I’m having my second boy within the next few weeks and my husband doesn’t want any more children. I’m gonna be a boy mom period, end of story, no little girls for me.

I’m not looking for lectures. I am very grateful for my children and I love them to the ends of the Earth. My son, who is three, is the actual king of my heart and I’m sure I’ll love this baby just as much. I am just sad about something I’ll never have that I wanted - it’s hard to let go of a dream.

With that out of the way, part of what’s got me feeling a little down is the fact that, if either of my sons decide to marry women, I’ll be the “mother in law.” When she wants to plan her wedding, she’ll do it with her mom. When she’s having a baby, she’ll want her mom. When it’s time to ask a grandparent to watch the baby, she’ll want her mom.

No one likes their mother in law. I don’t. People tolerate their MILs at best.

My husband says I’m being super negative and that maybe it won’t be that way. Maybe this or that will happen and no one knows the future and blah blah.

I know having a daughter wouldn’t guarantee me any of these experiences anyway. I get that. But now I KNOW I’ll never have them and it’s heartbreaking. I feel like I’ll be excluded from so much just because I’m the mom of the boy instead of the mom of the girl. I won’t have worked any less hard at being a mom, but I just won’t be as included.

My husband says I’m wrong - in part because we’re surrounded by his family and his mother gets all the time in the world worth my son (because my relationship with my own mom is strained and she’s hundreds of miles away by my choice) so of course he doesn’t think it’ll be this way. But I don’t want to depend on my daughter in law hating her own mother to be the “main” grandma. (I don’t even want to be the “main” one, if I’m lucky enough to have grandchildren one day. I just want to be an equal one.)

But is he right? Am I being too negative and deterministic? Tell me he is so I can feel a little better about this.

Ladies, tell me you love your mother in law. Tell me she gives you good advice, and warmth, and caring, and you’d go to her looking for love and advice and help. Even if you love your own mother to death, tell me now you have two. Tell me that your MIL matters to you as a grandmother and the mother of your man and you’d never exclude her from her son’s life and her grandchildren’s lives. Tell me my husband is right and I’m being a little crazy.

And just to be clear, I want to respect my sons independence and will applaud them living their own lives, and by extension I’ll respect their partners too. Just don’t want anyone to think I’ll be the pain in the neck telling them they don’t know what they’re doing or yelling at them about grandparents rights. That’s not me. I’m just having an anxiety fueled meltdown over here.