To dislike the twaddle MIL spouts to baby DS?

[MrsBloomingTroll]

DS is 6 weeks old, not my PFB but my DC2.

Whenever MIL holds him she talks to him non-stop, whether he's asleep or awake, saying things like:

"they don't look after you, do they?"
"they don't feed you, do they?" (she is anti-bf and convinced I am not producing enough milk for him, admittedly we are supplementing but for other reasons, we are very pro-bf)
"I don't blame you for complaining about . I would if I were you."
...and the inevitable conclusion....
"you should come and live at Grandma's house. I'll look after you properly." by dumping you in boarding school aged 9 as she did with DH

She basically has verbal diarrhoea.

She also fusses endlessly about whether he's too hot/cold/sun in eyes/not enough sun/etc when he generally seems to be quite a content little chap and rarely squeaks. Unlike DC1

I don't think she did it as much with DC1, or maybe I didn't notice it so much. Or maybe I just didn't let MIL hold my PFB as often!

DH says I should just ignore her. But I am too hormonal and sleep-deprived for that.

DC1 is 3 yo and I'm also worried what she is hearing and noticing, although she seems to have inherited her Grandma's propensity for verbal diarrhoea and talks all the fecking time rather than listens!

I don't think I can bring myself to say anything to her, or is there a subtle way to get her to stop? (I'm aware of the accepted MN method...)

AIBU to dislike it? Even if it's meaningless twaddle I am a mother with the inevitable guilt so hearing someone say "they don't look after you" isn't very nice!

Oh, and I'm sure some of you have MILs who say worse, right?

it would drive me mad but on other hand its prob just habit and she's not going to change now - so u prob need to try and not get annoyed - not for her but for you!

Well I'm a MIL and never talk like that to my grandchdrn and am lucky enough to have 3 nice DILs. However I honestly think most of you are taking this too seriously. It is something that some older women do and they think it's a joke. I can remember years ago hearing women talk like this to babies. I notice that those of you have mums like this can just be straight and I understand why this is possible, but not with a MIL. I think some of the suggestions of what you should do/say are a bit over the top to be honest.

Can't you just "suck it up" as the young people say these days! Once the babies grow up, they won't be able to do it anyway, well not as easily anyway.

I think some of you young mums with sons should realise that in all probability you are going to be a MIL one day.....I say "mothers of sons" because the difficulties almost always are between the MIL and DIL and not about the MIL and SonInLaw. It's such a shame that this age old conflict continues.

OK will now retreat to a safe place with a hard hat on!

well my mum does this which annoys Dp but I know she is joking although would love DD all to herself for the day. When DPs mum does similar it grates on me. 'tell your mum you want more milk' Erm yes showing her the empty bottle wont help and shes not hungry/windy or cold. Shes bloody annoyed because you keep jiggling her after feeds and making her puke!

OP here, checking in during the night feed.

Thank you so much for your replies, it's great to know I'm not alone and thank you for the suggestions on how to handle it.

We've been with MIL again today but, thanks to the lovely weather, we spent a good chunk of it out and about, with DS in the pram (pushed by MIL...as if I'd get a look in!). I got annoyed with her commentary and endless fussing about the sun quite early on, and took the decision to leave her with the pram and stay with DC1 (DD) as much as possible instead, which made it much more bearable, and I got through the day feeling much less wound up!

Lucky this evening DS fell asleep being cuddled by someone else, whilst MIL was otherwise occupied, and we didn't want to disturb him, so she didn't get her mitts on him long enough to start up the commentary again.

I'm not a big one for confrontation so will probably just try to continue to avoid her when she's with DS and see it as a chance to spend time with DD. But if it gets bad I will come back to this thread for ideas of how to handle her.

NanaNina I do hope to be a MIL/grandma one day so am trying to take account of her feelings as much as possible, but my MIL seems to be trying to take over parenting of my DCs (DS especially) as a way of compensating for missing out with her own kids, my DH especially, when they were small. This is what DH reckons anyway. She tends to take over, with a definite implication at all times that my way of doing things is wrong, her way is right (not just parenting - everything!) and I do object to that. I hope not to be like that when I am a MIL!

redexpat I hope your baby arrives soon!

I think my own Gran will whitter on regardless when our first baby turns up this month.

She was going on to my Niece, "Lucy" "Lucy" "Lucy look at me" etc etc, just because the baby wouldn't - said baby was about 2 months old at the time and I would have thought didn't give a toss.

Even I had got sick of Gran's voice, God knows what Lucy thought and she'd been listing to it for hours!

My mum used to talk non stop to my PFB-didn´t find it necessary to say anything nasty though-there´s plenty of nice stuff to witter on to a baby about!

YANBU. While doing some of your own critical baby speak back may be tempting (and rather funny) I would avoid it as your 3 yo will probably just end up more upset and confused. And I wouldn't want to lower myself to a war of words with your mil via goo goo ga ga baby language if I were you!

I would do what a pp suggested and tell mil that although baby can't understand your 3 yo can and some of the stuff she is saying doesn't sound very nice.