Both mine and my husband’s family are not affluent, much less oligarchs, if anyone decided to look in that direction of material prosperity. We barely scraped together the down payment on an apartment, and, strapping on the last holes, we paid the loan, but we live in our own house, we are our own masters.
At first, my father-in-law and mother-in-law thought that we would ask to live with them, in their luxurious four-room apartment, they even hinted that they would give us two rooms and would not meddle in our family. I was a little hesitant to accept such an offer, and my husband, knowing his parents better, refused at once. I couldn’t count the insults at the time! They accused us of everything, but most importantly, my husband’s parents did not believe that we would be able to live independently. And suddenly we did!
The flow of taunts and resentment began to subside, and then I got pregnant. My mother-in-law started her song again: “And what are you going to live on with a small child? We are not going to help you, if you lived with us, then it would be different …”.
The motive is understandable, we have heard it more than once, so all these tricks and hints of the mother-in-law passed over our ears.
I gave birth to our little girl. Yes, it was hard until she went to daycare, three years we were again close to zero in our wallets almost every month. After I left maternity leave, I found out that my boss decided to create his own firm, and pulled to her former colleagues in the department. An offer was made to me as well, and so tempting in terms of money that it was just stupid to refuse.
We went up again, stopped counting pennies, but did not take into account the fact that the reproductive age is well underway. Another pregnancy was totally unexpected for us. The classic question arose, “What to do?”
My husband’s orders went out of order at work, he was asked to write a statement and leave for three months without pay, and on the horizon there was also the prospect of downsizing.
Then we took a commanding decision – I give birth, a couple of months to sit with the child, and then my husband takes maternity leave, and we get a minimum of financial loss.
And everything would be fine, but when my husband’s parents found out about our plan, their reaction, though fairly predictable, exceeded all our expectations of emotions.
My mother-in-law was laughing so hard that the glass in the windows rattled, and my father-in-law just mocked my son, calling him “babysitter,” “cook,” etc. words.
It should be said that my husband endured all these attacks with courage, and just waited for Mom and Dad to calm down, and they “let it go.
It happened after about a month. My mother-in-law came to visit us, and, as if from a lordly shoulder, threw:
– Well, be that as it may, help you, stupid. I’ll sit with the baby, and you work, and then shame to tell someone – a man, and suddenly – nanny!
Perhaps if the offer to help sounded in any other form, we would have thought, but such a “gift” we just could not accept, as reported to the extremely surprised mother-in-law.
Now we have another round of tension in the relationship, but it doesn’t scare us. Soon I am going to work, we have received maternity capital, not much time left before my husband’s maternity leave begins. The head of human resources at my husband’s company, when he found out about our “move,” was indignant, but there was nothing he could do about it. We had to accept the application, and put my husband on maternity leave. Downsizing was automatically eliminated, and after three years we will figure out how and what to do next.
The main thing is that we solved our problems again, and quite serious ones, by ourselves, without outside help, and without having to curtsy to my mother-in-law and father-in-law for their “care” and “understanding”.
