIL would never have let me. I got the impression that she just didn't like me. I was a college graduate, and when I moved over here, I learned Dutch as soon as I could, got a job, and I think she kind of felt like I made her look bad? She wasn't confident in her English, she didn't have a job or a college education, and she was known for being kind of a diva and hard to please, where I was a people pleaser and people usually liked me. (Not when I was younger, but as an adult) She never SAID she didn't like me...it's just the feeling I got. Like, we invited them to go out to a casino for a night out and she said no, that didn't sound fun. She wasn't really into casinos, etc. But then a week later, SHE invited some friends of theirs to go out to the casino for a night out. She just hadn't wanted to go with ME. And when I first moved to the Netherlands, my birthday was only a month later. I didn't want to celebrate...my mom had recently passed, my dog had been put down, and I had given up everything and moved across the world to a country where I didn't speak the language and knew no one outside of my husband's family. My in-laws insisted I had to at least have a dinner and invite BIL and his GF. (They weren't married yet) Her aunt's birthday was the day before mine, so she said she couldn't come. So my MIL asked HER when a good time for my party would be, when they could make it. THEY chose the day and time, but then showed up 45 minutes late and didn't stay for the dinner, which was the celebration. They came for less than an hour and then said they had to go because they had planned to go to the movies with her brother, and it had been planned for months. First, you don't even know what's playing at what time months in advance, so you were just going to show up and pick something that happened to be playing at that time? And second, THEY picked the date...if they already had plans, why say they could come that day? She just couldn't stand it that it was about me. Anyway....
I'm so sorry you got a guilt trip about waking your husband. She does know it's HIS kid, too, right? You didn't get pregnant by yourself. Why SHOULDN'T he take turns with the night time stuff? My husband used to pretend to sleep through the baby crying and me shaking him so I would have to get up every time. He did help sometimes, but if he was tired, he'd just pretend to sleep. I could hear his breathing change, so I knew he was awake, but he would lie there like a log. And that's when jerk mode started. It was when A was a baby. He used to wake up really early every day...4:30, 5:00am and wouldn't go back to sleep. So DH would take turns on weekends getting up with him. Obviously I got up with him during the week because DH had to go to work, but on the weekend, I wanted a day to sleep in, so we took turns. Whoever got to sleep in was supposed to come relieve the other when they woke up. But I noticed that whenever it was MY turn to sleep in, I was making sure I came downstairs by around 9, even if I hadn't really gotten much sleep, so he could go take a nap. But when it was MY turn to sleep in, it would be 10, 10:30 and I'd be falling asleep sitting up and I'd have to go up to get him to come take over so I could get sleep and I'd find him playing on the computer instead of sleeping. And then he'd be an absolute jerk to me all day like he was the one who was short on sleep. I noticed a pattern that his jerk mode always seemed to be on days when he got to sleep in and do his own thing, like he really resented having to eventually take a turn with the kids. And it was like that on vacation, too. Whenever I took the kids and let him have his own time without us, he would be grouchy and nasty with me whenever we were together, like at meals and whatnot. But he never took a turn with the kids so -I- could have down time alone. We were either together as a family, or I was with the kids and he was alone doing his own thing, and resentful of having to come back and spend time with the family.
But I loved it.