Before I moved to the UK, my mom made it very clear that she was not happy with the decision. She is one of those people who lives for her grandchildren and she was very close with DD (she saw her several times a week and DD usually spent the night with her a few times a month). She told me that it wasn't fair to rip her family away from her (she was honestly more concerned about "losing" DD than me...stating that the young years are where you can really watch them grow and develop and she would be missing all of that). I completely understood exactly what she was saying and took it all into consideration...but decided to move anyway. I tried to reassure my mom that even though we were oceans away from each other, our relationships could still stay close...it would just take more effort on both parts.
Since we've moved, it almost seems like my mom is purposely making things difficult. She got an international calling plan with 300min/month and doesn't even utilize all of that to talk to us. When I do talk to her, it seems she goes out of her way to mention my sister's kids being at her house and just spending time with them in general. She rarely asks about my pregnancy and if I bring something up, she doesn't seem to interested in keeping the conversation going. There have been a few times that she's seemed excited about something...but few and far between (as opposed to the huge amount of excitement she showed when I was pregnant with DD and during my sister and sister-in-law's pregnancies). I try to make excuses...like saying "Well, it is her 5th grandchild so I guess it's not as exciting as the first ones" or maybe she can't let herself be excited about it because she's not physically here to join in the celebration. But as time goes by, it feels more and more like she's just purposely pushing us to the outside.
The latest...we had originally planned for my dad to come visit us at the beginning of August and take DD back to the US with him for a few weeks. Then my mom would come at the end of August and bring DD back with him. Well for various reasons, we have decided that DD will not go back to the US. When I told my dad, he understood the reasons and said he would still come at the beginning of August as planned because he was excited to meet his grandson (my DD is his only grandchild atm). When I told my mom, I mentioned that if she wanted to wait a few weeks, the flights might be cheaper. She responded by saying that since she didn't need to come at a certain time (to drop DD off before school starts) she would just keep checking prices and come "Whenever". She didn't say it as "I'll try to come as soon as possible when the tickets are a bit cheaper" but kinda like she wasn't bothered about coming at all and since she didn't need to come, she wouldn't be.
It's probably just pregnancy hormones exasperating something that's been bothering me for awhile anyway, but I can't help but be kinda bummed that we're not as close as I'd like for us to be...and left wondering why it feels like she's purposely trying to make this harder than it has to be.
