Mum is ‘so looking forward to being a granny’ - but I need to seriously manage her expectations

[howtomum123]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been having counselling about my childhood from 2014, but pretty solidly from 2018 to the present (with the same therapist since then). From this, I’ve been unpicking that my mum was/is emotionally immature, insecure, self-centred, expects us all to put her needs, wants and emotions first, even when we were tiny children.

She lives about an hour away with my dad, and I live with DH, 10 minutes from his parents.

I’m 31 now and pregnant with DC1 and due any day now. She has made awful comments to me over the years, including around a MMC I had at the end of last year (repeated incessant phone calls when I’d said I wasn’t ready to talk; wanting to know about the scans prior to surgical management and saying ‘so it had died then’).

Back when I went to uni, it was that my then-boyfriend would ‘meet someone else and forget all about me’; conversely, she’d phone me every single day at the exact same time demanding to know who I was with and what I was doing, and she wanted a copy of my timetable and to put a tracking app on my ipad

She seems to genuinely expect access to my personal/medical information, e.g. when my midwife appointments are, what jabs I’ve had, and when I don’t want to share information with her, or if she happens to find something minor out from a family member, she absolutely hits the roof. The problem is that when we were growing up and we wanted to have these conversations with her about our health and choices, she would react furiously to us talking about contraception, and just neglected to tell us anything about periods or puberty at all.

She has lied about me to family members, telling them that we hadn’t told them when our scan would be (even though DH had), and also told me that she would come and ‘hijack’ my baby from nursery, which I actually spoke to the police about, on the advice of my midwife.

My problem is managing her expectations as I get closer to having my baby. Everything in my brain and body is screaming at me that I do not want her near us. There is a note on my hospital records saying that she is not to be allowed in or given any information about us.

She seems to think she was a wonderful mum (and that I’m an abnormal daughter/our bad relationship is my fault), and my dad has said that she is ‘so looking forward to being a granny’. He constantly constantly throws us under the bus - we’re ‘too sensitive’, she ‘doesn’t do emotions’, it’s just how she is etc etc, for the last 30-ish years. Since having counselling, I’ve given up hope that he’ll ever stand up for us against her volatile and unstable behaviour.

I can’t express how much I do not want her ‘being a granny’. How dare she think that she can lash out at us with her anger and silent treatment (days of it) when we were so small, neglect us or even abuse us emotionally and psychologically, lie about me to others, behave in such an intrusive and enmeshed way, and yet still expect a lovely cuddly ‘grandma’ relationship?

She’s hugely insecure about my relationship with MIL (who’s genuinely supportive and wants to support both DH and me as well as our new baby, whereas my mum seems to see the baby as a trophy or a toy and has no genuine interest in my wellbeing). She hates that MIL is only 10 minutes away, and has spread the idea within the family that I’m under MIL’s thumb and she is controlling me - actually, I decided to move here to be with DH and to put some healthy distance between me and my own parents. She doesn’t seem able to understand that I can and do make my own decisions - I’m an adult and have been for some time.

There’s so much more I could post (and have done in the past). This is already so long, I’m really sorry.

TLDR - how do I manage my mum’s expectations of what her involvement will be with my baby when she did such a poor job of raising us as a mother?

Thank you if you’ve got this far

Wow! Go no contact or low contact. You’re a grown up now and you have all the power to have her in your life as little as you want

1st post nails it...

Rock solid boundaries.

Understanding FOG helps but distance helps more.

I think your brain is screaming at you that its time to go lower contact. You have every right to do that. She's not an emotionally healthy person to be around. Not is your father, who's a classic enabler.

It doesn't have to be irreversible, if she shows signs that she's learning to respect boundaries and behave appropriately. But for now you need the headspace.

Thank you all so much. I know that I don’t have to tolerate this, and I also know that I am absolutely not willing to inflict her behaviour on my baby - I absolutely will not have his childhood irreparably damaged by her instability and unhealthy behaviour like mine was.

I think I have the strength to tell her this (especially post-birth when those protective instincts kick in even more?), but it will be messy. My dad genuinely expects me to put up with it - ‘leave the past in the past’, ‘it’s time to build bridges’ - but it’s always me who has to do the leaving or the building - they have never ever acknowledged or apologised for any of it.

I’m so angry and fed up. I’ve muted her on my phone but if I check my messages and see a message from her (‘just say and we can be there within the hour’ - that is the LAST thing I want, but she’s seemingly completely delusional about this?), it feels so intrusive and I feel completely destabilised.

She doesn’t deserve anything to do with you and your baby. Believe me; when you give birth to that tiny, precious human, you’ll struggle to accept your childhood and her treatment of you even more. You’ll wonder how she could be so cruel, nasty and dismissive to someone so small and vulnerable.

