I need to get over MIL announcing birth

[Grumpynewmum23]

I am certain AIBU here but honestly 3 months later am still so annoyed.

For context as am still a bit emotionally drained and have psychological support as I had quite a traumatic birth (PROM, induced, allergic reaction to epidural and failed epidural, 3hr pushing to no avail, baby flipped transverse, episiotomy to pull head round, forceps, ventouse, shoulder dystocia and PPH (lost 1.2l) - mild ptsd/was in shock so refused to hold baby/feed baby etc as a result until next morning).
Anyway, next day after gathering thoughts together etc, DP and I decide we want to announce arrival of our first child to friends and family on Facebook (we didn't announce pregnancy at all as I was scared of losing the baby).
I go and open up Facebook and see MIL has posted a picture of our baby (sent by DP just to family which I hadn't even seen at this point) announcing the arrival of 'her grand[child]' that 'just happened'. Neither DP or I are tagged or even mentioned, and she didn't contact me at all.
At the time I was too in shock and exhausted to even really take it in, but as the initial shock of the birth wore off I've just felt increasingly angry about it and literally cannot shake it off.

Tbh it is not like me to get annoyed or upset by others behaviours that easily, and I hate that I am feeling so negative.

Am I being unreasonably grumpy to feel absolutely incensed by this and is she just excited or is this just not good etiquette?!

Also if anyone has any tips for getting over this, please share!

I think it's fair enough to be annoyed about but I also think its possible you are overreacting after your horrible birth experience that would have been frightening and made you feel very powerless so perhaps you are projecting some of this onto you MIL as it's one thing that should have been within your control. Ultimately probably not worth falling out over but may help you move on if you explain that you weren't comfortable with her doing that and why

My MIL very harmlessly decided she would refer to her friend (to my son) as ‘his Auntie X’.

I was 7 days postpartum and this absolutely riled me up. How dare she, this biological to me stranger, decide her random friend would be my son’s aunt?!?!!!

It was hormones. I know it was hormones. She’s a lovely person and was just excited. She’s never said it again, and does not refer to her friend as Aunt anything, and if she did I’d just tell him that she wasn’t his aunt, but was gran’s friend. As much as I know it was the initial excitement of first grandchild, and it was my hormones that made it into a huge deal in my head, it does still irk me 21 months later if I think about it 😂 But I’m so glad I just let it go, because she truly is such a lovely person to have in our lives and she loves my son dearly.

I think grandparents feel unexpected love for their grandchild, they feel like it’s their own, and it takes a while for them to realise that actually, their role has shifted. It’s not up to them to announce the birth of someone else’s child. But overall, I think this one is harmless and done without malice.

Grandparents seem to get away with all kinds of shit when they're 'excited'.

She was excited, albeit over excited and let her heart rule her head but in the grand scheme of things was it really so bad?
It’s done now and it can’t be changed so isn’t it time to let the anger go, it’s only causing you stress.
You had a really difficult birth and I am sorry it happened to you.

YANBU to be annoyed. She’s a selfish cow for doing this. And doesn’t seem to have had a thought for you or your well-being. So now you know where you stand with her and can act accordingly. I hope your DH has told her how unhelpful her actions were.

But… YABU to allow her to make you feel bad for any longer. Focus on your newborn and tune MIL out. Also, please consider counselling for the birth trauma- it sounds like you really went through it and some expert help could make all the difference. 🌺

That's appalling of your MIL.

The only way I could move past this would be if I told her how we felt about what she did and received a genuine apology. Wouldn't need to be grovelling or on the floor or anything but I would need an acknowledgement it was thoughtless/wrong and a sorry. Anything less than that and it would definitely damage my feelings towards someone for good.

That’s not cool.

Does she have form for this or could it possibly be forgiven as she was excited/is older/hadn’t thought it through. Think a lot would depend on what she’s normally like. I’m not on SM but I can totally see why you’d be v annoyed and upset, particularly given the nature of the birth.

I remember my sisters’ MIL visiting her in hospital when I was there. Traumatic birth, blood everywhere as couldn’t change her pads, had to help her out of bed to go to the loo and clean up, in a lot of pain etc. MIL ignores her shouting “where’s my grandson!” at which point I said something. She had a heart of gold in some ways but was v self absorbed in other ways.

The excitement of a first grandchild can be all consuming. Unless she was specifically told not to share any information, she was not going to be able to mind read and it is easy to see how the situation arose due to excitement.

Personally I didn’t share on social media until I had cleared it with the parents, although I had shared with a couple of close friends who had hand held in the early hours of the morning after what ended up being a very traumatic evening in the delivery suite and ended up in life or death dash to theatre, with me being left on my own in the delivery suite.

Unless she has form for this sort of behaviour and there is some game playing going on, I would be inclined to try and let it go. Only you are going to know if speaking to her after the event will be helpful or not. However, you can’t change the past and dwelling on it will not change what has happened.

