MIL deliberately ignoring my wishes..AIBU or is she?!

[havingastress]

Quite prepared to accept it's me who's being unreasonable...

BUT I literally had the biggest stress out yesterday!

Baby due literally ANY minute, am being induced this week. It's her second grandchild.

We found out we were having a girl at the 20 week scan (with hindsight, won't find out again, but there you go!) ...and told parents and inlaws. Her first reaction was...Ooooh great I love all the little pink clothes and outfits you can get.

Now....daft I know..but I BLOODY HATE PALE PINK BABY CLOTHES!!! You know...the whole rows of the stuff in Asda, Next, M+S. it's that insipid pink. Ewww. Anyway, I laughed and told her, Oh god please NO PINK..Honestly, I don't like it and I won't be dressing my daughter in it. Please save your money!! She was categorically told for want of a better way of putting it!

My mum has bought us 5 beautiful outfits for our daughter - each time she phoned before she purchased, described how it looked and asked would I be ok with her buying it.. Totally over the top as it's my mum and I know she has brilliant taste! But I appreciated her respect, and she said she knew from personal experience how annoying it is to receive loads of stuff you don't like because then you feel pressurized into using it because you feel guilty.

MIL turned up yesterday with a bin liner. A bin liner FULL of a mix of second hand clothes, car boot purchases, ebay purchases and some reduced sale stock from Asda and Next. ALL BLOODY PINK. THE WHOLE BLOODY LOT. A ridiculous amount of clothes that I have no idea where to put. She actually said, 'I know you said no pink, but come on, it's a girl, I want her to wear pink'

I was blazing! I feel as though she is deliberately ignoring my wishes, spending money needlessly (which then makes me feel guilty) and forcing HER wishes/beliefs onto me.

I know if I get rid of them to the charity shop/ebay she will open the wardrobe and demand to know where they are. The stuff with tags I took the whole lot back last night and swopped for 9-12months plain babygros etc that will be used and we will be very grateful for.

So...AIBU or is she? And even if it's ME being U, how the hell do I get her to stop buying loads of crap that I don't want?!

OP - congratulations! Including your maiden name is simply a lovely touch.

Not going to even address the clothes because the thread has moved on somewhat.

Your MIL,from where I am sitting, does not "mean well", she is being a controlling vitriolic bully. It is good that your DH has seen exactly how bad she has been with you. Stand your ground with her. She does not have a god given,or even legal right when we get down to do,to have anything to do with your daughters upbringing. You don't sound like you wanted to exclude her completely,you just want some time with your new baby! A normal person would understand that.

Hope you can find a way to right the situation without a massive fall out,though if she carries on behaving the way she has,it could easily happen.

Enjoy your baby and ignore her as much as possible!

get down to it

Congratulations on your new baby girl.

It sounds to me as though your mil still considers you as children who she can control. You need to assert yourself as adults who are now parents and who make your own decisions. I mean WATF "take her back and tell them you've made a mistake!"
"Er, no, because we ^haven't made a mistake. This is what we have decided upon, so butt out."

I don't know how old you are (or if it's even relevant) but you need to withdraw from her a lot little. Stop consulting her on everything (if you do), be more detached, as you would with a colleague, in that you're not inviting opinions or advice but stating how it is.

I do hope that this isn't spoiling what should be magical days with your lovely newborn little girl.

Oh, and in the light of "name-gate," there is now NO WAY I would let her see my baby wearing any of that pink stuff.

But then, I can be a cow.

Didnt just want to read and run, Congratulations on your beautiful baby.

The MIL, well, she's trouble. Could you try writing it all down for her do you think?

Ah, op, don't worry about the tears.

Day 3 is when it all seems to kick in and if you weren't crying about MIL, you would probably be in sobbing over something else

My dd has firstname middlename mymaidenname dhsurname, so we've done the same as you and don't give two hoots what anyone else thinks about it!

Your MIL is clearly controlling and used to having her own way. It's going to be a shock to her, but the reality is that this is your child and you will make all the decisions regarding her. The sooner she accepts that, the easier it will be for everyone.

Good idea to let dh deal with her as much as possible. She may never change but you know you don't have to put up with her crap.

How's that newborn baby smell? Pass her over here for a sniff

Oh, the newborn smell on the back of the neck

Congratulations on your lovely daughter, commiserations on your ghastly MIL.

All you can really do is as people have said - keep stating matters, don't ask or an opinion, give her options of things which are acceptable to you for her to choose between.

In other words - you'll be getting some excellent practice for when DD hits toddlerhood

havingastress congrats on your DD and hope establishing bf is going well (keep that lansinoh handy!!)

I'm just so sad to hear about your MIL's reaction to the name.

This kind of thing is distressingly common when a baby is born but you have to hold your ground. I've posted before about this on MN but we did the same with our DS's name and my FIL was so horrible about it (reacted the same way as your MIL, and sent email after email of emotional abuse) that we ended up cutting contact with him. He had always been overbearing but it just showed what a narcissistic prick he really was. It totally destroyed such a happy time for us and poor DH ended up having counselling over it. I don't see any benefit in having someone like him in our lives and can't envisage a situation where we bother with his shit again.

The best thing was that my DH absolutely stood up for our choices 100%, even though he wasn't too keen on giving DS both our last names himself at first. We presented a totally united front to FIL and that really made the scales fall from DH's eyes when his own father started bullying him and trying to abuse him emotionally. When you say your DH was in tears I remember sitting with a 5 day old DS last December, watching DH cry as he read his father's awful emails. Finally, DH texted saying just "Please don't contact us again" and that was that - life has been so much better since then (and since DH did some reading up on narcissistic parents, fear/obligation/guilt, and had some counselling).

