Dear Carolyn: This will be my first Mothers Day as a mom, and Im already not enjoying it due to the pressure I feel to balance time with my husband and baby, time with my own mom, and time with my in-laws including both my husbands mom and his stepmom, who cannot be grouped together. Everyone is local, so theres no card-or-phone-call-easy-way-out fix.
My husband is fine with disappointing pretty much anyone except me and wants us to just shut ourselves in to celebrate alone on Sunday, but I would feel terrible doing that to our moms. My mom and mother-in-law have already both called me to try to parcel out my time really the babys time but if I say yes to everything theyve requested, Im left without a moment of downtime all weekend, and barely any time to be alone with my own new family.
I know it wont be like this every year, since the landscape of the family will shift and the newness of the baby will wear off, but I feel so depressed thinking about how a day thats supposed to make me and others feel good is inevitably going to lead to someones feelings of disappointment or overexertion or rejection. Do you have any good suggestions? Balancing
