Sorry for the long message, setting up the scene. I'm not British but I'm Scandinavian, my MIL comes from South East Asia, DH was born and brought up in Britain and is fully British. My MIL is usually very shy and quiet, she was in a terrible marriage and DH had a pretty horrible childhood. DH has a number of siblings but only one of them was actually looked after by MIL as the rest were sent abroad to be looked after by relatives or DH actually looked after his younger siblings when he was still a young child himself (yes, really). MIL has never acknowledged that she was a bad mother and doesn't seem to think she did anything wrong, SIL moved out permanently to be looked after by relatives when she was still in school and hasn't had much contact with her mother since, SIL's son has very little contact with his grandmother. DH has a pretty good relationship with his mother now.
We had our first baby in October and MIL wasn't too fussed during the pregnancy, but she became very keen to be involved since DD was born. When she visited she was keen to look after the baby but I breastfeed her so DD was with me most of the time, plus I didn't trust MIL with her, knowing that she didn't actually look after her own babies. I found the visit stressful because MIL would try to walk away from me with DD and wanted to hold her all the time. We got through the visit but she's coming again in a couple of weeks' time.
I'm finding it hard to decide how to feel about her relationship with DD. On the one hand she's always been nice to me and I've never had an issue with her before. DH is really pleased that his mum wants to be part of DD's life. On the other hand this is the same woman who was a terrible mother to my husband, and yes she was in a terrible marriage but she should still have looked after her children. As a new mother I can't understand how any mother would let their children be abused. She also doesn't seem to understand that I'm not going to take any parenting advice from her.
I spoke about this with my own mum, she thinks that MIL's enthusiasm towards DD will wear off, especially when she grows up and isn't a cute little baby anymore. My mum also pointed out that DD and MIL won't actually have a shared language because MIL's English is very poor and DH isn't going to teach DD to speak MIL's native language. MIL's flat isn't suitable for children due to small space and clutter etc. so DD will never be left alone with MIL there.
As long as DH is happy to involve MIL in DD's life that's fine by me, but I somehow feel very annoyed that MIL is now playing this devoted grandmother role when she was a terrible mother and isn't making an effort to reach out to her other grandchild (SIL has actually tried to make an effort with her recently). She's making a big fuss about DD to her relatives. Sorry for long explanations.