MIL advice needed....

[Padgatepeach]

I’m new to mumsnet and I am looking for some advice regarding my mother in law. I have a feeling this may turn out to be a long post but please bear with me.

I’m married to her son and we’ve been together for 5 years. During that time I’ve always got on okay with my MIL. However since having my daughter 6 months ago things have deteriorated.

A catalogue of things have happened, the worst being that my MIL and FIL took my daughter out in their car to visit their friends without my permission when they were minding her when she was 4 weeks old.

They asked me if they could take her out and I said no. I trusted that they’d listen to me but unfortunately they didn’t. When I called back to collect my daughter an hour later they were out. I sat on the drive in my car crying until they returned. I told them I was unhappy that they’d gone against my wishes and my MIL tried to blame me saying I hadn’t been clear that they weren’t to take her out.

To cut a long story short, rightly or wrongly I agreed with my husband that we’d all put the incident behind us for the sake of our daughter but deep down I’m still angry nearly 6 months later.

What’s really upsetting me is that prior to my daughter being born my MIL asked if she could look after her 1 day a week when I go back to work. I agreed as we had a good relationship, however now I don’t trust her and I’d rather pay for my daughter to go to nursery.

I’ve tried to speak to my husband about this and his view is that we should give them the benefit of the doubt and let them look after our daughter but the thought of it makes me feel physically sick. To make matters worse I’m happy for my father and step father to look after her (my mum has passed away) as I trust that they will listen to our wishes.

If we were to send our daughter to nursery rather than to my MIL it would cause world war 3, so what I’m hoping for is some coping mechanisms/advice from those that have been in a similar situation because at the moment I’m ruining my maternity leave worrying about what’s going to happen when I go back to work.

It's not purely whether you can strap a seatbelt around a car seat though is it? It's putting a tiny, floppy, fragile baby into a seat that seems far too big, straps that don't fit well around their neck, clothes that ride up and cover their face, in a back seat where you can't see them, or tell how hot or cold they are, or whether they have been sick.... And people who aren't the babies mum just aren't as tuned into all these possibilities- whether they've been a mum or not. There's a reason that we're anxious and protective in the sea of hormones - it's because they are bloody vulnerable. Plus there's people's driving ability to think about, especially if a new, loud distraction in the back seat.
I've recently had number 3 and am very happy for extra pairs of hands to help cuddle/rock/occupy the baby but I asked husband not to take her to the supermarket in the car whilst he was trying to let me have a rest one afternoon as why should the baby have to go through all that if they don't absolutely have to? He's a perfectly capable parent and we have safe car seats - it's more than just that. Obviously there are lots of times when we have to go in the car but for those first few weeks I'd want to be there. As soon as they are a bit more able to shout about unhappiness and wriggle their faces up if something's moved to cover their mouth etc etc then it's a different kettle of fish...
I'm just highlighting that mum's make decisions based on lots of factors and don't necessarily have to explain them all - it was a simple request to MIL, which she ignored.
Don't pick on the fact that it's easy to put a seatbelt round a car seat...

@wingingit4 couldn't agree more.

I'm sorry but why are PILs suddenly incapable of strapping a car seat using a seatbelt? Most car seats are simple to do and plenty of people are capable of doing it themselves.

I actually know a Grandma who couldn't get the seat into the car correctly, knew it, and still drove 20 miles with a baby in it. Laughs about how over the top precious people are these days. She is in her 50's.

So it does happen.

We never used family for childcare as I was a SAHM but we cut contact with pil for a while when I was deliberately undermined by my fil whilst I was in the room so heaven knows what he would have done when I wasn't there.

It meant they never spent time alone with Ds1 again because I couldn't trust them with the most basic safety measures.

Put your child into a nursery and use your step Dad too. Tell your mil that you cannot trust her due to going against your explicit wishes in regard to your baby.

I would give them the benefit of the doubt. You are over thinking this.

They clearly adore your child and are part of her in some way.

A seat belt car seat is quite safe otherwise there’d be laws against it.

A bit of advice: don’t go to war with the in laws it never ends well and causes massive stress on your marriage. This issue just isn’t worth it.

I would give them the benefit of the doubt. You are over thinking this.
A bit of advice: don’t go to war with the in laws it never ends well and causes massive stress on your marriage. This issue just isn’t worth it.

Clearly coming from someone who has never had to deal with this before?
As if you had you'd know that being constantly undermined, eye rolled at and not listened to isn't fun.
Stresses on marriages are far more likely to come when grandparents expressly go over your heads, treat you like children and refuse to listen to you or see you as parents.
GP wants to go to beach for the day but you've got other plans and say we'd love to but we need to do it another day? "I was going to take you to so and so but mummy said no."
Cue tears.
Not so bad as a baby, but when the baby is a bit older and grandparents undermine you in front of the kids -not so much.
It's good OP sees what's happening now and not several years down the line.
It's not conducive to good mental health and healthy relationships all round.
Stop it now as a baby as it's likely to get worse.

