Is the relationship with SIL now broken for good? Navigating no contact.

[DaringMember]

I am 6 months postpartum and struggling. I’ve had a very difficult postpartum experience, including significant mental health challenges and trauma around my baby’s birth, failure to breastfeed and early medical issues. During this time, I’ve felt that my SIL has been critical of some very sensitive areaas including my birth (which involved interventions and ultimately an emergency caeser), formula feeding, and my experience of postnatal depression. Whether intentional or not, those comments have landed as dismissive and invalidating when I was already vulnerable.

Recently, she had her own baby, and everything went smoothly for her. Perfect no intervention natural birth, instant bonding and breastfeeding and healthy baby. After a few days I responded and congratulated her, but I’ve also been dealing with a lot of complicated emotions—grief, comparison, and hurt. I reached a point where I felt I needed to step back to protect my mental health, and I sent her a message explaining that. Some of you may have also seen my post in AIBU re the wedding.

Her response was brief, along the lines of “I’m sorry you feel that way, all the best.” It felt quite final and lacking in acknowledgment of my experience. I replied more emotionally, explaining some of what I’ve been going through, but she hasn’t responded since.

Now I’m left feeling rejected, embarrassed, vulnerable and unsure if I’ve made things worse, especially as this affects the wider family dynamic.

My main question is: is a relationship like this repairable after it reaches this point, or does that kind of response usually signal a permanent distance? I’m open to reconciliation in the future, but I also don’t want to keep putting myself in a position where I feel hurt or dismissed.

This thread is becoming quite concerning.

So much more thought is dedicated to relationship with SIL than your relationship with your child.

I hope you can access help OP. Your daughter needs you. You are everything to her. Please seek help for her sake if not your own.

As my sil said
I dont breastfeed
Therefore she doesnt need me
We have 0 attachment and baby doesnt know who i am

Who is caring for her then? Is she safe?

Dh
Yep

I mean I help a bit but baby too young

Of course your baby knows who you are. She was inside you for nine months. She knows your voice. You’re imprinted on her. Absolutely a long separation after birth may have rattled that, but it’s something you can get back! A woman in my NCT group got HELLP syndrome and was in a coma for some time after her baby’s birth. It took some work to reestablish the bond, but they did it.

It sounds like there is a lot of stuff that you need to grieve. None of this is your fault. You need to work on getting yourself better and healthier for your child. You can't change your SIL.

Hello OP, we are really sorry to hear you are feeling this way.

We hope you don't mind, but when these threads are flagged up to us we usually add a link to our Mental Health Resources. You can also go to the Samaritans website or email them on [email protected]. Support from other Mumsnetters is great and we really hope you will be able to take some comfort from your fellow posters, but as other MNers will tell you, it's really a good idea to seek RL help and support as well.
We also like to remind everyone that, although we're awed daily by the astonishing support our members give each other through life's trickier twists and turns, we'd always caution anyone never to give more of themselves to another poster, emotionally or financially, than they can afford to spare.

We are going to move this thread to the Mental Health section shortly

Ignore what your SIL said. Your baby does need you. Your baby does love you. Your baby is absolutely biologically programmed to do so. Your baby doesn't care if you bf or if you have meds during labour. Your baby needs and loves you just the way you are. That's the beauty of it.

You need to get yourself better for her. You must know this isn't right. Stop obsessing about SIL and focus on yourself and your child. Your child needs you, not SIL.

Thanks
I know im unwell
But I dont think i have any hope of getting better
I pushed SIL away even though it wouldve been more simple to go see the baby. I just know she wouldve done what she does and belittle me and my experience. So im hoping this makes me off limits in a sense to her judgement. Because honestly nobody else gives me this level of criticism.
My baby is also very sick. So her biological programming may be a bit off. It's very hard to have a child with a condition when during pregnancy you are told healthy low risk etc. What changed? The birth is my only guess.

I can't help but think that your counselling should be about coming to terms with your DCs condition and your trauma over the birth. I'm not an expert but I'm a bit cynical about counselling that just encourages you to ruminate over SIL.

You have more and bigger problems than your SIL but at the moment you're focusing on her, perhaps because everything else is too difficult and I can understand that, if you have an unwell baby. It must feel very hard, because it is.

You do however need to seek help and as you are refusing your prescribed meds, to discuss alternatives with your MH team. You need to do that as soon as you possibly can.