AIBU to still feel hurt by mum’s behaviour around my birth?

[TheVividPlayer]

Good morning,
this may be a long one .. but curious if it will ring true with any other mums/ daughters and also.. would be grateful for some words of advice ♥️

let me set the scene, 3 years ago I had my 3rd pregnancy and my mum offered to come over from the UK and watch my other children ( we live in a beautiful European country but do not have a family network here) / she offered to do light housework ( at the time we had a daily cleaner for floors etc) and babysit and just general be around for a month for the last weeks of pregnancy / first weeks of baby’s life.

we happily accepted , mum had her own bedroom ( private area of house) own bathroom and the house is in a very pretty location, big garden, lovely village and is a popular holiday destination considered relaxing and picturesque.

all was going well, until my pregnancy unexpectedly progressed to 42 weeks. After 7 days of being ‘overdue’ the behaviour of my mum inexplicably and noticeably changed. She turned from
being warm and friendly to being very sharp with me, uptight and quite simply ..unkind. She would slam doors, refuse suppers we were cooking of foods she previously liked and when we were late to pick her up for a coffee out after a heart monitor appointment (at the hospital) went overdue she stormed out the house without saying a word to me. Causing me to start to feel very stressed and on edge ( especially as I was swollen and overdue). I also felt really embarrassed in front of my partner as they were rightfully so confused why mum
was storming out on me.

up until then, the tasks my mum was helping with was essentially pick up kids from school bus at gate in afternoon , prepare them a snack and relax with them for a couple of hours ( with me present as well) and my partner would cook supper for us when home from
work. After my 7 days overdue appointment the midwife asked me to stay off my feet more and with them raised.

the following day, I was home with my mum, she had been out for the morning and had been out for shopping/lunch in a restaurant in the village and had been relaxing while
kids were at school, I had been
home resting, partner at work.

My mum got in from her lunch, collected kids by the gate and they were watching a cartoon while I was in another room with laundry. My mum came in and asked me if she could help, at which point I indicated the pile of clean clothes on the table and said ‘please
can you fold these? My ankles are swelling and I would love to go on the sofa with the kids’.

my , previously kind, mum spun around and looked my straight in my eyes and said “….( my name).. you are such a fucking bitch”.. without wanting to get too ‘emotional’ about it I can tell you quite simply I still feel the sting of confusion and humiliation thinking about it at the distance of years.. there I was, overdue, exhausted and with my children in the next room.. and here was my own mum, staying for a few weeks as I had no regular support network, and she was calling me names. I felt so shocked and hurt I burst into tears ( not usually like that but heavily pregnant so felt vulnerable) and went to my room.
she later apologized, without explaining why.. but was still bizarrely unkind and difficult until my baby was born the following week, lots of weird atmosphere and silent treatment. Essentially, my being overdue had inconvenienced her as she wanted to be there for cute baby time
and was annoyed that two of the weeks were ‘eaten up’ by me being heavily overdue and needing to keep going in for tests.

recently, on instagram I have seen some really lovely videos ( not posed or influncer
type ones- just normal looking ladies / mums) sharing really sweet videos where they are being cared for by their mum/ mum in law alongside their partner in the days post partum. Seeing these videos ( that I love to see btw) has made me realise that the week of being overdue and then coming home post partum after a long birth, whereby my mum unfortunately restarted after a day or two to be very difficult and unkind ( lots of ‘little’ but significant things but all aimed at
me and mostly when we were alone ) I have realized I am still really hurt by how I was treated and the eggshells I was walking on with a newborn, genuinely left me weeping and stressed.

AIBU, do I need to suck it up, it was years ago?

or

should I bring it up again with my mum ( I did once and she was defensive and not apologetic ) explaining that in a sensitive moment being treated unkindly and unpredictably by a close relative has caused an unfortunate wound I cannot seem to get over ..I have really tried to forget it but it even pops into my head uninvited, it’s like it made me feel really unlovable like a seed was planted in those vulnerable weeks ..

has anyone else been treated badly by their ( otherwise mostly kind) mother post partum? Does anyone have any insight into why she may have done that? There was never any reason given and the atmosphere in the home was a relaxed and kind one so I am racking my brains for it.

f what it’s worth my mum is not elderly and does not have any significant health issues, or money issues. So there were no such stresses at that moment that could have been influencing behaviour .

thank you and sorry for the length! Grateful
to anyone that can answer so I can try and stop this returning to my brain uninvited

Did she believe you were overdue? Any chance she thought you'd fudged dates to get more help heavily pregnant instead of cute newborn time?

