Lost the Grandparent lottery.
My partner and I are 34. We live in France.
We have one son, he is soon to be 2 years old.
We spent the pregnancy and first 6 months of his life 30 minutes away from my parents. They sucked. We barely saw them. Always an excuse. No help. Huge arguments over my dad's smoking and smelling of smoke when visiting. Ended in a blow up, them calling me precious and entitled, and us not speaking for a year.
We left, and spent nearly a year living 30 minutes away from my partner's parents. We saw them once per week for like 20 minutes, and they'd take our son on Saturday's from 9 to 5, probably twice per month. We were drowning in a small apartment near Paris to be close to them, extremely high rent, and decided it wasn't worth it.
Today, we live 1.5h from my parents, and 4h from her parents.
Her mum has a week long vacation. She is always saying how she doesn't see her grandson enough. I offered to pay for the train (1.5h trip, first class), and to make up the guest room lovely for her, so she can come down for the week.
"Sorry, can't, I have a chiropractor appointment midweek" - you can get same day chiropractor appointments in France... but I digress. So they want to come Friday to Sunday, and for us to go to the Zoo and the Beach. Great, more stuff to do. No help. No taking a load off.
My parents asked for another chance, I said ok. Last week they came to see us for a few hours, was ok. I said sure this can be a weekly thing. But their life choices have led to them having poor health at 55 years old. So this week they've cancelled, and I doubt we'll see them for a good month or two now due to my dad's back acting up.
And then I speak with my best mates... their kids are practically raised by the grandparents who never fail to step up... I'm gutted. My partner and I wanted 3 kids. We can barely manage one, especially now with cost of living creeping up leading to my partner probably having to consider a return to work.
Am I alone? Childcare is a bitch we've got 2 days per week costs us 600 EUR per month... They don't have capacity for more.
I'm honestly considering moving the family to Thailand just to have helpers so we can have the 3 kids we always dreamt of... is that bad?
Edit: Didn't expect this post to blow up so much, thanks for all the comments, can't answer them all as either my work, my partner, or my toddler will kill me 🤯