MIL & my baby showers

Decided to post more about the things my MIL to piss me off while I was pregnant bc you guys helped me see more clearly how rude it was that DH & her speak Russian when I'm right there & made some good points that I had never even thought of. I guess I'm gonna need a nickname for her. I'm very open to suggestions.

When they found out that I was pregnant, both my mom & MIL insisted that i needed to have a baby shower. I thought it was unnecessary, but told them that as long as they invited both women & men (cause babies aren't the domain of just women,) kept it relatively gender neutral, & let me pick the theme (to prevent it from becoming jesus or Blue Is A Boy Color themed) that they could throw a baby shower if it made them happy. I figured this would be something to focus all of their "OMG I'M GETTING A GRANNNDDBAAAABBY" energy on something productive, but it turned into a whoole thing.

The first issue was that they wanted to invite EVERYONE they knew, so we ended up having to split the shower up into 2 showers (yaay /s.) Even then, MIL swore up & down that the place they booked (the clubhouse in her development, she insisted) would only hold like 30 people even though it really looked like it could comfortably hold 100ish people, & had a posted max capacity sign saying that it could hold 250. The shower being held at this venue was the family only shower (DH & I weren't allowed to invite anyone to this one.) Well, my family is a lot bigger than DH's bc he emigrated here when he was young. So his whole family is just MIL, her mother (GMIL), Dh's step father (SFIL), his daughter (SIL), her husband (BIL), & their 1 year old whereas when you tally up just my parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, & cousins there are 35 people altogether, none of which could really not be invited without causing major hurt feelings. When my mom told MIL that we were inviting 35 family members, MIL pouted and passive aggressively started moaning "oh well, I guess can't invite anyone on my side now bc there won't be any room." I'm not sure why she was doing this, maybe she thought that my mom was just inviting people all willy nilly & she wanted to make cuts to my mom's guest list. Or maybe she didn't want a coed baby shower (both her & my mom kept saying this was very weird & it would be much better to just invite women) so she might have wanted us to not invite my male relatives. Idk. We told her that she should absolutely invite her side of the family & assured her that there would be plenty of room. She kept insisting it would be so crowded but agreed that her family should be there.

So we get the invitations, give her half of them bc both sides said they wanted to send invitations as a curtesy to some people they knew wouldn't come bc they were out of state or whatever. Then she wouldn't leave me alone about wanting to look at my registry, which I showed her after I finally finished it. It took me a while bc I was researching & carefully picking out the stuff we needed. As soon as I showed her she started going through and picking out stuff we didn't need. She said I didn't need any clothes bc my mom had given me a ton of hand-me-downs from my siblings (MIL also stated that babies only need like 5 outfits total) & that SIL had an old highchair, stroller, & baby bath tub that she would be giving me. I said I was grateful but that I was leaving them on the registry bc I wanted to see them first to make sure they were still in good condition before taking them off the registry. She CBF'd hard but let it go. We didn't talk about the registry at all until the day before the shower when she informed my mom, in front of me, that she told everyone she invited that we really didn't need anything on the registry & that they should get us diapers instead. She gave me the bathtub & highchair a few days later, but I never saw the stroller travel system she swore she had for us. I left all 3 on the registry bc I forgot to remove them. She was obsessed with the idea that all we needed was diapers, which had become apparent at the friends shower, which had happened the weekend before the family shower when she hovered over DH & I while we opened gifts & loudly announced that we could return it & get diapers with the $. So. Fucking. Rude. DH & I were pissed. Afterward, DH told her absolutely not to do the same thing at the next shower & that we would decide what to keep, thank you very much. One of the gifts I received at the friends shower was the travel system I had registered for from a neighbor who doesn't have a lot of money. It was the nicest, most unexpected gesture & when I decided to keep it so that I'd have a travel system at my apartment & one at my moms house (so the neighbor could see us use it & so we wouldnt have to lug them back & forth), MIL threw a fit. She called us irresponsible. She said it was ridiculous. I ignored her.

By then, I had become attached to the bathtub set I registered for , which was a big deal bc it took me a long time to get excited about buying baby stuff & the general idea that I was having a baby. But my hormones saw this little whale shaped bathtub & locked on to it. It became an emotional thing for me & I needed it. Luckily my aunt bought it & ALL of the matching accessories for it & gave it to me at the family shower. I almost cried. MIL asked my aunt if she had a receipt bc we would be returning it on account that we already had one. My aunt was not the onlyperson she said this to. Afterwards I found out, she basically kept loudly commenting (while hovering practically in DH's lap) that we could return every item as we were opening them. Ugh. I apologized profusely but was too overwhelmed with the stress of having 2 baby showers to react in the moment in any real way. As soon as we finished opening gifts, MIL made the passing comment that we could leave some of the things at her house down the street instead of bothering to take them home. I immediately told my siblings that everything needed to be packed into their cars right now and stood watch so everything went with anyone else. My siblings got that stuff packed up so quickly that by the time MIL noticed, it was already done so her convenience argument didn't hold up. She never gave us the travel system & when I made DH ask her about it, she swore she had no idea what he was talking about. Riiiight. I gave the bath tub to my mom so we could use it when baby & me go over to her house & refuse to let MIL take LO for a walk with the travel system.

So remember how she was being weird about how many people we invited? Yeah, turns out she invited like all of her friends, coworkers, & what seemed like most of the Russians in the local area, most of which showed up. No one ever introduced me to any of them & none of them made any effort to talk to me, which at the time I was fine with bc I was already pissed off & didn't feel like meeting anyone anyways.

My mom spent a stupid amount of money (like a few thousand $) on the showers & made them really nice for us with food, treats, decorations, games, prizes, & favors. She put a lot of effort into the whole thing & I was very grateful she did. And she bought us a shower gift on top of it all. MIL's contribution, however, were 2 trays of pinwheel sandwiches, neither of which I could eat bc one tray was spicy & the other had turkey. She had to have known that I wouldn't be able to eat them bc in my last trimester I would not shut up about my killer heart burn & had taken a stand that most things that everyone assumes were bad during pregnancy were based on old wives tales with a few exceptions of thigs that were actually dangerous to the baby, and the only thing I made a point to turn down was turkey & mexican cheese bc of the listeria risk. Like I told everyone who would listen about this. She fucking knew. As a bonus, she got us exactly nothing for a shower gift & when I mentioned it to DH, he said that she probably considered the shower to be her gift to us.

Oh, also her BFF came to town the day before the family shower as well & announced that her & MIL decided that she would do a blessing for the baby in both English & Russian at the beginning of the shower. DH & I are decidedly NOT religious, however both of our families are. My mother loved this idea, I said no thanks, but ended up being overruled at the last minute & since DH had just argued with his mom about her telling everyone we were returning literally everything, he didn't want to argue with her again. Cool.