Hello! I'm kinda new here. I need help with a situation that may arise with my ILs.
BG: My DH is the youngest of his siblings by a lot. All the older siblings have kids, with some nieces and nephews being in their mid 20s. Most of the time my ILs are pretty great, especially PILs. There's some mild drama from time to time amongs the older siblings, but it usually doesn't involve us directly, we just hear about them fighting.
We are expecting our first child soon, and everyone is really excited. We went on a tour of the hospital and the mother-baby rooms are really small, with only a couple of small chairs for potential visitors. This bummed my DH out, as when his DNis and DNes were born there was lots of room for visitors and everyone got to come see the baby in the hospital, but there's nothing we can do about it. Besides, hopefully everything goes well and we'd be discharged in like 24 hours anyway (no one is being told I'm in labor until after baby is born), so he sends an email to the whole family asking that only our parents come to visit AT the hospital and everyone else wait until we get home. This doesn't really affect my family as they all live far away and it's not likely my parents would even GET here in time to visit us at the hospital, but his family is all fairly close. He gets a response back from one SIL asking us to reconsider as her favorite memories of the other kids was the hospital visit. I really don't care much right now, but could def see it getting overwhelming if EVERYONE chose to come visit at the hospital (rooms are really small), and then there's always the chance that I have a terrible delivery and don't want to see anyone at all, but that's borrowing future bother.
Anyway, I told him it was his choice, he doesn't want to tell this one SIL that she can come and then have everyone else be like "wait, you said only PILs", and he's right, so that's that. But last night FIL makes a comment about how he had been chatting with SIL and while he didn't actually commit himself to comment, he made noises and "didn't say" things that indicate that SIL is really upset about it and he maybe agrees with her. No one has been confrontational about this, it's just a vibe I'm getting. SIL is awesome about 90% of the time, but every once in a while she freaks out about something that she's decided was offensive and there's a huge fight while we all kind of look at each other like "what just happened?". Then it's walking on eggshells for a bit until it blows over and everything is fine again. This hasn't happened in a while, but the potential is always there.
Anyway, I really don't want drama around my first childs birth over something as stupid as a hospital visit. I know everyone here will say "your birth, your decision, she can suck it up", and while I totally agree with that assessment, it's not so important to me that I'm willing to deal with the potential fallout.
I think this turned more into a vent than a question, but here's one: is there something DH can do to prevent this that we're not thinking of? One of his other siblings wont' care to visit in the hospital, and I'm thinking maybe a solution would be to call the other sibling and explain the situation (has plenty of experience with SILs occasional drama). Give up on the whole "parents only" thing but insist that everyone call first and make sure there's not going to be a lot of overlap?