A month cleaning and childcare is very generous though so seems odd to be so helpful but then so awful.

What's your relationship like now? Has it ever happened again?

If she’s anything like my mother, she’ll never accept responsibility and will apologise but not mean it, so nothing is resolved.

It’s a shame, for whatever reason. I’d focus on your little family and building a support network near where you are, and on inviting others out.

Maybe you’ll forgive her in time, but you won’t forget.

There is no point in raising it with her, she won't apologise now. Clearly it will affect your relationship with her going forward. Keep her a bit more arms length.

Thank you for the reply, the dates had always been the same from
the first scan. I was having procedures in the last week (41) to try and start labour so wasn’t really any doubt I was overdue.

We had a daily cleaner ( at the time) so it was mainly just grandmother support with kids after school when I had hospital appointments or was giving birth. We hadn’t asked her to come out to us,
she had offered. Hence I think why I was so taken aback when it went awry..

What was your own birth like? Could your experience have raised some trauma within her? (assuming you're in your 30's, if she had gone overdue with you, she might have been treated quite badly by her medical team and had the fear of god put into her about the consequences of going over). The change in behaviour doesn't really tally with it being a toxic or nasty response to me, more of an upswelling of emotions that she didn't know how to deal with, and so became angry rather than working through her feelings in a more "healthy" way.

Thank you very much for your answer, perhaps that’s what I need to do, essentially find a way to accept it and move on.

Even if your mum was frustrated by the unavoidable late arrival of your baby, her behaviour towards you, in particular calling you 'a fucking bitch', was completely unacceptable and unkind. I cannot imagine ever being so cruel to any of my adult children.

If that happened to me, it would ruin my relationship with my mother and I would find it difficult to ever trust her again and would spend much less time with her as a result.

I had a very similar experience my mum. We nearly asked het to leave because her behaviour was so awful.
Is she generally a bit disregulated emotionally? My mum has always been like this - very poor at dealing with stress and her default when she feels out of control is to go on the attack, which means that generally whenever there’s a crisis or things are stressful or difficult you can rely on her to respond by hitting out for no reason. Has your mum ever been like this before?

I don’t think there is much to gain by bringing it up. She doesn’t see what happened in the same way that you do, and she’s very unlikely to accept your version of events or understand why her behaviour was wrong, which might just make things harder for you. I would focus on processing it yourself, accepting that it happened and that it wasn’t right, and then move on from there.

I have a reasonable relationship with my mum now but it’s very much based on recognition of her limitations and having some fairly iron-clad boundaries and defences.

You know what OP if she'd have been my mother she'd have been sent home immediately and I'd not care what inconvenience she'd have to go through in order to get home. I wouldn't go with either of your options because- Option 1: Absolutely not, you do not need to suck it up no matter how long ago it was. Option 2- Again absolutely not. If she felt genuine remorse she'd have apologised and listened to you about it way before now, at this stage any apology she gives and I suspect you won't get one will be because you asked for one, not because she's ashamed of her behaviour and that's not genuine. I'd just tell her you can't move past it and I'd go LC or NC with her.

Yes, this strikes a chord.. she does get disregulated. And she always seems to strike out when stressed, I just REALLY felt it this time as I was so vulnerable in that moment , sounds silly but I guess I hadn’t really recognized the disregulation before ( I am quite easy going ) so when it happened when I was really I need of a bit of gentleness and support the attack mode really knocked the wind out my sails. I wonder if that’s why I am finding it so
difficult to move on ..

A similar thing happened when I was a young student. My mum had always insisted I call her anytime day or night if indeed anything, and there was a computer error with my loan and my money hadn’t arrived. I called her and explained it was Thursday and I had 3 pounds until the money arrived on Monday and could I please have a transfer of 30 pounds for food and travel to ride me over ( that would not have been a financial struggle for my parents ) and she went absolutely BALLISTIC on the phone to me, telling me I had stressed her out. I felt so shocked and again… embarrassed.. that a few years later when I again had an issue when a card was stolen abroad I didn’t eat for two days until my flight home as I was so worried about calling.

would you mind sharing what your mum did for you to nearly ask her to go home? No worries if not of course xxx
we very nearly asked my mum too as well! I think you’re right I need to
focus on boundaries

@CinnamonBuns67 thank you very much for your post. I find it helpful to see it really WAS unkind behaviour, I have been doubting myself for years about it xxx

ironically I didn’t send her home as would have been inconvenient… and I wouldn’t have wanted to do that.
i wonder if that would have helped though?

