Am I being petty or was DP's mum being unkind?

[bluedonuts]

Clased with DP's mum in the past but was all sorted out. We went over last night to see her and as she lives an hour away, we stayed the night. I was very tired as had had two hours sleep as was up with DS (5 months). She asked me what was wrong and I just said I'm just a bit tired as DS was up. She then gave me a lecture on how she lived on no sleep with her children and how I should get used to it, and went off about how she even worked nights etc etc.

She's constantly undermining me, DS has a bit of eczema and she bought cream from him from the pharmacy (without asking us if we already had any) and then covers him in it whenever we're there. We had already bought our own cream that we were using. She told me that she had spoken to the pharmacist about it and we needed to use that one. (The one we had already is great). She will literally put it on him whenever I'm not in the room without asking.

It's just things like that all the time.

Last night while we were there I was entertaining DS with some nursery rhymes, and then put him on the floor, holding him under the arms standing up for about a second. She literally snatched him off me and said 'I don't need him walking yet'. I was so taken aback, I'm not overexaggerating when i say she snatched him, it was as if she thought he was in danger!

Then this morning when I woke up and came downstairs, I said good morning (admittedly I was still sleepy - up with DS) and she said in front of everyone: 'God, you're like a grumpy teenager in the mornings aren't you!' and then went on to make these really loud, weird grunting noises imitating me, over and over again until the point I wanted the ground to swallow me up as I felt really embarrassed.

I am feeling quite emotional at the moment as suffering with PND quite badly so I might be a bit sensitive. But is this quite unkind behaviour or am I just being petty?

Your MIL is a nasty bitch and what you need to do is make sure there are consequences every time she lashes out or undermines you. After a few times, she will get the message and if she has a brain cell in her head, she will keep her mouth shut.

Right now I would tell your DH that you are very upset, don't need the added stress on top of your lack of sleep and PND. I would tell your DH that right now you feel really unhappy because of the way you have been treated by his DM and to protect yourself, you are not going there. Let him feed back to his mum that having her in your lives causes misery and let that keep her awake at night and see what lack of sleep feels like.

Ring or text. Something like.

I felt really unhappy this morning as you made fun of me in the kitchen. If it felt like joking to you it felt like bullying to me. I love my child but PND does make it hard and telling me how much better you were as a parent, how much better you did on little sleep in between commenting on my parenting makes me feel unhappy. Perhaps you haven’t realised how I have been feeling but if we are to carry on visiting then you do need to be more thoughtful.

If she apologises great and if not then great! Your child will not grow up with her bullying you. You don’t have to see her. She is unkind and not worth it. Finding your voice can be scary but liberating too.

What is it with bloody rude mils?! Who do they think they are?! I had similar issues with mine when eldest was born I also had pnd no sleep etc etc and she used to make me feel 100 times worse and so did her daughter (sil). Took ages for DH to realise what they were doing and raised it when anything happened in front of him but he was never around when these things used to happen. I eventually learnt to stand up for myself but they didn't like it. Nowadays my fil completely ignores me as we are not bowing down to everything he says and tells us how to raise our kids. I don't care n on love lost.

OP you look after yourself and distance yourself from her.
I would not visit for a long time. An hour isn't long if you want to visit (But not stay) but no way would I visit soon. Or answer phone calls.
Dh needs to step in.
Mocking you and shouting at you are huge no no's

Sympathies to you op. There is nothing worse than being undermined and bullied when you have PND. This happened to me and I have had no contact with MIL for 25 years. I have never had a day I regretted it. What made it worse was DH failing to step in. If anything happened she would ring him at work telling him her side. Sometimes I would not even bother saying anything.

It only came to a head when his sister told people that everyone knew I wasn't a full shilling since I had dd2. And she was a nurse. It was clear they had been mocking me for a long time.

She isn't going to change and you can't forget this. You have to make a decision based on what is right for you. She is bullying you and making your situation worse. What a nightmare she is.

Your partner should have told her to sling her hook whilst he loaded you all up in the car to leave.

I would put your foot down about the eczema cream, some of them are very strong (although hers is unlikely to be if it wasn't on prescription) but they can thin the skin so you shouldn't use double amounts.

She's bring unkind, I wouldn't visit again. Send the husband with the baby for the next visit. Lets see how he likes waking up all through the night and surviving his mother's jibes!

She does sound awful OP, at some point soon ( when you’re not so tired ) you could do with having a face to face chat with her. Pointing out how her behaviour won’t be tolerated anymore.

Your MIL sounds like a horrible bully. She's massively overstepping boundaries with your baby as well, and your DP needs to back you up on this.

