aibu to think grandparents are just expected to know their place now?

[justme39]

honestly feeling quite upset and not sure if i’m being unreasonable or not.

my ds and dil had their first baby a few months ago and ever since it’s just been rule after rule after rule. no kissing baby, no picking him up straight away if he cries because theyre trying to teach self soothing, dont call him my baby because apparently thats boundary crossing now 🙄

i’ve kept my mouth shut mostly because i dont want drama but yesterday i honestly felt humiliated. baby was asleep on me and i kissed the top of his head without even thinking and dil immediately goes we’re not doing that in this really sharp voice in front of everyone. atmosphere after was awful.

i do feel there’s a lack of respect if i’m honest. i’ve raised 3 children perfectly well, all grown adults with good jobs and houses etc so its not like i dont know what im doing. yet if i mention he looks cold or maybe he’s overtired suddenly im undermining.

another thing that upset me was photos. i put ONE picture on facebook after he was born because family were asking and you’d think i’d leaked government documents. ds rang me asking me to remove it because dil was really anxious. i did remove it but i wont lie i cried after because it just feels like nothing i do is right.

i’ve also offered loads of help. meals, cleaning, having baby so they can nap etc but apparently they want to figure things out themselves. then dil posts online about how exhausted she is all the time. i honestly dont know what we’re meant to do anymore as grandparents except buy things and sit there quietly.

now ds hardly messages unless she’s included as well which never used to happen

aibu to think younger parents are so obsessed with boundaries and gentle parenting they forget other people have feelings too?

Posting the photo was wrong. Everything else is fine. Some people get weird when they first have a baby - you just have to hope it passes.

I had no bother letting the grandparents hold my dc. Or give them a kiss. Even though (I dont know if it’s the same in UK but in ROI) the nurse gives you a little “pep talk”/ lecture about kissing and cold sores and stuff like that before you get discharged from hospital with the baby and it really does scare the crap out of you.
However, in PILs house it led to the baby being passed around like pass the parcel and I really didn’t like that.
We had a similar row about bloody Facebook. I remember getting really pissed off because my dad kept referring to my mother as the baby’s mammy because he “forgot”. I didn’t accept much practical help from them either. There were some other things, some of which seem petty now but overall it was about boundaries. These seem like small inconsequential things but if if we’d conceded to them all, GPs (on both sides) would have just pushing every boundary til they got everything all their own way.
Sometimes for whatever reasons, new parents feel they have to pull back. To get used to being their new role, decide how they’re going to do things and to learn to be assertive.
I think it’s quite normal. It’s just re establishing roles. You can all fall out over it or you can let things settle and make little compromises and eventually there will be a new normal where hopefully you are involved and everyone gets on.
I get that it feels hurtful but you need to give your son and his dp some space and leeway. In all likelihood this will all be water under the bridge in a few years.

To be honest I think the fact OP did this knowing they didn't want it, downplays it (one one pgoto) and then paints herself as the victim, pretending she cried because she couldn't do anything right even though she knew not to post on social media (and its fairly established etiquette to not post other people DC on SM) says a lot about her personality

i do feel there’s a lack of respect if i’m honest.

Yeah and it seems the feeling is mutual.

Where was your respect for them when they asked you not to post photos of their baby and you did it anyway? You don’t respect them so why should they respect you?

Now imagine a new mum is writing the counterpoint:

"I've asked MIL not to kiss the baby due to the risk of transmittable disease, or share photos of him, and she can't even stick to those basic rules. Worse, she spends her time pointing out she thinks he's cold or tired as though I can't even look after my own child. And then when she's reminded, she throws a big strop about it and makes it about her, even though she's had her chance to raise her kids the way she wanted to. DH is backing me up thankfully but AIBU to be sick of it?"

Id dump them out of my life, they sound completely selfish and neurotic, can understand want some space initially, but they are so way out of line. Don’t visit anymore, block their phones, rewrite your will. you could leave some to the baby but imagine how he is going to turn out, scary. Sorry for your loss.

Op, they are new parents, and you do sound like you need to wind your neck in a bit. They told you not to post photos on FB, but you did it anyway? That’s really not on. You call their baby, ‘my baby’? You say the child is cold or whatever, completely tone deaf to how that’s going to make the new mother feel? You’ll not be visited much if you are not careful op. Try to be more aware of how you are coming across - just a suggestion..

