I’m looking for a bit of guidance and reassurance here; I haven’t had my first doctors appointment yet so I haven’t been able to tell them my concerns. I’m in my first pregnancy, and my MIL is freaking me out!

We have an okay relationship, but she’s very self-centered. Now that I’m pregnant, she only wants to talk about how horrible her experience was (but I think she dramatizes a lot). She’s in horrible health, my FIL isn’t much better, and they both eat like garbage and raised my husband and brother in law the same way —seriously, everything they eat is from a box, and eat virtually no vegetables, no fruit, and tons of sugar. They’re all huge hypochondriacs, but do have legit health issues as well.

She’s always talking about how (as babies) my husband and brother-and-law had all these issues. Apparently they were very sensitive to sound and would have panic attacks if they heard loud noises. She said they also had to have specific diapers because they were allergic to everything. She said they had constant ear infections. She’s mentioned that they had to get steroid shots because they had asthma. She has a blood clotting issue and my husband has that gene too. My husband also had spina bifida occulta (he’s fine, he had minor back surgery as a boy) and I suspect he got it because she may not have been getting enough folic acid during her pregnancy. She’s also said that they never stopped eating and that she was feeding them 8oz of formula 8 times a day as like 4 month old babies!!!! When she says things like that I have to wonder if she kind of caused some of the issues—I mean, 8oz 8 times a day is twice as much as they needed.

I’m just freaking out because I don’t want my baby to have these same issues! As an adult, my husband is fine! He has almost no health issues, no major allergies or issues. It makes me wonder how much of it was my MIL being dramatic.

Does anyone marry into a family with a bunch of health issues? Do you find that certain things weren’t hereditary and just how you raised your baby? I’m just curious if anyone has ever been in a similar situation.