Tips please: overbearing mother

[Lovemarmite]

Hi everyone,
I would love to know if you've got any tips or let me know how you've managed whilst pregnant / have the little one in your arms if your own mum can be very overbearing please.

I can't knock my mum really, and I do love her but she's always been very controlling and she loves to bully people. I'm 38 and pregnant with our first (and possibly only) DC and so this is very new for myself and DH but also new for my mum. For the past 10 years or so, I have always done things my way and have completely different outlook on life, from diet to beliefs from my parents and although this seems to have been respected, she is now questioning me about everything. She has always been a career woman and has said that me and my sister ruined her career (meant to be tongue in cheek, but she means it) but now her career has come to an end due more to her age and ability rather than her choice. She has a lot of time on her hands and is looking at 'the family' to fill her void. I don't mean to sound unloving as I'd love her to be involved but she often says a lot of nasty things behind my back about me and this is a trait that I cannot ignore, I've confronted her on occasions and now it's easier not to speak so often. Fortunately she lives about 1.5 hours a way and she cannot drive anymore and so she can't just pop in, however she has already asked if we'd chosen a substitute birthing partner and she volunteered herself for the job. This has filled me with horror and so we ignored it and managed to gloss over it quite successfully so far.
I am getting the impression that she's trying to get involved as she's always said that she was a horrible mother herself and would like to do it again and do it properly. Thing is, as the product her being a horrible mother, I don't want her involved too much!
She maybe forceful at times but she sulks badly and then the whole family suffers!
Help, how can I be tactful and tell her?!

I guess all you can do is try to be firm. 'DH will be with me at the birth, we don't plan to have anyone else there' is all she needs to know. If you are worried about her interfering try not to give her too much ability to do so - e.g. don't tell her when you're in labour, just phone her to tell her you've had the baby when you're ready to.

I guess you can only answer each thing as she brings it up if she disagrees with you about pregnancy/parenting etc - again trying to be as matter-of-fact as possible. 'Thank you for your input - I'll think about what you've said but for the moment we are planning to do x' or 'It's amazing the way the official guidance on this has changed such a lot since I was a baby' if you want 3rd party validation of why you're doing it your way.

Good luck!

Completely agree with pootle. Also when your mum askes questions, no matter how direct, try be as brief and/or as vague as possible (maybe she'll tire of trying to pin you down on things) this has worked with my MIL in the past.

This is going to be the most amazing time of your lives, you really won't want to look back and feel that you did it someone elses way and not your own no matter how well meaning they are x

As joy suggests, I recommend being as vague as possible. You do not
need to tell her what you are doing if you think she will disagree with it. My mother is strong on routines and leaving babies to cry; I don't tell her we are co sleeping and I just nod and smile vaguely when
she warbles on about the dangers of bf on demand. It would be pointless trying to explain things or change her mind.

Thanks for your messages pootlebug and joymaker

I've started to be very vague as when I told her about my morning sickness, a few weeks later she really went into how women these days make way too much out of morning sickness. When my DH asked her how she was when she was pregnant, she admitted that she didn't get any ms at all.
My initial thoughts were that I cannot talk to her about anything as I will only hear it back negatively and so have learnt to say nothing and then will hopefully hear nothing back.

I love the idea about telling her that the August stork has arrived rather than informing her of labour. I know she's already making sure she is around for the whole of the month and so I guess we'll have to go off radar for a bit, this will drive her crazy I know!

Thanks for the advice to be firm, will try hard(er)! x

Good to hear how you're doing it helium
Sounds like you've got it pretty much under control.
I know we'll be doing things very differently too!

I wear rose tinted glasses so take this with a pinch of salt Im not actually trying to be provocative, but perhaps she means what she said about this being a second chance for her while she was a bad mum?

Id be tempted to tell her nothing (I have to do this with my own very well meaning mum) eg are you breast feeding - I will if I can I wont if I cant so she never quite knows what you are doing to critisise, switch off as best you can to any sniping but give her the opportunity to be a grandmother under your terms, she might just surprise you

And if she doesnt and hour and a half is a good long distance for someone that cant travel

Hey Lovemarmite, I just wanted to let you know you are not alone! I, too, am 38, pregnant with first (probably only) child, and am struggling with my Mum. I actually name-changed for this reply, as my Mum knows my username, and while I don't think she's internet savvy enough to google it, I wouldn't want to risk it...

I'm at 36 weeks and still managing to get quite upset with her at times, so I'm not sure how much help I can be. My strategy has been to try to ask her questions about how things were when she was pregnant/I was a baby, as she likes to talk about that. If she can get going on anecdotes, sometimes it manages to not turn into telling me what to do. I also try to have conversations about how guidance has changed and what people have learned in the last 40 years about childbirth. I also ask about my Aunt's pregnancies and kids, which enables my Mum to criticise someone else other than me.