I’d have died of boredom!

babies are lovely and cute and smell nice (sometimes) but they don’t really DO much lol.

Im blessed with extremely normal daughters and daughters in law. I come and go as I want (sensibly). We help each other out with babysitting as I have custody of 2 small kids and I post away to my hearts content.

I think I’m very lucky lol

Yes you should 'know your place' (could you be anymore passive aggressive??) because he's not your baby! NHS advice is not to kiss babies that aren't yours - babies have died from it. 1 in 6 people carry the HSV virus, most without knowing - it can kill a baby. Look up what happened to Annabel Karmel's 3 month old. You're boundary crossing in a big way - if you were my MIL I'd have cut you off. You need to apologise and start listening to them pronto.

I think this ‘American trend’ came because for a very long time, new mothers suffered unnecessary criticism from mothers in law and general overstepping of boundaries. I think now things have gone to the other extreme.

If this post is real, I think no photos online and no kissing are fairly basic rules now and seem to be pretty standard for our grandchildren and our friends grandchildren. They don’t seem to be hard rules to keep.

No other posts by the user.

I’m guessing there is rule after rule because you keep ignoring what they ask and doing whatever you want. As you have said, you have had your children. This baby is their baby. Not yours. They can raise it and have whatever rules they want.

The only thing that upsets me is the self soothing, because babies can’t. And at that age they cry for a reason.

I think this hits every bingo card for interfering MIL behaviour. Not troll hunting (honest) but I wouldn’t get too upset for the OP here . . .

He’s not your baby. Don’t call him “mine”
You were asked not to post online. You ignored the wishes of the parents. Keep doing that and you will end up nc.

It’s not the same. The sense of trust and security between a mother and daughter cannot be compared to sense of security between a MIL and DIL. It takes years to build that and a MIL needs to be sensitive about it because historically / statistically MILs have been critical and overall difficult with DILs.

edited to say. The statistical data I have is from observation not any studies.

Calling them your baby IS unreasonable- you’ve had your babies and this one is not yours.

Putting a picture on fb without permission is v unreasonable - if your friends and family were desperate to see then you could have shown/sent privately to the individuals who asked.

Overall it sounds like you’re trying to make it all about you when it’s not.

So they asked you not to post on social media. You ignored that and posted anyway, and then cried when they asked you to take it down because ‘it feels like nothing I do is right’.
I think you should just read back your first post because your DS and SIL are telling you very clearly how to get it right, you are ignoring them and crying about it, which is ridiculous.
If you don’t show them some respect you will find them distancing themselves more and more.

Surely the default is that you never post a photo of someone else’s child without the permission of the parents?!!!

Ahh I was with you until this. Unless you want to be pushed away completely, you should respect their wishes on stuff like this.

So is it also disrespectful for an adoptive mum to call the baby " my baby". After all they didn't grow and birth it

Either you have posted this thread as a joke or you are 75 shades of dim-witted

I'm going to assume the 75 shades

Stop doing and saying EVERYTHING you are doing and saying

The baby is not yours and you are not entitled to do anything or say anything which the parents donf want

Stop being a dick. Then , after a while, things might calm down

Tbh if one of my kids had a baby and came out with all these rules I'd just leave them to get on with it.

Certainly wouldn't be making big effort for them and enjoy the grandchildren I have already without having to read rulebooks

But it’s probably correct in most cases. I don’t think my DM would have said ‘my baby’ if she’d been alive as I know her sister my aunt was very careful about that with her grandchildren, but I would have had a word with her if she did, whereas with MIL I would have exploded with fury. Perhaps unfair, but the relationship is different.

MIL made the mistake of saying ‘Oh, thank you’ the first minute she saw DS1 in the hospital. Before I could say anything DH said ‘we didn’t have him for you’. I expected FIL to tell him not to speak to her like that but he didn’t. He was clearly unimpressed by what she’d said, and nothing similar was said when we had DS2. We went through years of infertility and failed ivfs - but apparently we ‘gave’ them a grandchild.

For someone who wants people to think of you, you could try thinking of them. They are probably very anxious and already worried they are doing something wrong.

wait for them to come to you rather than imposing yourself