@thepariscrimefiles thank you, it is really helpful to know how shocked others would have been to be treated like that. I have been second guessing myself about it for years, almost like I internalized that I somehow asked for it. Thanks

My guess, is this wasn’t as ‘out of the blue’ as perhaps it felt at the time- perhaps you were just used to her, but if you think back critically, has there been a history of attention seeking, pointed comments, narcissistic behaviour? Unless she was unwell, you just don’t get people behaving that out of character.

im so sorry op, i dont know how I would have managed that. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that and im so sorry it’s hard to move on from.

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I think sometimes the only thing we can do is accept that we’ll never know what was making her behave the way she did. It sounds like it was out of character for her, hence it catching you off guard, so I’d think there was something fuelling the fire. You’ve tried to speak to her about it, so trying again now is unlikely to bring an apology or insight. At this stage I’d be exploring why you’re holding on to it - thinking about how your relationship is now, and how you want it to be. The harm has been done, you’ve seen a side to her that’s not particularly nice but you can choose what to do with that now.

You know you didn’t deserve her treatment of you, you don’t know what was going on for her. You do know how she usually is and whether you can forgive her, and how much of a relationship you have going forward.

Perhaps childcare and “light housework” she was thinking she’d do this WHEN the baby arrived not before. Light housework might mean she didn’t expect to be entirely treated as a guest - she might make coffee, unload the dishwasher, prepare the kids dinner. Perhaps she thought “if I wasn’t here, dd would have to look after her own kids and fold her own laundry. Now here she is lying by with her feet up and exploiting ordering me around like a servant”
Im not saying she was right, but perhaps that may be how she felt at the time?

Mine stopped speaking to me a few weeks after my eldest was born.
Well, apart from the occasional phone call to pass on news about a death in the family before her tone would change to remind me that she was annoyed.

Just before she died 6 years later she said in a perky way "Oh, do you want to know what that was about?" and told me some ridiculous story about how something I'd said had "stabbed her through the heart". Six years before she told me why she'd stopped talking to me and it was utter bollocks.

Who knows why people do stuff??

@TheVividPlayer Relentless nastiness and spite, verbal attacks, needing to be waited on constantly, all while clearly feeling herself to be the aggrieved one, plus some other more specific stuff that is a bit outing. The strange thing is that I know how much she was looking forward to it and how much she would have wanted to be kind and helpful, but she is simply not able to manage her emotions and becomes overwhelmed both mentally and physically. Lots of similar incidents.

She definitely wouldn’t be able to accept that she had done anything wrong in relation to this incident (this was all nearly 20 years ago). Over the years she has got slightly better at realising afterwards that she’s lost it (we had a similar incident a couple of months ago following a family bereavement where she attacked my sister similarly, and afterwards was able to say “sorry I was a bit wild” which was a bit of a breakthrough 😂

(This is all so outing if my sister is reading this, which she might well be. Hello sis 👋 😂)

There is (IMHO) no point in trying to go over it with her. She won't have been giving it a moments thought in the last 3 years. So if you ask her about it, it will feel like an ambush to her. Which will likely mean she will just get defensive, and nothing will be resolved. In her mind it will be one very small incident not worthy of even thinking about let alone discussing. Trying to talk to her now will likely sour future relations further.

Assuming you want an on going relationship with her, you are going to have to come to terms with it yourself. Decide how you want that future relationship to look like, and work on achieving that.

Also, try not to let this one or 2 incidents define your whole relationship. I'm sure there are plenty of good memories as well (it doesn't sound all toxic - apologies if wrong). Think about who you can call on in emergencies, so you don't have to call your Mum who doesn't sound as though she can cope with them, and therefore not trigger this bizarre behaviour.