You should also put your foot down with your DP and tell him that under no circumstances will you stay there overnight again. She's only an hour away, so there's no reason why you can't just go there and back in one day.

I'm normally about the majority of MIL threads on here but yours sounds a real peach.

Tell your DP that your MIL clearly can't stand you and it would best all round if you didn't visit again. He can then bother his arse to visit and take your DS but he probably won't

Weddings and funerals....

I'd be turning round to her and saying who the fuck do you think you are speaking to like that, if it happens again you won't be getting any more visits, it may shock her into behaving, if not you don't visit again, I'm sure you lose any sleep over it, the condescending cheeky bitch

I would put your foot down about the eczema cream, some of them are very strong (although hers is unlikely to be if it wasn't on prescription)

Actually this is the other way round. You can only buy 1% hydrocortisone OTC, the lesser 0.25% you need to get from the GP, so she could be really damaging

No more visits for you or DS. DH can see her on his own or she could meet you in a park if she wants to see DS with minimal chance of her manhandling him.

So stupid to apply a cream to him against your wishes.

She is a nasty bully. Your DH needs to be very clear about this!

She's a bully . Do you want your child around a bully?

I’m a mil and I’m so disgusted by this. My dil is an amazing person and the best thing that happened to my ds. When their first dd was 4 weeks old they came to stay with me and my dil was exhausted as dgd had just been switched to formula feed as breast feeding wasn’t working and it was a difficult time. Yet my ds was looking as fresh as a daisy. My dh and me read him the riot act and told him that we were ashamed of him for not helping her more. Mil should be supporting their dil not putting them down.

I think you need to give yourself permission to not spend time with this woman. It’s ok to not spend time with people who are this unpleasant. You’re not a bad partner or bad mother for not nurturing this relationship.

How often do you see her? I’d be having firm words with DP about how often you are exposing yourself to such rude, bullying behaviour - never mind the fact that she is going against an agreed medication programme - it’s not “only” cream, some of the medication in that can be bloody strong, especially when they’re so small.

Your mil sounds a lot like the way my exmil started with her behaviour . The snatching and the over the top mocking . In my exmil she is entirely batshit crazy and it escalated while I was trying to deal with it tactfully. I will say this , i tried to be understanding , i tried to be nice i tried to do all the things the pearl clutchers on MN would have wanted me to do (not deliberately to do with mn but i hear the advice on here all the time)

I wish I hadn't I wish that I had stopped it at the start and said out right and clearly that she needed to stop and the next time she snatched my baby or spoke to me like that she would not see us again.

I didn't move quick enough and when it did all blow it got her closed out completely (and in my case out the coffin nail in my marriage because it had gone too far and exdh hadn't helped at all not saying it's the same with yours but it definitely played a part in the end of my marriage). She didn't meet ds2 when he was born , she was cut out completely.
Since exdh and I split I've actually had an apology, a genuine one from her. I actually wish I had come in hard and shut it down on day 1 and I would have saved us all a lot of heartache and pain.

I know its incredibly hard , especially with PND but it is not ok for her to behave like this , either you or dh needs to shut it down from a great height. Trust me softly softly does not work with people like this.

I would just tell your DP you won't be visiting again for the foreseeable, and you will never spend the night there again, so your visits will have to be a lot shorter to get home again.

You reap what you sow. She's a bullying cow, so she can miss out.

@ithinkiveseenthisfilmbefore

I would just tell your DP you won't be visiting again for the foreseeable, and you will never spend the night there again, so your visits will have to be a lot shorter to get home again.

You reap what you sow. She's a bullying cow, so she can miss out.

This!

DH would definitely know exactly how I felt and I would not be visiting her for a while because of it!

Tell your DP exactly what she did that you didn’t like - start from there. Sounds like he may have told her about the pnd and she might be trying to gaslight you. My mum did something very similar to me - fault finding every decision, undermining me etc. Luckily for me Covid-19 happened and so I got away with not seeing her and now thankfully my baby is too attached to want anything to do with anyone else.

Op you have to stand up for yourself, and damn the consequences. Dp has failed you.

I know its incredibly hard , especially with PND but it is not ok for her to behave like this , either you or dh needs to shut it down from a great height. Trust me softly softly does not work with people like this

This. My MIL used to do similar to me, until one day I just snapped at the poisonous bitch. And then I figured out she'll shut up if someone stands up to her, because people like her are cowardly bullies that will only ever act towards those they think are weaker than them/won't stand up for themselves

She's unkind. I'd avoid her.

Exactly what @JoanJosephJim said - wise advice!