MIL annoying as hell!

[20thCenturyBoy]

My MIL has been staying with us over Xmas. She is loved by her friends, and her grandchildren, but I find her very annoying! I accept that I am not perfect and will probably come across badly here but need to vent.

My wife drinks red wine (as does my MIL). Sometimes more than she should but she is a grown woman and it's up to her. My MIL deemed that she had too much to drink a couple of nights ago and has a drink problem. Perhaps is an alcoholic and should seek help. And that I have enabled that. And that as we have a 10 month old baby (who is breast fed a bit but is eating now) she may have to 'report it to the health service'!

This was on Boxing Day. My MIL had had too much red wine the night before. My wife accepts that sometimes she drinks too much. Fair enough. However to accuse your daughter of being an alcoholic (she absolutely isn't) and saying she'll report her is an awful thing to say at Xmas.

There was obviously a heated exchange after this accusation and it has really affected my wife over the last few days. I haven't said anything to my MIL about this but found myself getting increasingly annoyed by her. We are very different people. She talks from the minute she wakes up until she goes to sleep. Mainly waffle, or repeating the same stories again and again. I try to be civil and converse with her but she really doesn't want a conversation just wants to talk at me.

After 5 days of this I get pretty techy and this morning I lost it as she was deciding whether to eat Weetabix for breakfast. We'd already had about 10 minutes of talk about whether she should have Weetabix or not and my wife asked me to hold our baby. My MIL said she would but I kind of took our baby away from her because I just wanted her to eat the f##kin Weetabix!

My MIL got all upset about this and it lead to another heated discussion between MIL and wife about what my wife was doing wrong, the drinking, how I enable her to drink, how my MIL has 'taken her eye off the ball' with regards to her daughter's life.

My MIL has gone now but my wife is really upset with me for what I did. I am really pi##ed off as really my MIL is to blame I think. Yes I should be the better person and suck it up but I was so annoyed at what my MIL had said that this came out in my behaviour.

Am I am in the wrong? I feel like I always have to be the rational, logical one when everyone else gets to shout and
argue it out!

Neither you or your wife are in the wrong here in my opinion . Your mother in law sounds like a toxic lady, who wanted to stir the pot. Do not let her succeed.

This has now turned into a full blown relationship issue. My MIL says I am domineering (I asked my wife if she'd put fruit in our childs breakfast cereal this morning.) and now my wife says I am domineering. Because of this. And because I ask out kids to eat their food over their plates.

So I am now the focus of my wife's upset. Not her mother who accused her of being an alcoholic. My wife said I should try harder with her mother. I said that she is a really difficult woman to get on with. She has fallen out with her brother & SIL, has a fraught relationship with her parents, doesn't get on with her Son In Law or daughter in law and regularly falls out with my wife and her other daughter. My wife says I have no respect for mother. And it's true. I don't. As horrible as that sounds. Basically my MIL has undiagnosed /untreated mental health issues and is not the mother she grew up with. My wife has gone to bed crying because of this and because I am not showing any empathy for her situation. I'm at a loss....

I really struggle to believe that this is a genuine post !! If it is author read it agsin and find your own solution for goodness sake.

Gosh, this is a terrible one. If she has the issues you describe she’s likely deflecting and your wife will be wanting to try and keep the peace.

if she is truly an addict she’ll pick up on any little behaviour she can try and hone in on to take attention away from herself and doesn’t care what disruption or hurt arises from it.

I have lived with it and it’s really hard to accept that someone you love has a problem, especially if you grew up used to an amount of chaos.

my genuine advice here would be for now just go and hug your wife and reassure her, this must be very difficult ❤️

You wife should not be drinking while breastfeeding. The fact she does it and she can’t control her drinking even with a small baby is a concern. Your MIL seems horrible but maybe she has a point. Badly delivered point but you should really have a chat with your wife. Probably some counselling.
the fact your MIL can stir a fight between you two for something honestly quite trivial (holding the baby while having breakfast) shows something is off. You have a small baby. Invest in your relationship, strengthen it and work it through. If she has an issue with drinking it will come out and you can deal with it before it is too late.

Stop falling out with your wife over MIL...I'm sure she's hurt over her mother's attitude as it is and on top you're stirring things up...let it go

Why 5 days? Guests are like fish- they go stale after three days. That was said hundreds of years ago, as true now as it was then!

Why is your wife drinking a lot of red wine ? is there stress in her life?

