Wow. Not everybody is like you. That's very naive of you to assume that people are basically overreacting. Believe it or not, the reason we post about it is because the anominity of the Internet is a safe place to vent. It's not exactly easy or nice to complain to your partner about his mother all the time! Every family situation is different. You may want your in laws actively involved in your life which is great but have you ever considered why some of us don't? Do you really think anyone in their right mind, who share a normal loving relationship with their in laws, would care abour something so trivial as a car seat? Obviously there is a reason they are anxious and stressed over it. For example, I've complained here many times saying things like "my MIL bought herself a bassinet when I was 5 weeks pregnant", "mil insists on either being in the delivery room or pacing the corridor outside", "mil keeps buying me size huge clothes", "mil ruined all our baby names", "mil ruined my pregnancy announcement by telling everybody", "mil insists on babysitting from a few weeks old". You may read all that and think I'm a bitch and think wow, you should be lucky your mil is so excited. What you don't know is she's an ex junkie with severe bipolar and drinking problems. You don't know how many times she's been taken away by the police for trying to kill her husband. You definitely wouldn't be able to tell how many times that woman has threatened to kill me for taking her son off her, how many times she's threatened to kill us all and herself, threatened us with bikies, how many times she's falsely called the police and got her innocent husband locked up for the night leaving her kids to hide in their rooms alome in fear while she rants and raves. Then she does a complete 180 the next day and acts like nothing happened. Her husband is some sort of sexual pest/pervert who has sexually abused a family member of mine and has made many sexual advances towards me and my partners ex girlfriends. This is my first pregnancy and Mil told everybody my news. It really hurt. She also made fun of every single name we suggested she ruined them all. So I ended up framing her an ultrasound pic with big cute pink stickers spelling her name and my partner told her "mum that's her name if you don't like it please keep it to yourself" and walked away, so I absolutely understand why people keep the name hidden. I have had counseling because of this woman and her husband. I have informed my midwife and councilor of everything and my partner has come to a session to understand his family aren't normal. These people will never EVER have my child unsupervised. I'm not trying to exclude them although I'd love to but any visit will be short and sweet. I will never even change a nappy in their presence. Your post and some of the comments here really have annoyed me. It's easy for you to read things and think people are over reacting but not everybody lives in a perfect world or has time to explain the back story to every comment. You should keep an open mind in the future.