Postportum issues
I am a South Indian woman married to a North Indian man. I am the only child of my parents, while my husband is the elder of two siblings. Ours was a love marriage. We recently welcomed our first baby.
According to my family's tradition, after childbirth, the mother stays at her parents' home for about nine months. This gives the time to recover physically and emotionally while receiving support from my mother in caring for the baby.
The past three months have been extremely exhausting. I genuinely feel that staying at my parents' home for the full nine months would be a huge help. My mother helps me with the baby, allowing me to balance motherhood and my office responsibilities much better.
However, my husband and in-laws are insisting that I return to my in-laws' house after four or five months. Their home is a traditional joint family of six, and there are expectations that I wake up early every day (including weekends), help with household chores, seek permission before going out, and manage my full-time office job, which requires me to be in the office five days a week. I have been doing all these for the past 3 years since day 1 of my marriage.
My in-laws live only about 3 km away. They visit every weekend, we have video calls twice a day, and my husband is currently staying with me at my parents' house. I have even offered a compromise by staying at my in-laws' house every weekend while continuing to live with my parents during the week.
Whenever I explain why I want to stay at my parents' home for nine months, my husband says that it is not part of his culture for women to stay with their parents for that long after childbirth. He has told me that we will return after four or five months regardless of my wishes. He has even said that if I want to stay for the full nine months, it would only be after a divorce. He also told me that if I stay at my parents' house for nine months now, I should not return to my parents' home again for the next three years..
What would you do in my situation?
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