First time Mum to a 7 month old, for the most part I think I’m fairly laid back (just that sort of person) and husband agrees. I go and visit my parents once a week and stay the night (at their request, so they can spend time with LO) also it’s nice to be around them and my younger sister who lives at home, plus husband gets a night to himself. We’ve been doing this for about 2 months now, I don’t feel as if I’m imposing as parents seem to bend over backwards to accommodate us (unprompted) and are upset if we miss a week.
However, recently tensions have been rising between me and my 70yr old Dad. Dad and I have always got on well but butted heads in a spirited way (debates about politics etc, but never arguments or anything that left a sour taste in anyone’s mouth, we both really enjoy long conversations and can talk about anything).
I guess Mum and Dad are fairly traditional in the sense that Dad was the breadwinner and Mum the main caregiver (she has always worked full time though, Dad is now retired). As such Dad was a bit clueless when it came to baby care whereas Mum jumped right in naturally. We’ve both been nothing but patient with him, but suffice to say he’s really only in it for the ‘fun Grandad’ side of things and will hand her to Mum or me if she needs a nappy change or feeding (bottle).
Something weird happened the last couple of visits that got me thinking. He’s just started bickering with me about things. Started with inconsequential things like TV shows we were both watching and details he misremembered but was adamant he was right and I was wrong (I dropped it as he’d just find out as the show progressed)
But recently it’s been more personal. He made a comment about how I shouldn’t complain so much because my husband won’t stand for it (implying he might walk out), no idea where that’s comes from as I don’t nag my husband and there’s no friction between us. Then last week he was being a bit daft with the baby (he can be a bit careless, jiggling her about after a feed, losing his balance and nearly dropping her once, not putting the break on the pram on a slope or right by a road and walking away, that sort of thing).
So what happened was she was on her playmat and he kneeled down to talk to her with a full mug of tea in hand, I was a little on guard but said nothing, the mug had brightly coloured animals on it and she took an interest in it, Dad noticed this so he held the mug out to her, her little hand about half an inch away from the mug reaching out. She’s at an age where she wants to grab and hold everything, she’s also in a ‘slapping’ phase and will hit objects and people, so I put 2 and 2 together and foresaw what might happen (all over Mum’s cream carpet no less). I was polite, no rude tone, I simply said ‘maybe not so close with the mug, Dad’ and he snapped back at me ‘you’re ALWAYS complaining, all you do is complain, the tea’s not even hot it’s only warm! I don’t know how your husband puts up with your constant complaining, you’re being completely ridiculous!’
I was completely taken aback by this and very annoyed, especially the comments about my husband, so I shot back that husband would be on my side if he was here. Dad then accused me of lying to my husband, said ‘of course he’s going to be on your side when you go home and lie that I had boiling hot tea!’ and he started doing an unpleasant impression of me speaking to my husband about how awful Dad is, he continued ‘it wouldn’t hurt her anyway, it’s just warm tea, she’d just get a bit wet!’ at this point it escalated into him shouting over me and me shouting back, I could see it was upsetting LO so told Dad to go away to end the interaction and he did. I tried to avoid him the rest of the evening and Mum drove us home instead of him a while later.
I was so turned around by the whole thing I started to doubt myself, was I one of those anxious helicopter Mums? Did I complain all the time? Was I being unfair to husband without even realising it?
I told husband what happened and asked him to give it to me straight, he told me a few things I should work on but he knows I’m already aware of (stuff like not sweating the small stuff and not getting bogged down in what all the baby books say etc) but he said that ultimately I’m fine, I don’t complain or nag and that he absolutely would have said something about the mug of tea if he’d been there, in fact he said he would have spoken up even if it was just a glass of water, because he too could connect the dots on what might happen if LO slapped the glass. He said my Dad’s comments were really strange and totally out of character.
I’m not sure what to do now. I don’t want to not visit my parents, but this behaviour cannot continue to escalate. Do I bring up what happened? Wait for the next incident? Involve Mum? I just feel pretty rubbish about the whole thing tbh. Any advice welcome.