Wwyd Mil distraught by my behaviour

[Ginnytonic82]

Sorry this is very long, but I'm in a bit of a difficult situation and could really use some objective advice to help me move forward.

Mil and I have always got on ok, not best buddies and she's said/done somethings I don't agree with. However, she is my DH's mum and I respect that. I am very close to my mum, Dh isn't as close to mil but all families have their own dynamic.

When we had our first Dc 4 months ago, both my mum and mil were over the moon as it is their first gc. I suffer from pnd and both my mum and mil offered great support and helped so much with dc. We tried to make sure my mum and mil saw dc equally (mil is very concerned that she is equal to my mum in dc's eyes). My mum is retired and mil still works, so we made sure that every weekend she saw dc.

Three weeks ago my sister very kindly treated me to a spa day. It was on a Saturday and meant I'd be gone between 10am and 4pm. Dh was happy to look after dc, bit we have a very bouncy labrador that would need a walk during that time. I suggested we ask mil to come over and look after dc while Dh walked the dog, as she would usually see dc at weekend anyway. She was really happy we had asked her.

On the Saturday she turned up at our house at 11am. Dh took the dog out at 12 and said he'd be about 2 hours. When he came back mil and dc had gone. He text and rang but she didn't answer for over an hour, when she sent him a message saying she had dc and would be back soon.

When I arrived home at 4, she still hadn't arrived. Dh had tried to contact her again, and had she had replied saying she had gone to a nearby town with dc shopping and would be half an hour. Two hours later she still hadn't arrived. I told Dh she was taking the piss and I was getting annoyed as she had taken him without our consent. Dh said that he could see where I was coming from, but felt mil had just got over excited and carried away and that as long as dc was safe we should just enjoy the extra time together. I explained that I missed dc and as it was 6pm I really felt he should be home as we start his bedtime routine at 6.30.

By 6.45 she still hadn't brought dc back, so I text this, "Hi Mil, thanks for taking care of baby tonic today. I was just wondering if you were on your way with him as I have missed him so much. Hope he's been good for you x" I didn't tell my husband I sent the text as it didn't seem important. Finally mil brought dc back at 7. All was pleasant and I thanked her.

The next day she saw my Dh whilst he was walking the dog, stopped him in the street and told him I had really upset her yesterday by texting her. She showed him the message and said I would never have sent that to my mum. Dh came home and spoke to me about it and I'm afraid I got my back up and was annoyed as I had done my best to be polite, and would have text anyone - even Dh if I felt dc should have been at home. I said if she was upset I would call her and explain as we are both adults. Mil would not answer the phone to me.

Now mil will not speak to me at all. She has not seen dc, or even called or text Dh to see how he is for 3 weeks. She says she is distraught by my selfish behaviour. I don't feel I have been selfish. I know I went to the spa but that was my first day out since having dc. Was I selfish to go? I am quite stubborn and really feel she needs to grow up, but should I make the first move? Dh thinks I should ask her to take care of dc at weekend but I really don't want too as I've lost some trust in her.

Please help me move forward with this and do be honest if you feel I'm being selfish or have acted unfairly. Thank you for reading this enormous post.

Embrace the thorn is for reasonable people, and even then if the relationship is harmful, and doing you no good, drop it fast.

Your mil is not reasonable.

You and your DH probably need to talk with someone about your dynamic, and also how you express yourself and how you are entitled to feel the way you do.

Limit mil for the moment - she's on the no fly list with me!
Just tell her like a broken record " no, that doesn't suit us" when she's demanding her self called "rights" of access.

Good luck with it all, and hope you feel better soon.

I don't know if I'd be entirely comfortable with someone who treated her own child so badly to have unsupervised contact with my DC. At the very least I would not trust her judgement. With the fact that she took your 4mo baby and effectively disappeared for the day, practically incommunicado, I would have no qualms about reducing contact for a while.

I think she'll only get worse, tbh. Please protect yourself. Your DH is going to struggle with his feelings regarding her, he's already normalising her behaviour and putting you in the 'bad guy' role. It will take a long time before he sees her for what she is, if he ever does.

I think she was completely unreasonable to take your ds away for so long.

What if he was ebf? You would have been tearing your boobs off after all that time without feeding.

I think you have some work to do on your dh, so that he sees his 'd'm's behaviour for the madness it is.

Out of interest, have you mentioned it to your df? Would your dh discuss it in general terms with him - obviously not as therapy, just a bit of gentle advice on how to handle it.

The only way I would have been able to send a text that was as calm would have been if I'd emotionally dissociated myself, which isn't a good thing to do.

" In your position I would have phoned the police - that would have been a proportionate response. Why did you under react so much?

What is it with these kind of critical comments when the OP is clearly perfectly reasonable and looking to solve the problem?"

Nauticant - I did not mean to criticise the OP, just to make her think.

When you have your first baby you can sometimes suppress that natural mother tiger urge because you feel "its not what you should be doing". Personally whenever I have done that I have regretted it (and felt guilty to my children). Knowing why you may do so can give you strength.

