AIBU - MIL bought carseat without consulting us

[Ivf4203]

Warning long post!

Soo i don’t know if it’s just my hormones… however i’m feeling quite frustrated with MIL. She tends to be overbearing at the best of times however I feel like this time we do really need to set boundaries. In the past she’s asked me about prams and what colours I’d be considering, I said blue or maybe black. She said blue is too common and black is boring. Hubby said I get to choose colour obviously. Anyway so we moved on from that. At dinner a couple of weeks ago, she asked us how we are with our baby list etc. We said we have an appointment to look at babygear etc as we want to see and try them in the shop particularly the prams and carseats. Yesterday she messaged us to say she bought us a carseat and that’s she sooo excited to show us. I don’t even want to see it. For me she’s crossed the line esp since she knew we’re due to check out different brands in the shop. She said it’s the best and she paid for the most expensive one available. I was upset because it’s our first baby and i feel like she’s robbing us the experience to choose what we want for our baby. Hubby called her to say thank you but we will be going to shop as planned and choose ourselves and again explaining it’s our first baby so please let us experience these things. Hubby suggested that she return the carseat but she refused. She said she’ll keep for when our baby uses her car. Since then she hasn’t been replying to hubby who’s asked how she is. I feel like we need to set the tone at this point and make sure boundaries are respected otherwise this will go on and on especially when baby arrives but AIBU to not even check out the carseat she bought?

My how things have changed. I remember baby showers and grandparents buying the expensive gifts so parents wouldn’t have to and parents were very appreciative. What has changed? You sound very selfish, insensitive, and ungrateful. You both owe your mil an apology and gratitude for her thoughtfulness.

It's obvious that OP's MIL uses her wealth to control family members and to get her own way. She bought a car seat after she was told that OP and her son had an appointment to look at travel systems and she knew how much OP was looking forward to it. She had one of her bedrooms fully kitted out as a nursery by the time OP was 12 weeks' pregnant and she is already telling OP and her DH which private school her grandchild will go to, paid for by her.

OP should ignore the posters calling her pathetic and ungrateful.

One. Hundred. Percent.

If she has paid £450, it might be a car seat that could really come in handy when baby is older and needs the next stage. Maybe a compromise if you find the car seat MIL bought to your taste? So you get to buy the baby car seat you want but you can use MIL's when baby is older?

I'm amazed at the number of people who confidently assume that MIL's car seat is fit for purpose and are berating OP for being ungrateful. We have absolutely no idea if it's a suitable car seat or not.

Take the help and stop being precious, it's a car seat fgs, the best available apparently, be thankful for the financial help. There are battles to fight in the coming years over the way to bring up your child, believe me, there are... trust me, this is not one of them...

I think you could have probably looked at the seat, and said thank you- we're still going to take a look at some others first before deciding if that's the one we're happy with. You could of found she's bought you the one you would have bought anyway..

Having said that I do understand where your coming from. My MIL is very generous and comes from a kind hearted place but I do struggle with this at times too. Little things like wanting to buy first shoes, Halloween outfits, lovely gifts etc. All very generous and to her don't even matter but to me are things I would have liked to have chosen myself.
When baby was first born I thought she had gone crazy as she bought one of everything so that when she babysat all we needed to take was the baby. I thought this was really overkill but turned out to actually be quite handy!

I don't mean to undermine your experience but you don't sound like have lived throught it. You can tell people like this everything you've said. You can be perfectly clear and reasonable but they don't listen. That is the point. Any experience is about them, not about the other person, so they will go on to do exactly what they want and how you react doesn't matter to them at all. That is why it is so difficult to navigate.

Yes she’s been generous yadda yadda but
not all car seats fit all cars! Don’t mayter if it was £20 or £2k!! And I feel they were right to assert themselves just now because this “one nice thing” could escalate into something more than just the one thing and before you know it you’ve massively overbearing in laws on your hands!! Let her sulk, you’ve a new baby on the way she will obviously want to see so WILL come out of her mood. YOU are the parents and baby will be in your care and your car more than anywhere else. I cried when I bought my pram and car seat for my second baby because it took me almost 5 years to conceive said baby with loss in between. So what’s a “mundane” task to some people is a big deal for others. Go your pram and car seat shop. Get what YOU want and what’s safe for your car and enjoy, make a day of it go for lunch after x

Except it's not a MIL in this case, is it? It's a mother. It's the OP's husband, the baby's father, her own son who spoke to her about it and it's her son she is now ignoring. How does that fit with your anti-DIL rhetoric?

This.

at least you have a mil / gran for baby who
wants to be involved & wants “the best” for them

How do you know she didn't buy the one you were going to get?

Your lucky your MIL bought an expensive one, many don't buy anything

No, because the OP didn’t even bother asking which is likely what makes her come across as rude / ungrateful to MIL.

PP nailed it when they said DH could have asked what it is and said they’re still looking at car seats to see what would be suitable and that they’ll let her know (paraphrasing). Feels like they’re both just being awkward for the sake of wanting some special moment of choosing a car seat.

If it is top of the range it costs about £450 for the special car attachment that swivels and seat plus pram with base £1000?

Robbed you of what exactly? An expense?! 🙄😅

Neither does the OP because they spat the dummy out and didnt ask 🤷🏼‍♀️

How rude of you to post such a comment when you "couldn't be bothered" to read the bloody thread.

"I really hope my DIL won’t treat me like this when the time comes." - I'm sure she won't if you're not overbearing, controlling and manipulative like OP's MIL.

Leave OP alone FFS, she struggled to conceive and has longed for this baby for years. She's not being precious just because she wants to choose a pram and carseat herself! For crying out loud she let MIL help name the baby!!

How is it thoughtful to do something one has specifically been asked not to do?

Do we know for sure that OP doesn't know what the model is? I know it's not been shared with us but OP might just want to hold that information back to avoid it becoming a car seat debate.

In any case, I can't speak for OP, but I would personally want to go and try out a few different models in person to see what would be a good fit for my car and try out a few on prams. I'd also want to do my own research on crash tests and baby's projected percentiles. I totally understand her reluctance to outsource an important decision to her MIL when it sounds like she wandered into a shop and bought whatever the salesperson recommended.

Ah yes, JUST a car seat. A thing that can make the difference between being seriously injured, dying or coming out unscathed in the event of an accident. Now why on Earth would any parent to be want to bother themselves over the details of something of such minor importance? Oh, hang on a minute...🙄

If the MiL had simply offered to pay for the one they wanted as normal people do then none of this would have happened.

Don't we all know it's not that simple? Even if the OP were to decide to cut the MIL out of her life, she can't make that decision for her husband and, as it's his mother then ultimately the OP is still tied to her unless she chooses to leave her husband or he also decided to cut her out. Can you suggest an easy way around that?

Taking it further, once there is a child involved then even if OP were to split from her husband, her child might and presumably would still see the former MIL at times because the OP cannot control what said child does when she is with her father. So again, how does she just cut the woman out?

The OP can't cut her MiL out of other people's lives, but she can cut her out of her life. Nothing stopping her DH doing the visits etc with their DC if needed. Hopefully it won't get to that point though, and her MiL will realise that it's better to take her lead from the new parents rather than imposing her wishes on them.