My issue is with my own family, not my in-laws. My in-laws are the only real family I've ever known. My mother and father are divorced but neither of them has much of any contact with my kids and I'm their only child.
We see my father twice a year for short visits if we're lucky and he lives maybe 20 minutes away. We see my mother only when she wants something or about every 3 months, whatever comes first and she feels the need to try and buy the love of my children with cheap gifts and junk food when she does come around. She's close by too, 10 minutes maybe. It's SAD.
Call me tacky or untraditional but when I was pregnant with my fourth child in 2005 after we lost our third baby boy when I was 6 months pregnant in 2004, and I wanted a nice big baby shower, I threw it for myself! I figured that if anyone had a problem with me doing it they simply wouldn't show up and I had a ton of people there, not to mention that my husband, who was my fiance at the time, had set the whole thing up to be a surprise wedding and married me right on the spot at the baby shower! Now I know no one in my family will ever top that baby shower
I guess what I'm getting at is that if you want something of yours up on a pedestal, than you should put it there!!
My in-laws might not be thrilled if we have another baby but none of them would ever let on and I've always had a large gathering of them waiting to see the new baby at any time of the day or night after I give birth, whether it was the first baby, or the fourth. I know I am blessed to have them.
Now my parents would give me the whole "Are you crazy?!" speech
I agree that it is nice to be wanted though.
My parents have done some nasty things to eachother and me during my upbringing but I still cry now and then because they aren't in my life really and my fathers approval of things means the world to me even though it seems like I can never and have never made him happy. My kids have no idea who he is and they barely know my mother.