I'm lucky in that my Mum lives across an ocean, so there will be no unexpected visits! She seems to have not taken too badly that we are inviting MIL around for just after the due date (also traveling across an ocean). But I just can't stand the thought of my Mum around when I'm feeling so vulnerable.

I'm still quite bad at handling the assumptions she makes about how I'm going to do things. It's not even "telling" me what to do, she just starts asking questions as if I'm doing something else. For example, she'll ask, "How have your interviews with childcare providers been going?", when DH is going to be a SAHD and I've arranged to work from home until LO is nearly a year! I just try to calmly explain why we are not interviewing any care providers right now, but that I have lots of friends with info they can share when we need it (and have money to pay for it...). Sorry, bit of a mini-vent there :) But I hope it helps to know you're not alone! I sometimes feel it is quite mad that I'm almost 40 years old and my parents still act like I'm 6 (don't get me started on my father...); but I can't change the way they act so I can only handle the way I act (and put as many large geographic barriers between us as I can).

My Mum is brilliant. A friend's mum is very overbearing though. She's found that it's helped to give her a role or jobs to do. For example, during pregnancy she made a wonderful pram blanket. After the baby was born she had the job of taking the baby out for long walks after it had been fed so that my friend could sleep during the day. She also made a great cake for the Christening. It helped the Granny to feel involved but also stopped my friend from going nuts.

Thanks silver and hotpot,
It's great to know I'm not alone in this.
Love the advice, thank you!

We had real problems with MIL but after my DH heard some of her comments to me and some madness, he ignored her for a few years and it kind of helped as everyone wanted to make things better. I wish this could happen on my side, as my mother has started to want to be a mother again and is trying to give me advice on everything, even relationship advice and what to say to other people - which I find very odd as she gets crazy with other people!
silver you are wise to live with an ocean between you. DH and I have spoken about him taking a job offer in the US but we think that it's a bit drastic for just removing the friction between us and my mum. I think I will just be firm and say only a little.

I don't think I could talk about my aunty's pregnancies as my mother was really nasty about how she was and her kids. And all the anecdotes so far seem to relate to how my mum just got on with it and didn't moan, she smoked tons, drank lots and worked with heavy VOCs during my pregnancy. But then again, I have to remind myself that things have moved on since then and so perhaps she wouldn't have known that all those toxins were bad?! hmmm and there's my sister with chronic asthma and me with asthma and a chronic skin disease - ok, sorry I am venting now!

Sorry to hear you had trouble with your MIL too, Lovemarmite. But it sounds like things are better now?

I'm lucky that my PIL are normal human beings. It quite nice to have a real set of parents available :) We do have different outlooks on a number of things, but at least they interact with us like we are also people.

Since my Mum got a computer last year and discovered video chat, my DH has been able to hear both sides of our conversations (when before he could only hear mine on the phone), and confirmed to me that they just don't sound like any normal conversation he's ever experienced. He said it's more like they're reading from some sort of script with pauses for me to speak, but don't actually respond to anything I say. He said he finally understood why I would keep saying the same thing over and over again -- like in my above example, I'd go through the explanation of why we didn't need childcare yet 3-4 times, as my Mum would provide follow-up questions as if I had answered "Oh, quite well, we've talked to a few now", still with the assumption that I am interviewing people... The one big exception was when I phoned to say I was pregnant :) That actually got a response.

And I'm afraid moving across an ocean isn't the panacea that it might seem, so do be cautious! I found that now my Mum must see me every year, in person, involving either me flying to her or her flying there, whereas when we lived only a 6-hr drive apart (a short distance in the US), I think they came down for my wedding and that was the only time we met in person in 4 years; I lived a 14-hr drive away (a longer time frame than it takes to fly between us now), and we only had 2 visits in 6 years. Yet now I'm "far away" so it's especially important to spend months discussing and arranging the next visit. Plus we must video chat at least once a week -- and now that she's found video chat it doesn't count if we don't use it. So it's multiple phone calls a week to arrange the weekly video chat, sigh.

Ugh I realise that in the above I must look absolutely horrible it's not that I think seeing my parents once a year is an onerous duty (I know many people visit family way more than that!); in fact, the years in the States without physical interaction were due mostly to their obstruction. I invited them over for Xmas, tried to arrange Easter visits, etc., but as I wasn't doing things "properly" they refused to come or told me not to bother. And they'd find the oddest excuses, usually blaming other people somehow, for why I shouldn't visit or they couldn't travel. This is part of why it takes months of discussion to arrange each yearly visit now...

Okay, now I'm glad I named-changed so no one can connect my other name with this horrible, ungrateful daughter

In my defense, I do try to maintain good interactions with them and I think they will be super grandparents.