So my boyfriend and I are long distance currently and plan on getting engaged/married and settling down once we both finish our degrees (the reason I had to move away) in a couple years and are living in the same city again. Anyways, I’m currently out visiting him and we stopped in on his family. His mother and I do not get along for various reasons. One of the big reasons is because I’m a medical professional and she believes medicine is evil so that causes a lot of tension between us.

Shes always upset about something and today it’s because her friend’s daughter will not allow my future MIL to see her newborn. The baby is only a week old and the mother has decided that only people up to date on their vaccines can see the child. My future MIL is very anti-vax so of course any vaccine she had as a child is out of date. She very upset about the whole thing and being very rude about the mother and her choice. She was ranting and proceeded to say to my boyfriend and I ‘you would never do that to me!’ We didn’t respond and my boyfriend was giving me his ‘I know you hate this please just leave it alone’ look.

My future MIL will very likely not be around when we do have children as she has stage 4 cancer and is terminal (she could’ve beaten cancer when she was diagnosed with stage 1 but she refused all ‘evil’ treatment even though her prognosis was close to 100%). But it still took a lot to bite my tongue because I will certainly not allow any baby of mine near someone that isn’t up to date on their vaccines. My parents will be expected to get all necessary booster shots as well and myself and current boyfriend will certainly also be updating our vaccines. So his mother (or any of his family actually as the majority are anti-vax/science) would never be allowed near my future child until that child is vaccinated themselves. My boyfriend knows this and supports it but doesn’t want to unnecessarily upset his mother which is fair.

So it got me wondering how I’d handle this in the future with his mother and even with the rest of the family that are not vaccinated. Im thinking I’d just set the rules and stay adamant about them. If they can’t follow them then they don’t see the baby and that’s that. But I was wondering what other people would do?