In-laws refusing to get vaccines

We’re due with our first in about a month. He’ll be the first grandchild on both sides. For months and months, everyone has been thrilled to get to meet him, but we knew from the jump we wouldn’t want people around him for the first few months (until we get the okay from his pediatrician) without being vaccinated for the flu and Tdap and RSV if over 60. This is what my OBGYN and the pediatrician we will be using also recommended. We prefer Covid vaccines too, but we were planning to give people the option of Covid testing on the way to see him if they didn’t want that. My husband and I both received all of our shots, my parents and brother received theirs. My sister in law has plans to receive hers.

But today we told my in-laws, who we knew would be the challenge. My MIL has been an anti-vaxxer since people started saying vaccines cause autism (yet 2/3 of her kids are autistic, so…). My father in law is more rational, but works in medical malpractice law and therefore believes doctors/the healthcare system to be evil. My husband sent them a text, and within minutes got a phone call from his irate mom. She yelled at him over how she’d never inject “poison” into her body (but she as a non-diabetic/non-obese person did take ozempic, so…), and how she can’t believe he’d try to enforce that and how “grandparents can’t give their grandchild the flu.” Minutes after that call, his dad called to (in a calmer manner) tell him that they wouldn’t come around until our pediatrician said it was safe.

I am heartbroken. I’d hoped that this would be something they could at least do to prove to us that they care. They already are the type of people to never visit but tell us we need to visit more (we travel 6-7 hours to see them at least every other month). They’ve visited us once in the year and a half we’ve lived in our current city, and it was a one day long visit. They have alcohol abuse issues, they refuse to acknowledge their faults. It is genuinely soul-crushing. My husband is the kindest, gentlest soul on the planet and watching them do this to him is infuriating. I honestly don’t know how to cope with it.

We have always had the boundaries of handling our own parents when they need to be handled, but I so badly want to discuss this with them (although I will not). I want to yell at them for damaging the relationship forever by putting their misinformed beliefs over their first grandchild. I want to make sure they know that he will never be the same level of close with them that he will be with my parents who have spent the past several months making regular trips to our home to help us prepare for his arrival. I want to tell them that I don’t and won’t trust them with care of their grandson unless they can magically sober up and get control of their screaming/cussing, something they normally just freely do, no matter the audience.

They seem to be wanting us to bend and make an exception for them, I think. This is the one time we will not do that. My MIL already started telling people the baby’s name (last time she ever gets to know a name early) and we didn’t lay into her about it because we chose to just move on. I’m tired of being passive though. These people have put my family, my husband and I, through so much abuse and manipulation, and it stops now.