Please help me deal with my weight-obsessed mother before I do something dreadful to her!

[sazzybee]

Sorry - this is a bit of a long rant and not sure if this is the right forum but it seems to be.

My DS is 6 months old. Until last week, he was exclusively breastfed. He went from being just under average at birth (6lbs 13oz - 25th centile) to the 75th centile at 14 weeks. I haven't had him weighed since although he seems to be gaining weight steadily. He is a very cuddly boy (see pics on my profile) and my mum has constantly commented on his weight, whether I'm feeding him too much etc. I've told her repeatedly that breastfed babies can't overeat but it seems to make no difference whatsoever - she's still worried he's 'too fat'.

Now I've started weaning him. He is very keen on his food and I'm absolutely delighted. He's been trying new flavours, doesn't reject much (well okay sometimes he pulls a funny face at broccoli ) and still is feeding well and regularly from the boob.

Today he downed a bottle of ebm really enthusiastically which I'm thrilled about as I'm going back to work in a month and obviously he'll have to have a bottle when he's not with me. I (stupidly) mentioned this to my mother and she again made a comment - something along the lines of 'ooh do you think you should be a bit careful? He's very chubby already'. Aargh.

This is not a new thing with her viz weight in general but has got much worse since I got pg. When I was 30 weeks and had gained 1.5 stone she told me that she thought I shouldn't eat any danish pastries as I'd got really fat. I wrote her a really long email after the danish pastry comment explaining how much she'd upset me, that my weight gain was entirely normal etc but we never really discussed it as I had high blood pressure and didn't want to exacerbate it. I have now lost most of my pregnancy weight but there's been no acknowledgement of that, despite the fact that I keep showing her I can get into my pre-pregnancy jeans in a pathetic sort of way.

I'm really concerned that she doesn't pass any of her weird issues with weight onto him. She's got 3 daughters, one's anorexic, one's obese and I'm a bit overweight (probably by about a stone - size 14) so she's already buggered us up and I'll be damned if she's going to screw up my beautiful boy too. Obviously he's a bit young now but he will spend a lot of time with her in future as I'm a single mum and will need her too look after him every now and then.

Anyway, on Tuesday we are going away to the Lake District for a week and I'm really not sure how I'm going to deal with this. I can't bear the idea that she's going to be watching everything DS eats and do calorie counting behind his back.

Any suggestions on how I should handle this, bar pushing her into a tarn?

My MIL is just like this. When I was pregnant, whenever we saw her the first thing she said to me (and I really mean the first thing, before "hello" or "how are you") was "how much weight have you put on?". I am a size 10 and put on a stone when pg (although ds born at 34 weeks), so was hardly ballooning! I just used to tell her I didn't know because I hadn't weighed myself. She doesn't stop talking about her weight, other people's weight, how everyone else she knows has put on weight, etc etc and oftens comments on the calorie or fat content of ds's food. She was so bad the last time that I just laughed at her and pointed out babies need calories and fat as they are growing, which shut her up momentarily. I think you have two choices - have a serious conversation with her about how much it is upsetting you, or treat everything she says with the ridicule it deserves. If that doesn't work, maybe try the pushing thing!

Thank you for all your thoughts and sharing your stories. It does help to know that other people think he looks fine. Sadly I found myself thinking today 'another feed? surely you can't be hungry again already?' which really made me realise how pernicious this type of thinking this is.

I'm sure you're right rosylily and that my mum won't have that much influence. But like liegeandlief, my nan (rather than my MIL) always comments about weight before anything else and it has made me feel miserable for years and I'm damned if my mother is going to do the same to my DS.

The idea of going to see the HV and get 'official' confirmation is good. I'll go and get him weighed next week when we get back and tell her that I'm doing it. I am also going to tell her that I am concerned about her perspective and quote from every baby book I have in my house, all of which say 'do not try to restrict a baby of under a year's food intake as it's dangerous'. I'm also going challenge her every time she raises the issue and, if she continues to do it, threaten to keep him away from her. I hate to do anything so drastic but equally I am very uncomfortable that she will ever mention his weight to him.

I don't think I'm going to mention the food issues of her own children though as I think that will be implicit and I suspect she's aware but can't help herself iyswim.

This whole subject makes me so sad.