to think my life is being taken over by my Mother In Law

[Ecoboo]

I have just had my first baby two weeks ago and on the second day the in laws turned up unannounced even after being told we would have a week before allowing visitors. I was really upset after the visit - they stayed for 8 hours and i was left with them while my partner went out. My MIL insisted on holding the baby for hours and i did not realise i needed to wake the baby to breast feed so she went all this time without a feed!( i feel terrible about this). In the end of i was almost delirious with tiredness and was encouraged to 'go and sleep' - which meant i left my baby down stairs and crashed out. I felt really uneasy about this but did not feel i could claim my baby and take her with me.

Anyway - since then, MIL wants to visit all the time. Luckily they live over an hour away but she is looking into a static holiday home 5 mins drive from us. All she wants to do is hold the baby all the time and does not realise that DD becomes unsettled and wants to be close to me at the moment.

DH is not really helping and does not appreciate he needs to keep the boundaries for us as a family at this time.

Now we are being invited for sunday dinner and i realise that this could be my life for next 18 years and i don't like the look of it. I would prefer to be bonding with my baby, sleeping and maybe spending some time with our friends who h babies.

Any ideas? what is a reasonable amount of time to spend with MIL? I was thinking once a month but i don't think i will get this. I am surprised she is being so possessive - it is not like the baby can do much bonding with her at the moment.

Help.

Tell her now no, I had the same problems with my own MIL don't explain why you want your baby back just say I would like her back now please. I found on ds MIL tried to get away with as much as possible I even ended watching my MIL and my grandmother fighting over my 3 day old baby.

On dd after I established rules MIL is much more considerate and we have a slightly better relationship.

How often do your parnets visit?

You are only 2 weeks in and they are very excited.

When mine used to come over unannounced I would just whisk DTs upstairs saying that I had to feed them (they were bf). They soon get fed up of sitting around doing nothing.

Yes you have to set some boundaries but be careful not to piss them off too much. There will come a day when you will be desperate for a couple of hours of sleep and GPs will be worth their weight in GOLD.

I can understand your frustration I was a bit like this with my first you want to spend every second with the new baby. My MIL would just turn up (lived about half an hour away) come in take the baby from me without asking and it drove me crazy. She would come and 'look after' the baby so I could get some sleep which I needed but didn't make me feel any better at the time, and I grew to loath her It does get easier though as baby gets bigger and your hormones settle down you will realise that her intentions are good, she only wants to spend time with her grandchild and for me it was only such an issue with my first (she still oversteps the line sometimes) DC4 due any day and I will appreciate all the help I can get but you do need ground rules and you DH should not leave it all up to you to set them.

Oh and be grateful that you MIL wants to spend time with thm, the last time my PIL's saw the DC's they spent 8 hours in their company and said Hello and Goodbye. They hadn't seen them for 4 months.

Mine were bf but I just used to feed them in front of everyone-if I kept disappearing I would have have been a hermit! However, I suppose it gives an excuse for a break.
Be assertive in the things that matter-e,g, if the baby needs feeding take it.

Omg you're me 2 years 9 months ago. My now exDP was about as helpful as a chocolate teapot even when I was suffocating under the pressure to hand over my baby to a virtual stranger (well they were to DD) for hours at a time. I was bullied into leaving DD alone with "someone who knows what they're doing". (yes they really said that).

Infact his parents constant interferance split us up in the end If your DH isn't taking a stand and marking out boundaries you will have to. Really. It seems hard at first but do you want to look back at the early weeks/months or even years with sadness because you felt pushed out? Hope you sort this out.

Definitely make a stand now! If your DH won't back you up resort to not answering the door or locking yourself in the bedroom with the baby. My mum had this from my nan (my MIL) she made my mum's life hell, and I mean absolute hell. She lived next door to us and then when I was 10 moved in with us. My mum and dad had no privacy and sadly in the end it split them up. My mum was very meek back then and very young. She totally regrets not standing up to MIL in the early days as it set the tone of their relationship from then on. My nan constantly interfered in our lives. And I grew up resenting her (my nan) for the way she treated my mum. I also saw my dad as weak for not standing up for my mum. My says her and my dad would probably still be together if it hadn't been for my nan.

Definitely definitely stand up to her.

Sorry that she should be my mum's MIL not my MIL.

Bloody hell!

