Mother in law driving me crazy postpartum?

[Katey94]

My baby is 3 months old & my mother in law is so overbearing.. I have always liked her but ever since I had my baby she wants to visit a lot & when she does she holds baby the entire visit which I don’t like because my father in law doesn’t get a chance and sometimes I want to put her down for a nap & she just won’t hand her back, one time I was waiting to feed baby & she wouldn’t hand her back then took the bottle from me & fed her .. now she’s pressuring me to go stay in her home for a few days and I don’t want to, She tries to make me feel guilty or makes sly digs without actually saying something out straight, she tried to imply baby was making strange with her because she never sees her, which isn’t true and a 3 month old doesn’t make strange , it’s driving me crazy , what can I do?

Stand up to her. Tell her when you want baby back, when you want to put baby down for naps etc. Advocate for yourself.

Just tell her you'd like a regular arrangement of once a week/ fortnight/ month or whatever suits you.

She will have to accept it and be happy she has regular contact with her grandchild.
At least you can grin and bear it for a few hours then...

It sounds like she's being quite insensitive to your wishes, so don't be afraid to be a bit blunt back. If she's holding the baby and you want to hold her for whatever reason, go and take her rather than ask her to hand her over. Walk over with your arms outstretched, and say to your baby 'it's time for X with mum now!'

You could also try 'FIL I'd love a photo of you holding the baby' to get her to hand over to him.

Is the baby's father there for these visits? Make sure he's aware that she's reluctant to hand the baby back, so he can sometimes be the one to step in when it's nap time etc. so it's not always coming from you.

If you don't want to stay with PIL ideally that's something their son could communicate to them. 'Thanks for the offer. We'd love to when she's a bit older but don't want to travel with her at the moment.'

Baby hogging is very irritating, especially when it's interfering with your parenting, feeding, naps, etc. even though it's not coming from a bad place. Keep reminding yourself of the fact that soon your daughter will be running around needing constant watching and at that stage your MIL's over keenness might become a positive!

She sounds really rude. But it’s your baby, just take the baby back from her arms when you want to feed her.