Nonsense. The amount of alcohol that goes through to breastmilk is the same amount as your blood alcohol level. You'd have to be virtually dead of alcohol poisoning before the amount that gets through could even potentially affect the baby. The main concern when drinking is that you are fit to look after the baby (if you're solo, if another responsible parent is present, then clearly it's fine as long as you're not both plastered) and that you don't co-sleep after drinking. I'm so sick of the misinformation surrounding almost all aspects of breastfeeding.

Apologies for the derail OP. Your MIL sounds like my mother, and at points I almost wondered if my husband posted this. Generally things improved in our relationship once I stopped expecting my husband to socialise with her beyond the minimum, and accepted that while I love her because she's my mother and feel obliged to spend time with her, she's actually not a particularly nice person. If my husband had pushed that though before I was ready to accept it it would have driven a wedge between us as I was very much in the FOG.

Hmm. If a woman had written this about her MIL, we'd all be saying 'you have a DH problem'
It sounds like your wife is having trouble sticking up for herself against this difficult woman, but as soon as you step in, you're the bad guy.
Maybe you need to have a proper talk with your wife, when she is sober, and MIL isn't around.

look at your MIL’s intentions. clearly, she has the best interest of the child in mind. Your wife shouldn’t be drinking while BFing even if she’s only BFing a tiny drop. you are putting alcohol in your child’s blood stream. if your MIL wants to make the child a more nutritious breakfast, let her. why are you offended that she wants to feed your child better? i would be pleased and let her do it. i think you are both being unreasonable and taking offence because there is an element of hurtful truth in all of this. drinking when you have children (let alone young children) is pretty awful and there are plenty of studies to show this. if you can’t control the drinking and abstain for a few years? then there is a serious alcohol problem. i am sorry if this isn’t what you wanted to hear..

I wouldn’t advocate drinking while breast feeding, possibly a small glass here and there that no one would bat an eyelid over. Yes it could be a small amount, but they’re growing and best to leave toxins out at this age. Up to you of course just my opinion.

Maybe MiL has undiagnosed SEN? It does seem she has little to no filter and this can sometimes point towards ASD. Try talking to DW first and then jointly handle the situation, clear, concise and calm should help (I hope).

Odd to out someone you love so publicly.
5 days is a whopping long time especially with a baby - lets face it we all need a break when they’re this age, next time just an afternoon I think.

From the NhS website
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/baby/breastfeeding-and-bottle-feeding/breastfeeding-and-lifestyle/alcohol/
pls also read research published on scientific journals.

justifying the drinking habit of mums with misinformation is really not the way to go

MIL says she "took the eye off the ball" regarding her DDs life?! MIL is a controller and she admits it right there.

I don't see concern for your DC I see shit stirring and deliberately driving a wedge between you and DW. DW enables this so I agree with those saying you have a DW problem.

5 days is way too long for an annoying guest. A long weekend arriving Friday night not daytime and leaving after breakfast Monday is plenty long enough. She's talking at you not to you so you need earphones. And to go out a lot more to get some peace from her. Leave the pair of them to 'enjoy' their relationship without you. Then you can be the consoling one to DW and not the one who gets attacked.

MIL attacked you because you stood up for DW, undermining MILs control of her. You're never going to get on with her because you're not someone who's going to tolerate her nastiness. DW is siding with the bully because it's that or be bullied herself. I wouldn't be tolerating that from DW either. If you don't want to split up all you can do is avoid being around MIL.

Well, whether or not the alcohol will affect the baby depends on a lot of variables- how much she is having, how long between drinking and the baby being fed, how much the baby drinks/how often (at ten months she might only be having a feed or two a day), or perhaps your wife expresses before drinking and feeds the baby that? So your mil may or may not have a point about the alcohol affecting the baby. To accuse her of being an alcoholic, again we don’t know, but you seem confident she isn’t. I guess what I’m saying is, mil’s concern might come from a good place even if she has expressed them clumsily and come across as accusing rather than supportive. That’s her daughter. If she’s worried, she should discuss her concerns sensibly and not on the middle of an (alcohol fuelled?) argument.
Sometimes is happens that the relationship between two people is toxic, or conflict arises, but the person who takes the brunt of the hostility is the one who tries to challenge the dynamic or the behaviour of the guilty party. It’s easier for your wife to do that than accept that her mother isn’t always the best person to be around and challenge her mother directly. She just wants the peace to be kept, but that can allow unhelpful patterns to keep playing out.
The breakfast situation sounds like a group of people who have just been around each other too long and are getting irritated by small things. She irritated you by taking ages to choose breakfast, you probably lost your patience and took the baby because you just wanted her to make up her mind. Perhaps you overreacted.
I think maybe you tell your wife that you try your best with mil and will continue to do so, but you won’t put up with her being rude to you or your wife and overstepping the mark.

