You’re coming back why?!

So my MIL told my husband that they (his parents and younger siblings) were going to start coming back to our church. That sounds like a positive thing...but here’s their reasoning: they won’t start coming until after our baby is born and we start going back to church so that they can hold him and play with him during service!

I don’t like this for many reasons! 1) I want to hold my own baby during church, 2) This should not be the reason to come to church, 3) They go around bashing the people at our church, so why come back just to start that again, 4) When they would hold a friend’s baby in church before they would always blow on her toss her around and try to make her laugh, and they were not quiet about it. People would turn around and look. It was embarrassing! 5) If you’re there, pay attention! This isn’t your social time! 6) They have a habit of kissing all over babies and touching their faces and hands and putting their fingers in the baby’s mouth. We are not okay with any of that, but they say “it’s fine! He likes it. Don’t be so picky!”

Then they want us to come over every Sunday after church like when we were first married. I didn’t like it then but I certainly wouldn’t now. His parents are more hateful and crass than ever, and everyone only gets served one tiny breakfast burrito (what they make every Sunday), so that his dad can have 4 large ones because “he’s the man of the house and deserves more.” They spend their entire lunch conversation bashing our pastor and gossiping about other church members. It’s so ridiculous.

They also don’t seem to understand that we have other obligations, such as our students coming to our house on Sunday evenings for Bible study. Even when we say we need to leave by a certain time, they find a way to keep us there. Being around them is stressful, and I know it will only be worse when our baby is here because they feel like they can just take him whenever they want and do whatever with him, and if we say no we are rude or selfish or a jerk (this is the behavior they exhibited towards a family friend when her daughter was a baby, and what they’ve said/done to me and my husband if they were around when I had kids I was babysitting with me).