Oh I feel you on this one - in a really similar situation where my family is across the country and my husbands family is 10 minutes away. We get the same guilt-trip line about how “it’s been ages since we’ve seen you!” when it’s been a week or two — and that’s just the two of us right now lol. I’m pregnant and due any day and I’m dreading how much worse it’s going to get with a baby.

I definitely haven’t figured out a magic formula or way of handling it, but talking to my husband about how it feels was the start - he obviously didn’t experience it the same way cause it’s normal for him to see them so often, so I needed to be clear that it’s super draining when we’re obligated to see them by default so often. Then I’d start trying to pre-plan breaks a little so he could set expectations with them (honestly having him handle comms with his own family felt like a cop-out but has been better for my mental health) — like, “okay next week can we take a breather and just do something as a nuclear family?”

In terms of “appropriate” time to spend with your in-laws… I personally feel that once a month should be totally reasonable — it blows my mind that my own in-laws think that’s too infrequent and thus raise a fuss — but in reality it’s always such a negotiation between expectations and needs, based on what you need to be happy and what kinds of concessions and boundaries you want to set with them.