These long visits over Christmas are not a great idea for anyone, you know.
😐

Guests shouldn’t behave like that. She sounds impossible to get along with.

Studies show that to 'mildly sedate' a baby, maternal blood alcohol levels need to be at least 300mg/dL, which is nearly four times the drink drive limit. You'd have to be drinking really quite a lot to achieve that, and probably wouldn't be capable of breastfeeding due to potentially requiring 'aggressive care, as respiratory depression, coma, and hypothermia are likely. In general, alcohol poisoning occurs at blood alcohol level of 0.35% but even at blood alcohol concentration over 0.25% (250 mg/dL) some patients may be at a higher risk of coma.'

So, as I said previously, you'd have to be nearly at the point of alcohol poisoning yourself before it could affect the baby. Also bear in mind NHS guidelines are designed to be simple for people to follow and have a wide margin of error. I last had an alcoholic drink at some point over Christmas 2023, so don't have any skin in this game despite currently bf DC3, but there is good evidence to show that many women are put off breastfeeding by the perceived need to avoid alcohol entirely, or stop breastfeeding earlier than they otherwise would have due to the 'hassle' of things like pumping and dumping the 'alcoholic' milk, which aren't actually necessary.

I'm assuming OP would have said if his wife was paralytically drunk at the time of MIL's comment, as that would put a different spin on things.

References:
https://www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/factsheet/alcohol/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128156070000010

So your MIL sounds hard work, but let’s be frank your wife has a drink dependency problem and you are absolutely enabling it. Rather then face facts you’re deflecting it on to your MIL. Having a drink problem doesn’t necessarily mean you’re an alcoholic.

@AveAtqueVale stop kidding yourself, drinking and breast feeding isn’t great. The idea that data says otherwise is just your confirmation bias at work.

This might out me but I'm going to say it.

When my DD was aound 6 months old, I had undiagnosed severe PND. I had stopped BF, thankfully, as I started to self-medicate with wine. Quite a bit of wine, thinking back. My mother (who is difficult at the best of times) did exactly what your MIL has just done. My reaction was, unfortunately, exactly the same as your wife. I took it out on DH. Yelled, said he was accusing me of being an alcoholic & wanting to take DD away from me.

Thank god he thought to speak to the health visitor when he took DD for jabs, as she came to see me, spoke to the GP and got me onto meds. The first set didn't work (mainly because I continued to self-medicate when on them) & it took a complete breakdown for me to get the right meds and stop drinking. That was 22 years ago, but I can still tell when my mental health is tanking by the increase in alcohol consumption.

All this is to say that perhaps your DW needs to talk to her GP? obviously I'm not advocating you tell her you think she needs help, especially at the moment, or that she has PND but it sounds so much like me all those years ago that it is worth considering. Perhaps frame it as proving your MiL wrong.

Other than that, give her a big hug (&here's one for you too)

Gosh all these people saying 5 days is too long! I stayed with dd1, her dh and my baby gc for that long last month. No arguments whatsoever, had a lovely time, sad to leave.

Sorry op, while your mil sounds very tiring she is right to discuss the drinking if your wife is still breastfeeding. The fact she can’t avoid alcohol while bf suggests she has an alcohol problem. Your wife’s reaction is quite typical, she is deflecting away from talking about the true cause of the discussion (her drinking) by turning you into the bad guy. She is also using her mother as an excuse to treat you badly. She is basically behaving in the same manipulative manner as her mother, while she should be standing up towards her mother protecting you. You’ve got a wife problem. (And a difficult mil).

One thing that would help a great deal is to not have MIL stay for more than two nights when she visits. Some people enjoy having visitors in their home for days, even weeks on end but I think many more do not. Even if you truly love your visitors it is intrusive- they are in your personal space, sanctuary however you might describe your home. Normal routines are changed to accommodate them, as hosts you are “on” the whole time and don’t get to relax fully. All that will make any existing tension much worse.

And some people can’t or won’t see people they love for who they really are. If that’s what your wife is doing with her mother then that might not be something you can change

Sounds like both women in your life are over hysterical and frankly batshit crazy.

God help you.
Your MIL is batshit.
Ask your wife does she want to go and stay with her batshit mother or you can go stay with family for a few days as you both obviously need a break from each other.
I would tell your wife that its best if she visits her mother from now on as you need a break from her. Permanently.