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Thursday 27 December 2012

3.1 My history with the in-laws: marriage and babies...

Fast-forward to about 5 years later. The MIL didn't like me but had stopped constantly battling me, at least for a few months... I think she had lulled herself to sleep for one moment and convinced herself that our relationship wouldn't last forever. (I will write about her evil ways during the period in between in a separate post).

We were together for about 7 years when we decided the time was right to have children, if possible for us. We had been talking about if for a year or two then I think. After a while I had a very strong feeling I was pregnant and started testing way too early, I was just too excited to know. The day I knew the pregnancy would be detectable I tested again. My hands were shaking uncontrollably when I checked the test strip and I immediately started crying for joy when I saw it was positive. I couldn't speak at first when I wanted to tell DH, and I was crying so hard, that he thought I had bad news, but I was pregnant! I was so happy and excited :-).

My husband almost immediately wanted to tell his parents. I didn't want to, mostly because I feared this wouldn't bring up the best in the MIL. I wanted to have some peace of mind for us. I wanted us to have time to adjust to the idea that we would have a baby and become parents, without any interference of her. Besides that we didn't know how the pregnancy would develop. We decided to wait for 3 months, mainly because I wanted that, my husband foresaw problems with his mother for not telling her immediately. (As if she was entitled to know it right away).

My pregnancy progressed well and we had the first ultrasound. It was so very touching and beautiful to see our little baby bouncing around. He was already a very busy little guy at only 12 weeks, full of life :-).

After 3 months my husband wanted to call his parents ( I would have rather brought them the news personally). The MIL was very surprised to hear I was already 3 months pregnant at the time they heard, that was the main message.

The first time we saw them, after they had heard the news, was at his brother's house. We were already there before them. My FIL immediately came up to me when they arrived, and congratulated me. He was visibly emotional and very happy and excited with the news. The MIL on the other hand lingered around my husband and didn't come to me. She acted real dramatic to him, 'oh how wonderful...., a baby!!!!', while sideways looking at me but making no effort to come up to me to congratulate me. She obviously wanted me to come to her, I didn't do it. After about 5 awkward minutes she finally came to me, throwing her arms up in the air as if she walked on a stage and was about the receive an Oscar, and then congratulated me but her sullen facial expression said something entirely different. She very well knew the others were all behind her and couldn't see her face.

After a while FIL, DH and his brother went downstairs to do something and my SIL went to the kitchen to prepare dinner and for a moment I was left with her alone. She looked very unhappy, and had a facial expression as if she had just attended a funeral. She started complaining to me about all sorts of (trivial) things that made her suffer (she's a real martyr). I felt a stone in my stomach looking at her. I felt all my energy disappear like snow before the sun. It felt like she wanted to suck all joy and happiness out of me. I escaped her presence by asking my SIL if I could help her.

When we sat down for dinner we showed them the ultrasound sonogram and the MIL held the sonogram above a candle to have a better view (?!?!). It is that I screamed otherwise it would have burnt. She then pulled the sonogram away from the candle and looked at me with this strange smile really savoring she had provoked me while at the same time acting like, 'oh silly me, I didn't realise it was a candle, does a sonogram really burn?'.

(To be continued).


1 comment:

  1. What a bitch! Your story of finding out you were pregnant was a lot like mine. After one miscarriage I was so happy! Glad to hear you had some joy even though the in laws rained on the parade ASAP. We waited three months to tell any of them and even so never told the Il's directly. I'm sure we got hell for that but we'll never know as we deleted the email before reading. ;)

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