Definitely not unreasonable to be annoyed. However, what's done is done. No amount of energy spent on this is going to be able to change what happened. Given this, what would it feel like to put that energy to other uses?

This is what works for me. Every time I catch myself spending energy on something in the past / something I cannot change, I bring myself back to that statement.

😂what?! This is the biggest overreaction I’ve seen in a long time.

Who in the heck cares who sees what on Facebook! You have a lovely baby who has made it through a difficult birth. I would start rejoicing in that! For heavens sake don't focus on this nonsense - it is of utterly no importance.

Not usually one to defend a MIL. But I think in the circumstances with your traumatic experience you were naturally upset and you over reacted. I can understand you being miffed but you should have got over this by now. You could still have posted the next morning as presumably your contact list would be a lot different to MIL’s and any friends and family you did have in common might wonder why she posted before you and some may think she was out of order. But this doesn’t reflect badly on you more MIL eager and over stepping the mark in her excitement. Draw a line under it now for your own sanity and try and move on. If you can’t maybe ask DH to have chat to her and say going forward please check with us before posting photos of our baby on FB (as we might not want certain things on FB or we might like to announce things ourselves).

Firstly sorry about your traumatic birth, go easy on yourself because (and I speak from experience) it can stay with you for a little while. You might find the shock and trauma of birth clouds your judgement on things like this. Hope you are starting to feel better. You are well within your rights to be annoyed as this is your special moment. Probably best to try and see it as a good thing that she is so excited. It's tactless and annoying but thats MIL's hey.

I feel your concern op had similar happen to me for my first. i wasn't even off the medical table during a c section when my partners phone blew up congratulating us my partner had made the mistake of messaging his mother that he had just seen the baby come out. "Mother and baby are well" annoyed the hell out of me considering she posted it at the point my belly was cut open and they were pumping blood in to replace what I was losing and it really was touch and go. To say it set the tone of our non relationship going forward is an understatement!

Also I expect all the YABU votes and snappy comments are some pissed of jealous MIL'S, there are a lot of them on here.

My own mother did this to me. She put the full name, weight and time of birth on her post. It was her sixth grandchild - she wasn’t just over-excited. Definitely game playing on her part, which is just really sad. In truth, I sort of knew she would do it before I gave birth, but I hoped she wouldn’t. She doesn’t even regularly post on Social Media. It still rankles six years on.

How did your MIL obtain all of those details in the first place?

People can't broadcast what we don't tell them.

I voted YANBU but also agree with the advice to forgive and forget. Life's too short to fall out over something like this, it's good that your baby has an excited granny. And congratulations on becoming a mum!

I had ds when social media was still in its infancy, so no chance of this happening, but I’d have been furious if my mil had done this, and I’d have bloody well told her so.

Don’t store up resentment, tell her your feelings about it in a non confrontational way, but do set a boundary. I’m a big advocate for talking through your issues and moving on from them and also establishing healthy boundaries.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of us learn this the hard way.

I did things very differently the second time around.

Be wary of what information you share with her (including photos) that you wouldn't want be shared online.

Reading some of the other responses, I would actually go one step further and (if appropriate) speak with your partner about how much of your child's life you want to share on social media, and by default what that means for your families.

Me and DP both have private profiles and consciously share very little of DS - the odd day out on stories - and thankfully neither of our families are on or use social media often, so it's never been an issue, but it might have been if someone was particularly prolific.

A friend did this to me when my first was born. Someone posted on my facebook asking if anyone knew I had the baby yet and the friend said yes today, it was a boy called mini-IsleOfThe Lost. I was proper raging as I had been rather busy in hospital for a week beforehand and did not want the birthday or name on the internet for future identy theft opportunities. Still raging years later now I have been reminded!

Nothing you can do though, so just make sure that if you have another child, or pet etc, that you ask her to let you announce first this time.

I didn't even think to say before baby was here about not posting as thought it is obvious - wish I had and definitely will if have another

TBF that context is important; sharing the news before the parents had isn't something I'd do myself, but in her excitement she wasn't to know how strongly you felt about it

As PPs have said the important thing is that your lovely baby's now safely in your arms (and congratulations ) but at least you'll know what to say next time!!

What did people do before social media? How were these grand announcements done? The baby was born and either you rang everyone you know or you rang a few and they passed the good news on. I find the whole "we wanted to be the first to announce on social media" bizarre.

I, like you, had a horrific birth OP, very traumatising. At that point I couldn't have cared less if they announced the birth of my son on the news. I was too wrapped up in my new, healthy, hard to get here baby than being incensed because my MIL put a pic of him on FB (which she did) and told her little posse that she now had a grandson. Who bloody cares? Let her have it. What difference does it make? Holding on to anger like this will only hinder your emotional healing after a difficult birth. Don't vilify a mother for being excited that her child had a child especially when she was NOT told she couldn't. Put your energy into your own recovery and let this go. At the end of the day...it really doesn't matter. It really doesn't. In the grand scheme of things, it is unimportant. It really is.

Yes, thats exactly it 😂