You need to make it incredibly clear to your DH that, two weeks after the birth, no-one is to turn up uninvited and unannounced to see you.

Honestly and truthfully, if your MIL is this keen, you will have a hard time not seeing her at least once a week; could you make that one week at your house - on the understanding that she eg comes after lunch and leaves by tea time - and the following week at her house.

I think YABU. They are excited and wanted to see their grandchild, but they are also being unreasonable to stay for that long.

They probably think they are helping by letting you sleep. try giving them some jobs to do when they come round so that they feel useful and keep them from under your feet.

I dread the thought that when DS is grown up my DIL would banish me from seeing my grandchildren and my son for weeks. It is your DH's family.

sorry but ths has made me smile as i am just pregnant with my dh first baby and i am anticipating a similar senario.We got married xmas eve and wanted to do it alone just with two friends as we both have large families and couldnt afford the doo and they all live away.The in laws were told as dh felt guilty so they just came along.He explained we were not having guests even my mum n dad or children but they came anyway so i can only imagine what they will be like with a gc.They live a long way away but i unfortunately have a spare room which makes it nice and comfy to visit. That said i do realise that they will want to see the baby asap and will make provision for that but also set some boundaries too.Your dh should be doing that for you tho and why does he go out when they come. Thsy are his parents not yours. I have a contingency plan which will involve me actually going out if they outstay their welcome. I do this when they come for their many vists i find it breaks it up a bit and gives them time with their son and heir.You need to get inventive with the excuses i think but also accept that they will want to see her often.The holiday home is mildly extreme tho.

I find it extraordinary that you want to bond with your baby alone and you seem to think that at 18yrs the bond goes and when the same DC has his own DCs you are just any other visitor and can miss seeing the baby as a newborn.
Someone earlier described their MIL as 'a virtual stranger' to the baby-missing the point that she should never have been put in the position of a 'virtual stranger'.

Your MIL sounds a bit like mine. She would come round, spend hours in my house cuddling my baby and had no concept of privacy - she would follow me upstairs when I took my baby up to bf. In the end I had a frank discussion about how I felt crowded and needed my own space. 13 years on she now comes round once a week and phones first. In retrospect I wish I had been more tactful - I was young and inexperienced and very possesive of my baby, but I don't regret the content of what I said, just the delivery. To my DHs credit, he was supportive of me and I think you need to have a frank discussion with your DH. I would tell him that he needs to deal with this because if he doesn't, you will and so he needs to step up. Not on for him to go out and leave you alone with the ILs. All that aside, I wouldn't and didn't make my ILs wait a week until they came round (much as I might have liked to). Think you do have to acknowledge that they are excited, but you are entitled not to be swamped. Agree with others that you should take the baby back when you want to - this is your child, not theirs

pisces - turning up unexpected then staying for 8 hours (when her DH has gone out) is far from reasonable visitation though.

and my MI endlesly offered to 'lighten the load' what she meant was, she didn't think i was doing it right, and wanted to do it herself....now i take the view that newbons need Mummy, and the older kids can entertain MIL - they have many years to get to know their GC, they don't have to impose it on you whilst the baby is tiny and the mother is tired and stressed!

You need to stick up for yourself, if she is holding your dc for hours and you want to feed then you have to speak up and say mil ill take him/her (sorry missed if it was a boy or girl) now to feed. just say it firmly, but you dont have to be so possessive as not to let her have a hold or anything at all. if you let her have her turn then she will not become so desperate to go ott (hopefully)
I do think yabu saying they cant see the baby for a week! But them getting a holiday home 5 min away is a bit much, and out staying their welcome for 8 hours is too much.
The best solution is for you to try and take a bit of control of the situation, you invite them sometimes, or go to theirs so that you are able to leave (it can be easier than stuck with people at yours who will not leave). They are the grandparents so try not to push them out completely, but be assertive with them, if there is an issue you are not happy about then rather than fuming in silence try to say something to sort it out, or get your dh to talk to them if that becomes necessary (if they go extreme and dont understand you need privacy, inviting themselves round all the time)
Alot of people have this problem, but you just need to get the right balance in the middle

Nip it in the bud immediately! I didn't and I put up with things like this for the first 4 weeks with my first born. Now, when I look back at how little I got to hold him it makes me feel really sad.

Yes grandparents are excited but the most important people are YOU and YOUR baby. Their bond with their grandchild will be no better or worse for having waited a week, but your happiness will be greatly affected.