My money is the MIL turning up in tears that the OP has been so meaaaaan to her and deprived her or 'her baby'.

I would have been livid. She is deffo in the wrong not you. My MIL would NEVER have done that. Different now my DC are 7 and 9 which would still annoy me, but NEVER with a 4 month old, during the 1st day the mother was away from her baby.

Very silly not to keep in contact with you/hubbie. A young baby ffs!

You were probably imagining all sorts of things happend.

I don't suppose she will ever see your point of view.

Even I who have never had a child think it was a very long day for baby.

Mind you, it must have been a very well behaved baby or she would not have stayed out that long, so that is a small crumb of comfort!

OP I'm not "enjoying criticising you" at all. Goodness that's the last thing I would want. I am slightly criticising the OTT reactions by many posters on here who have turned to the Jeremy Kyle approach to conflict resolution which will solve nothing and will drive a wedge between DH and his mother which will eventually cause a far bigger problem.

I'm just trying to understand what was going on, as you are. Yes, perhaps this thread should have come earlier, you should have questioned whether MIL was a safe person to leave your pfb with. However you couldn't foresee this happening and you clearly trusted her, and so did DH. Now she has pushed the boundaries and in order to deal with that you are going to have to go back to deal with the root cause of this - in a thread possibly called 'Can I trust MIL with my pfb?' which would hopefully give you some answers.

I would also say, do trust your instincts, ask her why she got so upset. If DH won't ask her perhaps you will have to get involved. If you understand therapy and its processes then perhaps you will be the best person to resolve this after all.

And everyone is allowed to be upset and say the wrong thing and do the wrong thing. It's how you deal with it afterwards that counts.

I have not read all the responses except the OPs but definitely do not make the first move and don't leave her alone with the baby again ,until you feel happy to do so . She was so far out of line she wouldn't even be able to see the line . Your DH obviously has issues with his family but TBh that's his problem and not for you and your baby to resolve ,he needs to do that for himself . Happy Birthday .

From my outsider's point of view this is very simple.
Someone (happened to be a GM) was looking after a 16 week old baby in its own home while the DF walked the dog.

DF returns. No GM or baby. No note. No response to calls or texts for half an hour.
Massive lack of communication and no return when promised.

To make matters worse this person then takes offence and sulks for weeks.

There's only one person being unreasonable here and only one person who should be apologizing and they should be apologizing profusely and trying to mend fences.

That's all there is to it really.

My PIL did this, albeit only for 4 hours. It drove me potty. In my case I didn't say much, because they lived away and visited so rarely I saved myself the battle.

In your case, I'd leave it until she contacts you. Don't chase, let her come back and then ask her to discuss it. It is not unreasonable for the parents of a small child to want to know where and how the child is, and have the child home as agreed or at least at a reasonable time. Taking him for seven hours was just wrong. Your text was perfectly polite.

If your MIL actually argues with that, then you know she is determined to be difficult and you can set firm conditions on her involvement as appropriate.

I think there is already a huge wedge between OPs husband and his mother and his mother's recent behaviour has caused further upset which now affect the OP.

Its no point in asking MIL why she got upset; she got upset because she is being held to account for her actions. People like this MIL do not like to be challenged and such people as well never apologise nor accept any responsibility for their actions. I doubt very much if MIL will ever apologise because she is at heart unreasonable.

I'm sorry for not having RTFT but it seems to me that she knows she did something wrong and is trying to create a distraction by sulking about OP's text. All the time she's kicking off about OP, no-one's calling her on what she did.

Now I'm a fairly lax mum and always have been, but even I would have been bloody annoyed at mil's audacity.

This is a woman who kicked her own son out at 16, because he didn't get on with his abusive stepfather.
She's not motivated by tenderness is she?

She had no business doing that...and if I were you I'd leave her to boil her head.
She's trying to exert control. If you cave now, imagine how reluctant you'll be to utter a word, the next time she takes it upon herself to do something you're not on board with? When even a polite request results in weeks of sulking and no-speakies, you know you are not dealing with a compassionate person. This is how she means to conduct herself to get her way and diminish you in the process.

Nip it in the bud now. Remain pleasant but unapologetic. You have nothing to apologise for, so being in the right should make this easy. No need to be arsey about it, but yeah...stick to your guns. She overstepped an obvious boundary in doing what she did, so it's her fuck up to fix.
In refuting contact with her grandson for the duration of her protest, she has shown true her real intentions.
This isn't for the love of him, but her bid for Top Dog.

So yeah...fuck that.

You are giving her preferential treatment to your own DM. I can remember back 25 years when my dad went off into town with my baby daughter and I couldn't find him. I can remember the rising panic even though I absolutely knew nothing would really be wrong. I was really cross with him and he was really upset. She put you through that for several hours and it is cruel and unreasonable to both you and your baby.

You need to stamp on this behaviour now. She is totally and completely unreasonable and has now shown herself as unreliable with your baby.

