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Infant feeding

Get advice and support with infant feeding from other users here.

How do you explain your feeding choice without looking like DIL from hell?

60 replies

PrammyMammy · 28/07/2009 20:12

Due dc2 in just over a month so i raided out my old feeding bras in an attempt to see what i would need to buy for in my hospital bag. They had been in the drawer for a year so i washed them all and hung on a small over the bath type clothes horse because it is raining buckets but too hot to justify using the dryer.
Anyway, my dp's mum and dad visited today and noticed them while using the loo, they must have been speaking about it while i was making tea because when i came back through they asked about why i had them out already, they had hoped i would bottle feed because they didn't get a chance to feed ds (19 mo) I just said that i had not thought about that but didn't really know what else to say. They already think little of me and choices i make with ds etc so what can i say that is polite but to the point?

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alexpolismum · 29/07/2009 09:54

PrammyMammy - I know how it is to have a difficult, manipulative MIL. Sometimes it is very hard to say things to her. (Although thank goodness mine never offered to suckle my children!)

My MIL thinks I am a dreadful DIL whatever I do, and believe me, I used to try really hard. It sounds to me like yours will be the same. I just gave up trying hard and pandering to her.

Things came to a head one day, not too long ago, when I had had enough of her constant criticisms and insinuations about my lack of parenting skills (and she could be very subtle, so if I said anything it made it look like I was the one with the problem). She had just told me to smack my son (then 20 months) for biting. I refused and told her I had a different way to deal with it. She started muttering about foreign people being rude and uncouth and how families were much closer in her culture. This is very relevant, as I am British and she is Greek. She had made racist comments before, but I had brushed them off and tried to be tolerant.

This time, however, I just lost it and shouted at her in her own house. I really put her in her place, and then I took my children and left. DH came storming in a few hours later, having heard her side of the story. I told him that if he wasn't prepared to support me then he could ring his mum and thank her for having caused his divorce. I don't know why, but we both burst out laughing, and he phoned his mum there and then and told her not to come round until she had apologised to me.

However, what I would say to you is don't let it get to that stage. I had put up and put up, and eventually things blew up over what should have been a trivial incident. You don't want to be in the same situation. I don't want to cause problems between my dh and his mother, and I'm sure you don't either. Best to nip it all in the bud now. Talk to her calmly and firmly over a cup of tea, try to find a middle ground before it escalates.

seaturtle · 29/07/2009 10:05

I'm in disbelief here. She wants to breastfeed your baby? And she's checking your bras?

I have minimal relationship with DS's paternal grandmother. DS's dad and I are not together, but are on very friendly terms. But granny was a nightmare at the hospital. I was struggling and dertermined to BF my son, and he was in a neonatal unit for 5 days for low blood sugar. I had to ask the staff to automatically ask her to leave. She would have manhandled my breasts to help me if she could, and then she was pressurizing me to bottlefeed. My own mum was encouraging me to bottlefeed, but for different reasons. I was struggling, and what I was producing is not enough. Nightmare granny was pressurizing me because she wanted to feed him. On the few times we see her, feeding him is something I never let her do. She is one of the reasons I'm glad exP and I aren't married or living together.

elkiedee · 29/07/2009 11:01

Very strange. Say you will be bf but you'd welcome help, eg cuddling your new baby between feeds so you can eat, or do other things you need to, when they're visiting.

You're not the DIL from hell, and I'd find it hard to be polite but it sounds like you want to try and find a constructive way forward.

lal123 · 29/07/2009 11:13

But she doesn't want to breastfeed your baby - she doesn't have any milk. She wants your baby to suck her breasts so that it feels as if shes feeding the baby - weird weird weird woman.

HoppityBunny · 29/07/2009 15:22

Your MIL sounded (or should be) very open about BFG if she had wanted your DS to suckle her own breast and that's called wet-nursing. And, now I find it amazing that she NOW wants you to bottle feed your next baby????*! Weird, perhaps she got deep rooted, jealousy, control, ownership baby issues? And that even over-rides the health of her future grandchild - very strange.

I feel for you, and I am surprised your FIL is going along with her issues. Perhaps he's just too hen pecked by his wife to see reason and be 'normal'.

Just ignore them.

wastingmyejumication · 29/07/2009 15:33

I wonder if she wanted to have more children and wasn't able to.
That feeling never leaves, a very elderly lady I know got very choked up around me when I was expecting due to MC and stillbirths from 60 years ago.

I think you just need to state your case clearly and firmly, but give her the opportunity to help in other ways.

mrsrawlinson · 29/07/2009 15:47

Wow, thanks OP, you've really put my mad-as-a-box-of-frogs MIL in perspective. And believe me, that takes quite some doing!

Oh and by the way, she sounds like a total bloody mentalist. If I were you I wouldn't let her anywhere near your DCs. Seriously.

HoppityBunny · 29/07/2009 15:55

I think you can take her on, after all you had enough guts to marry her son.

radiokent967 · 29/07/2009 16:56

Message deleted

PrammyMammy · 29/07/2009 17:29

wasting, i know that dp's dad never wanted children at all, they had dp and sil quite late, and dp still wonders if his dad is his biological one, so maybe he couldn't have children? I really don't know tbh, but it does sound plausible.
I told dp that i will have to be open with her if she carries on anyway, and we spoke about a few of the other things she gets up to.

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