You should talk to your DH as well and get him to support you.

Good luck.

Ecoboo...when you married, his family became your family. Period. It is so unfair for you to say that you want to hang out with your friends with babies and your little family, and it's unreasonable for your MIL to want to be around all the time.

My MIL drives me insane...intrusive, unhelpful, tactless a lot of the time. But, I love her dearly because she is my husband's mother AND because she lavishes my DCs with her attention, and they absolutely adore her. No matter how insane she drives me, I would NEVER be so selfish as to think her unreasonable to want a relationship with her GCs.

I know you have a new baby, and you just want to bond as a family, but they are family too. Instead of trying to get her to come over less, give her jobs to do when she comes...'MIL, could you just take the baby for an hour while I nap?' or 'MIL, if you're on your way over, could you pick up x and y from the shop'. This could be a great benefit to you.

I think maybe this is partly due to your confidence levels as a new mum. It takes a while to build these up and instead of silently seething but not saying anything, to have the balls to say 'hang on, I'm the mum, I know what is right for my child'.

So it's maybe not really a MIL issue more just about you building your confidence. Don't worry, this will come with time. And don't worry about forgetting things like waking to feed when this is so new to you. No lasting damage. I forgot to change my daughter's bedding for the first 10 weeks..... (ok, she mostly co-slept, but still!)

I think you've got to be pretty dim and or insensitive to stay for EIGHT hours when a woman has just had a baby. I'm at the woman's obsessive intrusiveness.

This is exactly what happened to me and my mil. She completely didn't understand that I just didn't want to see her every day or even every week and that it was very important that she got on with her own life instead of trying to revolve it around my baby.

When I'm a granny, I hope that I remember this is not my time - it's a time to fuss about the new mother and make sure she's ok and not take the baby all the time unless the new mother wants me to. Hang back. Invest in a bit of sensitivity because it'll pay back massive dividends with my dils. Hopefully, I'll be a little more grown up than the op's mil. And actually, I won't be making any assumptions or feel 'entitled' to be able to visit or do whatever I want just because I'm the child's grandmother.

And I'm sorry, but newborns are not going to be bonding with anyone but their mums at that stage. To think anyone else is even going to register with them is pure fantasy. I do wonder what goes on in the minds of people who think it ok not to give a baby back to its mother after even an hour!

Your mil is overstepping those boundaries big time. If this is what she's like normally then I don't blame you for not wanting to see her for a week after the birth. She needs to grow up - a static home near you? How very presumptious. Has she actually bothered to ask you if she can visit as often as that? She's thinking about her needs only. Certainly not yours and why does she think it's all about her and what she wants?

Your dh needs to grow a pair and tell his parents that you need time together alone as a new family. Erm, because you are the ones who have just had the massive, not to mention exhausting life changing experience. Not his parents.

You might need to put your foot down yourself if your dh lacks the spine to do so.

"But, I love her dearly because she is my husband's mother"

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. You can't possibly love someone because they are related to someone else. You love them for their own personal qualities not their family relations.

What crap. Don't suck it up, op.

You're not saying you don't want your mil to have a relationship with your new baby. You're just saying that you quite rightly are already feeling claustrophobic by her ott behaviour.

Establish what level of visits you want now but it's only going to get worse. Believe me, some relatives think it's ok to focus their entire lives around a new baby, forgetting that is simply not their role. Your mil needs understand that she can't see your baby whenever she fancies.

Don't let unrealistic expectations on your mil's part sour your relationship because it will and you'll loathe her for not respecting you.

If you allow this to carry on there is always the danger it will affect your marriage. Which is obviously not good.

Set some boundaries. I'd go for every two weeks as a compromise (if you can).

Of course 8 hours was too long! It came about because OP had no concept that it was unfair to make her wait a week. The caravan idea has come about because MIL fears that she won't get visits or DIL to visit her.

The whole problem is that OP has never made a relationship in her own right. I bet she has never been anywhere with MIL without her DH. If she had sorted out the relationship beforehand she would be able to set the boundries-let her to do the ironing or cook a meal instead of holding the baby all the time!

She needs to set the boundries now, in a fair way and including MIL as part of the family. After all the baby may take after MIL in looks and character!!! You get the genes you are given-not the ones you want!

I can't see any of the proud grannies I know thinking that a dog is a substitute! If they want a dog they already have one!