Congratulations on your DD. You can be happy that you have your DH backing you up on it all. As much as it is hard atm, it could be worse.

As long as you stand strong together it will all be fine in the end.

Squishy day three cuddles are more important than idiotic family members. Concentrate on the good stuff and ignore her. Stay strong and have big hugs with your delightful daughter and husband:)

She gets worse

I wonder if it would be worth writing her a letter, explaining how hurtful you are finding all of the things she is doing now and requesting that she rein it in somewhat. It might provoke an arguement, but it seems you are getting that anyway. At least it would give you chance to put your point across calmly, and seeing it in writing might make her reflect on her behaviour.

I would also say that whenever she starts on the phone, instead of argueing with her, maybe just end the call and briefly tell her it is because she is stepping out of line and you don't wish to carry on the call.

Having read your last post, I would say that your MIL has control issues and is trying to "take over". Luckily your DH seems to be made of the right sort of stuff and telling his mum to butt out, it's your and his DD, not hers, would be the right way to go now.

Bloody rude - how dare she be so dismissive of your role in your DD's life! My DS1 also has my maiden name as a middle name - also because it's an unusual surname and I wanted to give some credit to my Dad and can't stand his first name - if anyone had dared to suggest that DS1 had "nothing to do with that name" I'd have bitten their head off smartish!

Your DH needs to nip this in the bud now. Make it very clear where the boundaries are, and how much/little input his mother is going to have, because she sounds like the sort of person who thinks her opinion is the only one that matters.

Congratulations on your DD, btw!

OP, I have read most of this thread. I picked up the pinkgate bit and the namegate bit, but missed the playmatgate bit in the middle.

Anyway, gosh, you are doing well! She still thinks she has a lot of say over your parenting decisions, but you and your DH are the parents.

Your baby, your choice of clothes.
Your baby, your choice of names.

Stay strong, and look after yourself. It's a very emotional time.

Wow - just wow about the name. Where I come from, it s very normal to have name - middle name- mothers surname - fathers surname ( but we tend to not change our names after marriage). Your MIL is rude and obnoxious. Let dh deal with her and focus on the baby. Congrats, by the way.

On another note, this thread has inspired me to chuck out a lot of stuff people have given us, that I have felt obligated to keep, as they were gifts. Feeling very good about getting rid of stuff!

Congratulations on your baby girl!

I am a huge fan of including the maiden name, or even the maiden name of your mother or mil, in with the child's name. I like the sound of it, I like how it gives a sense of family history. My oldest ds has my maiden name and my youngest had my mil's maiden name, both have my brothers names for a middle name, then their own first name and dh's last name.
Your mil seems to be living in her own little world, and seems to think she is the mother of you all and you should all do as she does. She is going to be an unhappy woman until the day she realizes she can be an important part of your lives without her word being carved in stone.
I hope someone gets through to her.
Meanwhile, try and remember it is her weirdness and neediness that is wrong, not you nor your poor dh. Remember to be firm and don't give in.
All those pink clothes she bought, if someone gave my kids clothing I really despised, I would just donate them all to a charity.

Tell her to fuck the fuck off. I think it's a lovely thing that you've done. And that's just it, it's done, and it's none of her bloody business.

This is about more than pink, and she's acting like a total arse.

And I wouldn't write a letter as suggested down thread, that's just something else for her to get in a mard about. She'd probably photocopy it and post it to all friends and family as proof if how unreasonable YOU are.

Congratulations! Let DH deal with her and him talking to FIL may not be a bad plan if FIL has any hope of telling her to behave. If not then on the small stuff don't sweat it (eBay or charity shop actual stuff and practice your listening intently whilst ignoring completely face for her comments). On the big stuff decide your approach with your DH and get him to deliver the news. You've just had a baby - he can deal with his mother.

I think MIL is just excited.

I think YABU to have taken the stuff back with tags and exchanges them for something you want. That's rude.

It's nice when you buy a kid something and then you see them wearing it. It's nice.

Too add I don't like that baby pink either and never buy anything baby pink for little girls/babies.

winkle you think the OP is BU for not putting her DD in clothes her MIL bought knowing she would hate them?

Is she also unreasonable for wanting to use the steriliser her work colleagues bought her and the playmat she chose for her DD, to chose the names she and her DH want for their child and for not wanting her MIL to come and take over the first few weeks of their family life?

Or can those all be excused by MIL being excited too?

Well, yes, we can probably excuse the avalanche of pink as being excited.

But her response to the baby's name? Over the line. Big-time.

In my experience loads of people take stuff with tags back and exchange it, that is normal. Reasonable people include the receipt so you can do this. One of DH's colleagues bought us a pack of sleepsuits for our second baby when we already had loads in that size - should we have kept them and hardly used them, or should we have taken them back and got something that would actually be useful? There is nothing rude about it, they wanted to give our baby something to wear, we decided our baby wouldn't get the wear out of their gift but could get something else really useful on exchange.

I just read back - so sorry about namegate. That was horrible :(

She sounds like a massive controlling bitch. I would reduce contact of any kind with her until she learns to have some respect for the mother of her grandchild. It was the only thing that worked with my mil when we first had children and she was being rude and controlling (though not to this extent!). We now get on fine, have a healthy respect for each other and we see each other weekly with the kids.