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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

For not letting her in.

40 replies

peachy3 · 07/07/2022 19:12

I’ve posted about my MIL in the past. She’s very controlling and incredibly possessive over my DP and my DS. Doesn’t really like me, tolerates me for contact with DS.

Today I was supposed to go out with her and DS (3 mo) for the day. However, DS had his second lot of immunisations on Tuesday and has been incredibly grouchy and upset since. I decided to cancel today as he usually sleeps through the night but was awake a lot last night and had spent the morning crying non stop. I was on the phone to DP whilst I decided I was going to cancel and he said he would tell her for me as he could hear DS screaming in the background. This afternoon he text me and said he’d lied (why?!) and said that he had taken the pram to work by accident so I couldn’t meet up with her. She told him she would pick the pram up from him and come and pick us up. I told him to tell her the truth, that DS was achy and upset from his jabs still and I decided to keep him home and he did. She asked him if she could come over and he said we would come to her on the weekend when he’s feeling a bit better. An hour later she’s at my door ringing the doorbell and phoning me. Now her house and ours are not close, takes about 40 minutes to get here from where she lives so she definitely wasn’t just passing by. I didn’t answer the door or the phone as I had just started feeding DS and to be honest I was really irritated. I was in an old baggy T-shirt that DS had spit up on multiple times this morning and the house was a tip as neither of us has had the time to tidy since DS has been a bit of a handful. I ignored the door and my DP phoned me to say MIL had called him asking why I was ignoring here. I told him she was stood outside (which she didn’t mention to him) and that she hadn’t told me she was coming so she can go home. I was tired, stressed out and had been crying myself as I just couldn’t settle him. He called her back and said she shouldn’t have just turned up as I had been having a challenging day with the baby. She stubbornly said she was going to sit in the car and wait for him to come home but eventually she left. DP has seemed a little off with me since coming home and has said he feels bad that she went home. I personally am not feeling bad, she knows the baby isn’t himself and she’s been told once before about showing up unannounced, I wouldn’t let my own mother do it and I know that she wouldn’t. I’m not making a rod for my own back by allowing it, she’ll be turning up all the time otherwise and I’m not having it, I have boundaries.

WIBU?

OP posts:
Zone2NorthLondon · 07/07/2022 19:17

its fair enough to have preferences,and ask visitors to notify they’ll be coming. But I think it’s somewhat odd to deny your mil access,no cuppa tea,no make it quick you didn’t let her in. You two will have a fraught relationship if that’s how you treat her. She should not have turned up unannounced and I get it’s irritating but your reaction is quite fierce. Are you genuinely saying you’d deny your own mum access if she came visiting unannounced.

Albgo · 07/07/2022 19:18

God no and well down for standing your ground and not letting her in.

StarWarsisthebest · 07/07/2022 19:22

Goodness , she could have come in, made you a cuppa, helped with DS, even if it was a stroll out in his pram, maybe done a bit of housework for you. What a wasted opportunity.

SirChenjins · 07/07/2022 19:22

No - you’re perfectly reasonable not to want to meet up with her, but you and your DP need to stop tip toeing around her, otherwise she’ll continue to think she can behave this way. Honestly, who decides that they’ll drive 40 minutes and then refuse to go home?! Bonkers behaviour. Is she very lonely?

forlornlorna1 · 07/07/2022 19:25

I wouldn't just turn up on my own daughter like that, I always ring first. She's rude. Hope your little one's feeling better now x

Eslteacher06 · 07/07/2022 19:25

I've had my mil looking through the window at me before now trying to get in. I pretended i was on the phone and couldn't answer the door 🤣🤣 one thing to be careful with....your husband may get tired of being in the middle, even if they understand.

Sweetmotherofallthatisholyabov · 07/07/2022 19:25

I think DP's shitty communication is at fault here. You don't know what he actually said the second after lying the first time. And it being such a mental lie she might have thought something was up and you really needed help.

billy1966 · 07/07/2022 19:26

I think when your partner is so afraid of telling his domineering mother that a baby of 3 months is not well from jabs and your partner has been up at night, tells you EXACTLY what the OP is dealing with.

That his mother would threaten to sit outside waiting for her son, also tells a lot.

The OP has every right to her privacy with new baby.

Your partner is off?

Go and stay with your mother if you can.

I am so sick of reading about new mothers being bullied by parents and in laws and their expectations.

OP, you have every right to take to your bed for a sleep and a cry.

Tell your weak, scared of his mother partner, to take a hike.

7eleven · 07/07/2022 19:26

I have a saying - ‘if you don’t say things straight, they come out crooked’.

Most of this could have been avoided by MIL just being told at the outset that baby wasn’t well, and you both needed a quiet day, along with the reassurance that it would be rebooked, preferably by you. The stupid story about the buggy started a chain of events and to be honest, I can see why MIL might have grounds to be a bit upset.

