My MIL lives on the east coast, halfway across the country. One day she calls at about 10 oclock at night (I'm still at work, OH just left work) and says "hey I'm about an hour from Norman, what's your address so I can put it in my GPS?"

WTF?!? She drove for 21 hours and didn't think to call us until she was an hour from our house! We were expected to drop everything and make way for her! She stayed at our house for 3 days (house was an absolute disaster, I wasn't feeling well and I wasn't expecting company...) Now she has offered to OH to come stay with us when baby gets here to help out...I'm not sure I want her here. I mean, she's a fairly nice lady but we didn't ask her to come stay and there really isn't a way to tell her no without being rude or hurting her feelings...who knows, she is really flaky so she might wind up not coming to stay.

Whew sorry...that was long.

I'm really lucky, my MIL lives just in the next road to us and is lovely. She keeps herself to herself and only offers advice if we ask for it. She's also asked for a list of items we would like for baby and said she will keep to it, and has offered for us (and my parents!!) to come round for Christmas so I don't have to worry about cooking etc.

I did have a rough ride with my own mother for a while who kept buying things without asking us including steriliser, bottles, breast pump, baby clothes, etc. I eventually told her I didn't like her trying to take over and that we'd already researched and chosen what items we wanted. She complained to my dad about it and he told her off saying she's already had 4 kids and now it's our turn and we have every right to choose things for ourselves. Since then she's taken back most of the items she bought and has started asking our opinions before getting anything. We are grateful though, she bought the pram/travel system we wanted and my dad bought the cot we wanted. So it's all turned out well. We got our own steriliser and breast pump, bottles etc.

Compromise has turned out to be a godsend!!