"My MIL has made passing comments about my parenting style and joked that she’ll be doing things differently once I go back to work,"

This sentence alone would be enough to convince me that MIL has inappropriate boundaries and will not listen to how you want your child taken care of.

I'd do nursery. I'd also be re-thinking leaving DD with her. She does not think you have the right to make decisions about your DD when she is looking after her.

Once the trust has been broken it's extremely difficult to mend. They were in a position of trust and disrespected what you had said. This is the consequence of their behaviour. You are doing nothing wrong, you are protecting your child.

Some people prefer to send their children to a nursery for many reasons. It's nobody else's business what those reasons are. You don't have to answer to anyone especially when your own child is involved. Stick to your guns, you know best.

I’d feel the same as you in your situation. I was terrified, exhausted and overwhelmed when I had my child and the last thing you need is agro. You need support. In my case it was my actual mother saying and doing things against my wishes, like giving my son unsterialised water from the tap because he “looked thirsty”, he was only 6 weeks old and exclusively breastfed. I went nuts but she carried on with other crap like trying to just hold him in the car instead of putting him in his car seat. I got sick of it and told her and we didn’t speak or see each other for 12 months. She missed out on a lot of her grandsons life but that was her fault not mine. She wouldn’t respect my wishes and I won’t be bullied. She’s bullied me all my adult life but having a child have me courage to stand up to her and she didn’t like it one bit. Things are now resolved after she made in roads but she’s infinitely more respectful. My advice is be honest and clear about your wishes and reasons and if they won’t agree and won’t respect them your child goes into nursery instead. If your MIL keeps up with the passive aggressive comments just say nicely “what to you mean exactly?” Don’t let it slide. Sometimes that’s enough to stop people making the comments if they don’t get away with them and are actually challenged. 💐

For me it'd come down to this: your MIL can be upset/annoyed/hurt that you change the childcare arrangements OR you will be upset/anxious/worried every time your child is in her care.

I know you and your DH don't want to hurt her feelings but your feelings have to come first here.

They were only with your DD for two hours, why did they have to take her out at all?? A whole day I can understand. Your MIL should have respected your wishes, even if she felt a bit aggrieved and remembered you are a new tired mum without a mum of her own. I have no mum around or MIL for that matter, it is hard.

Her comments about 'her way' are tactless and you should discuss them with your DH and raise the issue of boundaries with your MIL - is this her first GC?

YANBU - stick with childcare outside the family and tell MIL you want her to be able to have all the fun of being a grandparent and to be able to hand back her GD after a visit or whatever.

Op I get how you feel. I adored my mil before I had kids but as soon as I had them it changed a bit. She's a wonderful grandma she really is but she drives me insane at times. She looked after my older 2 when I went back to work and id send them a lunch but she'd always give them something else which would often mess with dinner plans etc and she's the type who thinks kids should experience everything so wanted to let them use garden sheers at 3, things like that! The worst though was my middle child, her first dgd, when I felt she drove a wedge between us at times. She'd ignore my requests to encourage her to walk places and carry her everywhere, if i was there shed say 'mummy says no' rather than just backing me up and when my dd first said mumma she went on and on about it being mammar until that's what it became. I hated it and despite my recent baby being my third, and over a yr before I had to go back, I felt the same as you, physically sick. But, I'd still rather she had her whilst she's so little and I've seen how wonderful it's been for my older 2 to have that relationship so I've learnt over the years to grin and bare it for their sake. Honestly, I don't think a nursery will be better in terms of doing things your way, they can't accommodate everyone's every wish. Unless you really think your child would be at actual risk with them, I'd probably let them have her but maybe say you are trialling it but are concerned if might be hard for her having slightly different routines each day with different people so may decide to put her in the nursery full time at some point if it doesn't work.
Oh and just a side, once you are back at work, give it a couple of weeks and I guarantee some of the anxiety will ease, the hardest part is the thought of it honestly xx

Woah sorry that was so long

OP, please don't leave your child with these people

One thing I'm amazed no one has mentioned is that her four week old baby wasn't there when she went to collect him! Without knowing why: had they simply gone out, had there been an accident, was baby being bluelighted to a hospital!? That must be every parents' worst nightmare and to have it at four weeks... I'm really not surprised the trust is missing.

OP, I hope you weren't waiting too long. That, combined with the "jokes" would definitely have me going for the nursery option. Good luck!