@MaryMoog what you are describing is so similar I have my mouth open! And yes.. like you say.. my mother would have beeen super looking forward to it, was actively excited to be there ( beforehand anyway) and would/should/could have enjoyed it if there were not this strange moments of her feeling very aggrieved then turning it to attacking me.

as another poster kindly posted above, perhaps it wasn’t as out of the blue as I realized I just hadn’t given as much importan to other times.

it is so confusing to be on the end of the wrath of someone inexplicably aggrieved so I am sorry you have experienced that too. X

Yes there is a lot that makes sense here. I guess I struggle because I feel my guard has been so up for the years since and that I sometimes feel like I am acting or filtering when she visits me, I guess to stop preemptive melt downs. I think part of the reason I find so hard to move on is that I wish we could have a closer, genuine relationship like we had before I was sort of shocked out of it one too many times. It was just so deeply unkind and hurtful, I wish I could step out of the feeling I must be unlovable for
my own mum to do that to me when exhausted overdue/post partum. It really is such a sensitive time and i think sometimes you can hold on to things from that time x

Just need to know how to relax around her again

Similar but different for me. I've never had an easy relationship with my mother so I'm under no illusions and essentially don't expect her to be nice to me ever. But nevertheless she has on a couple of occasions offered favours and then either rescinded them because she's mortally offended by some imagined slight or been really upset with me for days afterwards.

I did end up asking for her help around the birth of my younger son, and I'm still hurt now by it. I wouldn't have asked at all but DS2 had a rare condition in utero that could have caused him to need to be delivered early. At the same time my FIL had a serious stroke at a young age and needed round the clock care. When I called to update my mother on this situation she said "Oh dear is there anything I can do?" Gobsmacked she'd offered and thinking I owed it to my husband and children to take offered help, I said "we think the pregnancy can make it to term but if there are problems the baby will need to be delivered early. If that happens could you come and take DS1 to nursery and be at our house so DH can be with me and the new baby who would be having major surgery."

She said yes, but then my father rang me back to say she'd felt railroaded on the phone, this was too much to ask and making it quite clear this was an unreasonable demand. She had not been offering that much help. Instead she sent DS1 a colouring book in the post and a note telling him to be good for mummy.

As it happens DS2 was born at term and was able to have keyhole surgery at 6 months old and everything was okay. His maternal grandparents (who travel all over the country and abroad to follow sporting matches) finally struggled down to see him at eight months old.

This stuff hurts OP so I don't blame you. It's a really special, really anxious time and you have every right to feel upset about it. I can't really judge if your mother just had a silly, regrettable selfish freakout or if there's more underlying it (I realized years afterwards my mother has had a severe problem with alcohol all her life which is one of the reasons she will rarely visit or stay long - could there be anything like that going on with your mum?)

Tricky really. My mum is a total cunt, and no amount of evidence proving this fact would ever change her behaviour.

So no, I wouldn’t bother. I’m NC with mine. Best decision I’ve ever made. 💐

I wish I could step out of the feeling I must be unlovable for my own mum to do that to me

Oh this is so sad to read. Obviously I don't know you or your mum but I am entirely certain that nothing about this is anything to do with you being unlovable.

I've done quite a lot over the years to get to a better place with my relationship with my mum- a lot of reading and thinking plus some therapy. I really agree with @pullingouthair123's last paragraph about the relationship overall and how it can help to accept your mum may have certain limitations- that she is not your person to call on in a crisis- and that really recognising that as a fact about her (and not a fact about you or something that you could fix) can free you to have a better relationship. I also find it helpful personally not to share problems or worries with her- I keep things fairly light because I know that she might not be a safe person with all that stuff. Limited ammunition=limited damage. That comes at the cost of not having a deeper and more rounded relationship, but means that we can at least have a relationship.

I don't know either of you - but the fact she offered I would say means she does love you.

The examples you've given of her odd behaviour both relate to emergencies, or things happening that are not planned for - running out of money, or baby going overdue. Is she someone who likes to know what is happening when and gets confused/flustered/scared when it doesn't?

If in her mind baby is due on the 15th, and on the 18th there is still no baby AND she is watching her daughter go for lots of extra tests maybe she just couldn't cope with watching that - so lashed out. In the same way you asking for money made her scared because something went wrong.

I don't know - I'm just a stranger on the internet!! But feels like there is more to it than just someone being mean!

The fact she offered to come, she does love you but clearly was frustrated or stressed at the unexpected overdueness, could she be someone who gets stressed easily when the unexpected happens?