The first Christmas

I don't know how I skipped this part.

His family is an hour and a half away from us, and with a due date of December 8, I started stressing over Christmas. What if he came late? What if I had to have a section? What about an episiotomy? How was I going to bring a brand new baby that far and how was I going to last through the car ride? What about nursing? And since that was such a disaster, it eventually turned into "what about pumping and all of the paraphernalia involved?"

My parents had the same thoughts. We were being told to come for his family's Christmas. No one gave thought to the exhausted new parents, and especially not to the new mother and her comfort levels. But my parents did. They offered to host his parents and his brother and his sister-in-law on Christmas. My parents are a 15-minute drive away in the same city we live in.

When he called to extend the invite, they originally thought he had asked to have them and they were very squirrelly about it. He kept inviting them and they kept blowing it off with a "we'll see."

At my shower, my mom asked his mom in front of their family and mine if they would please come eat. She was kind and generous. And his mother said "oh uh well we'll see." My relatives commented at various times about how strange that response was. My mother was flabbergasted.
My BiL and SIL were planning to do Christmas Eve in his hometown and in hers, 20 mins away from his. Then they were making an 8-hour drive to northeast Louisiana to visit her extended family. But the more his mom begged off about coming to my parents' house, the more they discussed the fact that his mother was really going to miss her only grandchild's first Christmas. So they planned to detour to New Orleans because there was no way she would miss BIL and the grandchild together.

After two or three months of us practically begging them, they came.

After Christmas, Mark called and thanked them for coming. Another gaslighting situation arose wherein she said that they were always planning to come, what was he talking about? Thankfully, my SIL and I had had extensive Facebook conversations via messenger, so I know for a fact that we weren't imagining their hesitation. He told them that he was glad they came because he was worried that they were being rude and that they had never once committed to coming and had blown my mom off at the shower. But they kept on gaslighting us.

To combat gaslighting, it is suggested that you keep listing things you know to be true. Every time I bring up what they're doing and he starts making excuses, I lost this as one major situation that we know to be true but they keep denying ever happened.