As long as I've been around my husband's family, my relationship with his sister, J, has been strange. As well as I can figure, J. really struggles with being happy and positive. She is almost completely uncommunicative whenever we're with her and is angry and resentful about nearly every interaction we do have. Through the years, I've tried to be friendly but just assumed that J is the way she is, there never seemed to be anything causing her behavior and I mostly just shrugged it off.

However, in June 2012, while at dinner with his family, my husband, B., and I told his family we were expecting a baby via a cutesy little framed photo. J. took one look at the frame, said "I figured," and left the table. She did not say one word the rest of the evening. I was shocked, B. was FURIOUS. My MIL apologized for her several days later but we were never given an explanation for the behavior. Weeks later, J. texted B. "Congratulations" and we didn't hear anything else from her for most of the pregnancy. The day we had our ultrasound and found out we were having a girl, we called all the family to share the news. J. knew to expect the phone call, but didn't answer and never acknowledged our message.

Things continued on like this. Somewhere along the line, B.'s aunt clued us in that J and her husband had been TTC for a long time with no luck. I felt absolutely horrible and obviously would have handled the pregnancy announcement, etc. much differently had we known.

C. is 8 months old now and J. and her husband have ignored her 95% of the times they've seen her. When we are together, I try to make sure we don't make C. the center of attention and work hard to get J. to talk about her hobbies, work and interests, although I normally don't get more than one word answers. My husband is completely fed up and angry with J. and my MIL is devastated that her family isn't getting along. I've asked my MIL many times if we could all sit down and have a conversation about what's going on and clear the air, but she is totally against that idea. J. does not want any of us to know about their infertility struggles but it ends up just being the giant elephant in the room.

I don't know what else to do. With the holidays coming up, I know the issues are going to be even more magnified. I know I cannot ever really understand how she feels but I am also very angry that she's choosing not to have a relationship with her niece. She's told her mom that it's just too hard to interact with C. and that breaks my heart and makes me angry at the same time.

I want C. to have a relationship with all of her aunts and uncles and right now it is SO awkward any time we're together. I do not want to make their struggles even worse, but I also don't want to spend our whole lives tiptoeing around her. I really think my husband is very close to just writing her off and I don't want that to happen. Bees, help me fix my family!