Coming home with the baby brings anxiety

I’m planning to come back to San Francisco at the end of August since I have a work offsite planned, and Chris and the baby are coming with me. It will be an opportunity for me to not only go for work and meet my colleagues in person for the very first time, but it will also be the first time my family will be meeting the baby. For our sanity’s sake, we’re only spending the weekends at my parents’, while spending time at the hotel that will be expensed during the weekdays since I’m in town for work. My mom called today, so I told her we were planning to go home since I have a work offsite planned. When she asked me how long, and I told her it would be just over a week, of course, she got upset.

“Yvonne, why is it so short?” she said, in her usual annoyed tone. “Why can’t you just work here and stay here longer, and I’ll take care of the baby? You should stay at least a month. Why don’t you think about me?”

It’s always about her.

My mom is delusional. She always forgets how miserable we are together when we are in the same place for longer than 3-4 days and all the fights. She has short term memory. She always imagines everything to be flowery when it is not. Also, has she completely forgotten that she herself said she isn’t even strong enough to hold the baby while standing up? She can’t even hold a coffee mug without spilling it all over the carpet at home. I reminded her this, and she responded, “Well, I can try.”

“No,” I responded sternly. “You can’t ‘try’ to hold and take care of the baby. You either do it or you don’t, and you won’t. Taking care of a baby is work, and you can’t do it.”

She wasn’t happy I said this, but I wasn’t saying any of this to make her happy. I don’t trust her being with the baby alone given all her outdated recommendations (e.g. “why doesn’t the baby sleep with a blanket?”), not to mention her lack of strength with her arms and back. I just need to try my best to be emotionally detached, being calm, managing the conversation at hand and not engaging. I’m already getting anxiety about being home, and this trip feels like it’s going to be more work than actual pleasure already.

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