Another one for the MIL-rage cannon...
We've just returned from a weekend away visiting DP's family in another city. They're a great bunch and I usually get along ok with MIL although we are quite different people. Her excitement about my 9wo DD (first GC) is morphing into sheer overbearingness and I'm looking for some advice / comebacks to help reassert my position as the one in charge when it comes to my baby.
MIL's babytalk is full of "my baby" and "why don't you stay here with me while mummy and daddy go home" and "do you want to sleep in my bedroom tonight" etc etc. Once she explicitly said "Mummy and daddy don't know what they're doing, do they? You'd better stay here". Yesterday when I needed to take DD off her to change her nappy, she started refusing, arguing that I'd wake baby up, she was happy where she was etc. I stood my ground and said that she needed her nappy changing, she could go back to Nanna afterwards but I felt like a right idiot standing over her wrestling DD from her. The most ridiculous performance of the night was when she sat on her (relatively new) DP's lap with DD, looking like some newborn tableau. Siblings in law looked pretty nauseated at that, so it wasn't just me that found the whole scene repellant. She'd had a few glasses of wine by this point.
The subtext of all this is that DD was prem, taken from me immediately after birth and spent 4 weeks on SCBU, so I'm pretty sensitive to further risks of separation, real or otherwise. I'd hoped MIL would have been sensitive to this too.
She's been really good to us since DD was born, buying quite a bit of baby equipment for us and has made it very clear that she wants a major role in DDs life. I want that too, but the way she's acting at the moment is affecting how I feel about future visits, proposed holidays etc.
DH has offered to have a word and ask her to tone it down a bit, reminding her that we're still recovering from the SCBU rollercoaster. I hate him fighting my battles and I doubt one chat would change things anyhow, so I'm looking for ways of dealing with her in a clear but lighthearted way. Alternatively, opinions on whether I'm just being supersensitive.