Original poster
peachy3 · 07/07/2022 19:27

@Zone2NorthLondon the thing is, we don’t have a good relationship anyway. She sees me as the woman who stole her baby (DP). I had an ectopic pregnancy in 2020 when DP and I were living with her temporarily and a week after she kicked me out of her house over a disagreement between DP and BIL and then got angry at me because DP left her house with me. We’re never going to have a good relationship, like I said, she only tolerates me for DS. Before she found out I was pregnant she wouldn’t speak to me and didn’t really even speak to me when I was pregnant, only when DS was born as she feels she has to now.

OP posts:
respark321 · 07/07/2022 19:29

No way would I have let her in. So rude and entitled to turn up unannounced- grandchild or not. I wouldn't feel comfortable with my MIL coming round with me looking a state and an untidy house either.

Mally100 · 07/07/2022 19:30

Well done for standing your ground. She sounds like an overbearing annoyance and she was rightly put in her place. She clearly got the message today.

Eslteacher06 · 07/07/2022 19:30

@StarWarsisthebest ....an example of how that's so far from the truth. I spent 8 hours overnight with my newborn in A÷E and asked her to comr over to look after my eldest while i was gone. She was very put out, even more so when she realised she'd need to stay overnight.

I came home to the house the state I left it. I was exhausted from no sleep. When she woke up she asked if I'd noticed she'd washed up. Never heard the end of it.

Sometimes it's not worth the "support"

Zone2NorthLondon · 07/07/2022 19:30

Going forward, your dp needs to be explicitly clear to his mum, no unannounced visits and that visit is by arrangement.
however be mindful if you’re overly rigid you may also lose out on spontaneity or when you need unplanned help it won’t be available to you. At sometime a situation will arise were you’ll need some urgent unplanned help form family either mil or your family. If you have habitually reinforced boundaries they may not offer or make a point if not giving you unplanned support.
I have read you said that mil is critical of you and controlling toward her son, He needs to address this for his well-being and for yours. Your mil is in your life so you all need to find a mutually agreeable way of being around each other.

GoldenSpiral · 07/07/2022 19:30

She sounds like a nutjob and not like someone I would want 'helping' around the house while I tried to soothe a baby. She knew she was in the wrong for turning up unannounced as you've warned her before. She knew exactly what she was doing.

She is the one that is going to lose out if she carries on this way, not OP.

Dancingwithhyenas · 07/07/2022 19:31

I would have done the same. Sounds awful.

Zone2NorthLondon · 07/07/2022 19:32

Ok cross posts read your update, in that case yes you need to protect yourself
its unfortunate she’s so mean spirited to you
people aren’t possessions they’re not stolen, her son, your partner is with you by choice. His priorities have to be you and the baby

Archibaldy · 07/07/2022 19:33

Well done OP, she was rude. I would question why your DP felt the need to lie her her about the pram though as thats a bit odd!

Original poster
peachy3 · 07/07/2022 19:33

I agree with all comments about DP, he’s spineless when it comes to his family and it does drive me up the wall. I don’t know why he couldn’t just tell her the baby wasn’t feeling well, I should’ve just phoned her myself but DS was screaming and he had offered, I should’ve known he would’ve said something stupid 🤦🏻‍♀️

OP posts:
Sesimbra · 07/07/2022 19:33

YANBU. I had to do this to my XMIL to get her to understand I meant my boundaries. I even let her see me through the windows and didn't let her in.

Before you berate me, this is a woman who forced her way into the delivery room when I was giving birth to my first baby - boundaries were definitely required!!!

TheThreadisMildlyAmusing · 07/07/2022 19:35

God, what type of person turns up when they've been asked not to, demands to be let in and insists they will wait outside until their son comes home in order to force access into somebody else's home? Someone with huge entitlement, that's who.

Well done for standing your ground Op.

7eleven · 07/07/2022 19:35

She sounds horrible. I’d tell your partner to makes arrangements with her at weekends etc and have nothing to do with her.

billy1966 · 07/07/2022 19:43

OP,

After your update about her and your spineless man child you need to put massive distance between you and her.

Personally she would not be allowed in my house and we would only visit very very occasionally AFTER she found her manners.

Women like this add nothing to your life or that of your partner.

Are you married if not, I hope you haven't given the baby his name?

Baby should have your name.
Go back to work.
Mind your money.

Spineless men get very tedious.

Don't waste your life with one.
Send him home to mummy🙄

Ticksallboxes · 07/07/2022 19:52

Before you berate me, this is a woman who forced her way into the delivery room when I was giving birth to my first baby

Good God!!

ImpartialMongoose · 07/07/2022 19:55

Eslteacher06 · 07/07/2022 19:25

I've had my mil looking through the window at me before now trying to get in. I pretended i was on the phone and couldn't answer the door 🤣🤣 one thing to be careful with....your husband may get tired of being in the middle, even if they understand.

Hope it wasn't an upstairs window 😆