My MIL keeps buying my 4 month old insanely expensive baby clothes. We’re talking £120 pairs of jeans that are really stiff so he can’t wear them anyway (not comfy) all the way down to £40 sleepsuits that don’t have feet or fold over mittens so aren’t practical for him.
This sounds like such a non issue and usually I’d be of the thinking ‘let her crack on, it’s her money to burn’ etc but she gets REALLY offended when she visits and DS is wearing something cheap (usually George at Asda stuff, it’s cheap and comfy!).
Every time she comes over she brings a new batch of clothes but doesn’t listen when we tell her he’s wearing 6-9 months at 4 months old. She thinks he’s not actually that size it’s just because we buy cheap clothes and they shrink. She’s buying him 3-6 months and none of it fits even before it’s washed.
Yesterday she turned up with £680 worth of stuff (I know the price because she told us, she always does) including 2 outfits at £140 each that are way way too small and I couldn’t put him in anyway because they both look really impractical. He’s also in reusable nappies so if the crotch on things isn’t cut for cloth nappies, they won’t fit. She demanded DS got changed into one of them immediately and when I said no, she tried to take him off the floor where he was happy playing. DH said ‘no mum don’t do that, he’s happy how he is’ and then she got really angry and said (word for word) ’ ‘he looks like he lives in the children’s home like no one cares about him. Someone has to make him presentable’
He was wearing a vest, a pair of socks, leggings and a dribble bib. Fairly standard baby clothing I thought?
The other problem is that MIL isn’t well off at all. She doesn’t come from money either, totally working class through and through so I don’t know where this is coming from. She retired 5 years ago and doesn’t have any savings at all. Her retirement payout had to be used on the house which was falling into disrepair. Her pension is ok but she’s always complaining she can’t afford a holiday etc etc. She really can’t afford what she’s spending on DS and I suspect is paying for it on store cards.
Wtf do we do? I don’t want to take a nuclear option and NC or anything like that, but I do want to put a stop to her buying impractical expensive clothes for DS for her sake, and also somehow stop the judgement she has about cheap baby clothes??