You sound such a nice person but she has taken advantage of this.

Happy Birthday! I think you have been entirely reasonable and your text was fine (much nicer than I would have sent!). Your MIL however is behaving like an entitled spoiled child. If she can't see what she has done wrong and will not apologise then I wouldn't be allowing her anywhere near my child - esp not unsupervised.

I remember a few years ago when my parents took DS1 out for "an hour" when he was 8 weeks old and EBF so I could have a nap. They returned him 4 hours later after not answering my calls for over 2 hours. OK, so the car broke down, but they could have let me know! They honestly thought they were being helpful by taking him out for as long as possible so I could rest, but I was beside myself with worry and very upset. The difference is that they were very apologetic. We now set reasonable expectations e.g. they tell us where they plan to go, when they will be back & let us know if plans change. It's not rocket science!

I have to agree with everyone who says you weren't being unreasonable - in fact, very lovely and calm.

My MIL used to have a very nasty habit of sulking if she didn't get her own way. Our relationship only improved when we decided that once she started sulking, we weren't prepared to compromise - because she didn't see it as us being reasonable, but as her winning. It had got to the stage where she felt she had the right to make all our decisions for us, because if we didn't do what she said immediately, we'd give in when she screamed/sulked/called family to have a go at us. She doesn't do it any more, because she knows it doesn't get her anywhere. The process of sticking to our guns was painful, especially for DH, but well worth it in the end. I think we would have gone NC by now if we hadn't.

If after abusing you for a perfectly reasonable text and then ignoring you for 3 weeks, she's rewarded by extra time with her grandchild that's setting you up for future poor behaviour. I think saying she broke your trust & that she has to rebuild it before she has alone time with DC is totally reasonable. As far as I know, your mum hasn't taken DC without your permission & I'm sure you'd be just as upset if she did, so you are treating them equally.

My mil has reacted extremely badly to having her behavior challenged in the past. Now I just limit her access as much as I can.

Your MIL isn't a reasonable person. Any reasonable person would not have done what she did and at the very least would have stated a time and got home for that time. Therefore you will struggle to reason with her.

What would you do if a non relative/ paid babysitter did such a thing? I highly doubt you would have been so restrained and you most definitely would not offer them more time with your baby.

Your husband bears the scars of not being his M priority. You and your DH must put your DC's needs first. He is not a time share to be handed around equally. Your MIL doesn't respect normal boundaries and you need to establish those boundaries firmly.

Nothing new to add op, but well done on being amazingly calm, and happy birthday!

that is word for word the text. I have shown it to Dh, my mum, my sister in law, my friends all say it's innocuous Add me and a fair few MNers too. She was too jolly casual by half. There is no way I'd be looking to apologise or make amends for MIL's thoughtlessness. The support she offered when you had PND doesn't give her licence to waltz off with DS for as long as she pleasrs the first time you get a break.

Happy birthday OP.

Have only skimmed... but please don't tell me there's anyone who thinks you are being unreasonable. At least no-one who's had a child.

My mum who I am very very close to took DS out for longer than she said when he was little and I was beyond anxious and upset. It's fairly normal isn;t it when you're children are little and dependent on you.

Certainly not the way to improve her relationship with you!

I don't entirely get why you're worried about her reaction though? Why are you and your DH worried about her

happy birthday

Your title says your mil is distraught with your behaviour?! Your behaviour was restrained, polite and nothing as mine would have been! I would have been so angry, gone ballistic, and probably informed the police. And given her a huge piece of my mind.

I am a grandmother of 3 and would not have dreamt of taking any of them away from their mother or father without consent for such a long period of time at such a young age. That's just crazy. Neither do I 'compete' with the other grandparents for 'equality'. We share the GC's and all of us love them deeply and see them when we can.

Her behaviour is selfish, controlling, sulking and childish but verging on the insane. She is a toxic parent, I feel for your dh. Do not let her become a toxic grandparent.

She is unreasonable, cruel, thoughtless, unintelligent and I would not let her take your baby out again. She needs supervision if she has not the intelligence or the humility to know what she did was utterly wrong. She should be on her knees apologising not turning people against you and causing any rifts between you and your dh.

Let her stew. But I wish you a happy birthday today, and to be left in peace to enjoy it.

I apologise to those who feel I under reacted. By nature I am a controlled and measured person, but please do not mistaken that for not caring. Mil did tell Dh where she and Ds were, she then proceeded to ignore calls, only sending occasional texts saying "we'll be half an hour" or "not too far from home now". As infuriating as it is, if I lose my temper it feeds her behaviour. nicename is probably giving a very accurate prediction of her behaviour! Attila I think you have a very good understanding of the situation, and many thanks for your advice. tb my df has passed away, apologies for not mentioning that. mummytime I assure you all I have done since I first discovered mil had left our house with Ds is think. I not a provocative person. It's totally counter to all u know, but again it does not mean I don't care or need to be provoked into considering my reaction. I don't mean provoked on the aggressive sense, sorry, perhaps prompted is a better term.