One thing I'm amazed no one has mentioned is that her four week old baby wasn't there when she went to collect him! Without knowing why: had they simply gone out, had there been an accident, was baby being bluelighted to a hospital!? That must be every parents' worst nightmare and to have it at four weeks... I'm really not surprised the trust is missing
Another very good point - spooling my mind back to the baby days, I'd have been in a heap if I'd gone to pick up and nobody was in.
Hormones all over the place, wanting to be with baby, no idea when they were back....
appalling, you have every right to feel untrusting.

Car seat drama aside, the "jokey comments" make it very clear that she has zero respect for you as a parent and will do what she wants regardless of your wishes. If you allow her unsupervised access to your DC, you will be making a rod for your own back. Your DH should be supporting you, the two of you decide how your child is raised, not his mother.

How many days are you planning on going back to work? If you are going to be part time, then your Baby is going to find it hard to settle at nursery if they are doing less than 3 days a week.

In the interests of not causing WW3, I think you are going to have to sacrifice your step-Father & say you want DC to have time to settle at nursery first. So no family is looking after him. You can then reconsider after 6 months. Also you can then ask MIL & SD to be on call for the days when the baby isn’t well enough for nursery. In the first few months they seem to be off every other week with a slightly raised temperature or conjunctivitis as they get exposed to all the new germs!

My MIL has made passing comments about my parenting style and joked that she’ll be doing things differently once I go back to work

This is the crux of it. It's about her getting her way.

If I'd been left in charge of my new tiny grandchild for the first time, I would have no trouble following instructions not to take them out in the car because I'd be happy to gaze at them adoringly for two hours. Bit shoddy that they couldn't even humour you for the very first time.

If I had left my car at someone's house so they could get stuff out of the boot and said "don't drive it until DH drops off XYZ, but next week you can drive it if you want" and they went ahead and drove it despite what I said, do you think I'd leave my car there again?

That's a car! This is a FOUR WEEK old baby. Magnitudes worse. Especially as OP said that she came home to find no baby and no idea what had happened or when it would come back.

My babies are grown now but I well remember how I felt when they were tiny. If my car had been missing I'd be angry. If my kid was missing I'd be hysterical and imagining all sorts of horrible things.

If they genuinely misheard (ha!) OP and came back to a crying DIL then the obvious thing to do would be to apologise and empathise, not blame OP.

..and to continue with the analogy further, just because someone looks after their own car fine does not mean they get to tell me how I look after mine. So what if PILs brought up DH fine, doesn't mean they get to do whatever they like with their grandkids.

I've looked after many kids, if the parents say "don't do X" you don't do X. Not a hard concept.

How would you feel about taking the next few weeks while you are still on maternity leave to see if you can build up some trust in the PILs again?

If you explained to them how the last incident made you feel, but that you would like to leave LO with them and know that you could trust them.

Then try leaving her with them for an hour, then build up to a morning and then maybe a day if it goes well. If you get any back handed comments, call them on it immediately, so they cant pretend they didnt realise, if there are any safety concerns, just stop and sign up for nursery minus one day for your father/stepfather. See it as practicing for when you have a preschooler who wants to do everything ‘myself’.

OP, Im a grandma 6 times over and I have day to day dealings with my grandchildren in one way or another. Ive always taken the lead from their mums about how they want things done because times and the way of doing things can change but they in turn have said you've had 5 children and you don't need told. I will admit though I was very confused about baby lead weaning and that did have to be explained to me and to be honest I still dont really 'get it'. Im not very confident when Im doing it and I worry the children will choke or that they be hungry.

I think if you MIL is saying she'll be doing things differently you really do have to see this as as deliberate challenge and a sign of things to come. I think it would be much better to put your DD in full time nursery.

I will admit though I was very confused about baby lead weaning and that did have to be explained to me and to be honest I still dont really 'get it'. Im not very confident when Im doing it and I worry the children will choke or that they be hungry
That's natural,as everything changes so much over the years, and what was OK when we were raising our children isn't apparently necessarily so.
For example,bottles could be stored for the day ahead at the back of the fridge.Now you make up as you go along. (I think.)
Baby led weaning alien to me too as even in 2004 it was wean solids at 4 months,I appreciate it's all changed now.
If in 5 years or more my now 15 year old had kids, I'd hope I'd respect that things had changed.
I know what it's like when IL''s/parents ignore you.

I would say family over nursery any day. People who love them and have a vested interest in them.
Nurseries vary hugely in quality. If you're lucky enough to live near an Outstanding rated one it STILL might be staffed by people who aren't that caring, who aren't that great at their job, etc etc. And they are strangers and they aren't 1:1 attention. If your family were awful, not just inconveniently thoughtless re. your wishes, then nursery would be in the child's interests. Otherwise, family's in the child's interests imo!