Go low or no contact with her. You owe her nothing! 🌷

Cross posted with you, op! You’re right re: the protective instincts. Good luck with it all!

And don't t worry about what she is saying about you to other family members I'm sure they know what's she's like and and what your childhood was like and either way you do t have to justify yourself to anyone

You can spend a lifetime trying to understand her but it is what it is...

Crazy is as crazy does.

So what if she kicks off & is unhappy?

Your dad is enabling this, don't feel bad for him. He has choice over this.

Presumably therapy has also made you think about the ways you have internalised your mother’s scripts inculcated in childhood, and think about ways of distancing yourself from her, and keeping yourself psychologically safe around her?

I can identify completely the anger that you’re feeling as you approach parenthood. It’s pretty common in people who were themselves badly parented. I certainly had it, and still have it to an extent, as my son hits different stages and I think about how I was neglected at those stages. (My parents have no idea they were appalling parents, because they are themselves from very dysfunctional backgrounds, and genuinely think they did a good job, and are puzzled that four of their five children are childfree by choice.)

I would reframe it. It’s not your job to manage your mother’s expectations. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what she thinks, or wants. Your concern is your own MH. Your baby is entirely safe from her. You don’t need to play along with anything. What kind of contact do you currently have with your parents? What level of contact, if any, would you be ok with after your baby is born, and what exactly is worrying you most?

And yes, I’d be wary of focusing too much on her and her psychology, or wishing she or your father would change the habits of a lifetime.

@howtomum123 after so many years of counselling why haven’t you decided you need to go no contact with your parents. Both of them. Your dad is as bad for enabling her and not protecting his children.

How do your siblings cope with your parents? I’d guess that other family members can see your mother is toxic and know that they need to walk on eggshells around her so I wouldn’t care what others are told by her.

Please just go no contact. It doesn’t sound like your mother is a low contact person and you cannot allow her level of crazy in your life especially once baby is born. Why should you have to continue managing her behaviour? Yes it will be hard and she’ll blow up - but eventually it will be over. Better than having her constantly blow up at you over perceived wrongs and forever cross your boundaries and upset you on phone calls and texts. Start now.

You've had counselling about your DM since 2014 and you still haven't gone NC/VLC?

You don't need to tell her anything. You don't need to tell her stuff about your pregnancy and you don't need to tell her she isn't going to be living out her granny fantasy.

You just fade her out, speak on the phone once a week or once a fortnight and grey rock.

What a horrible position to be in so close to having your child. You mother sounds just like my MIL who DH cut us off from shortly after our first child was born. Going NC has been the best decision we could have made to protect our child, but he is still human and regrets that his mother is too selfish, and toxic, to have a relationship with.

Listen to your instincts, they sound like they are screaming NO to having your mother around. And for very good reason given her history and her treatment towards you.

I think other posters would have better advice about how to respond than I do, but just to say that the time after birth is not easy to juggle with hormones all over the place, new routine, responsibilities and lack of sleep, so waiting until post partum to but boundaries in place may be a mistake. You need as much safety and headspace as possible to recover and focus on your baby. Being ground down in this time could also lead to your mother transgressing your boundaries more easily.

Is the conversation something your DP could deal with for you? I would suggest you envelope yourself in your DH's family's love and care, blocking all other forms of communication with your toxic relatives.

This time is precious, you have been through enough, prioritise yourself and your child and let your DH protect you.

Don't plan your first few weeks with your baby around what she's likely to be like.

Start with what you want it to look like. What kind of mother are you going to be? You can't predict the ways in which she might mess things up but you can decide what you want, what is non negotiable, and what you can't have (eg a not crazy maternal grandmother for your baby, sorry).

Make it all about YOU and your family, not her. Focus on that.

This could have been a post about my mother. I’m about 10 years ahead of you. Fortunately mine lives abroad so has had minimal contact in my DCs lives but I think there’s a couple of things. One is be very vague about the due date. Two is if you’re willing to have her visit in hospital make sure she comes with someone else. I insisted she could only come with my brother but she still turned up half an hour early and made a ton of insensitive and snide comments including about my DS’s (perfectly normal) name. When the nurse told me she’d turned up I said she couldn’t come in until my brother got there (I was very fortunate to be in a private room so she wasn’t able to just walk onto the ward).

The hardest thing has been to protect DC from knowing how bad our relationship is and also protecting them from her insane comments. She has never been alone with them and I wouldn’t trust her to be. When they were very small I used to get the nanny to meet her in the park but then she started inveigling info out of the nanny, swapping numbers with her etc and even found out from the nanny I’d had a miscarriage (and despite knowing this when I saw her in person a couple of months later she asked me if I was pregnant because I’d put a lot of weight on in that pregnancy).

I don’t really have any advice except what my therapist told me which is that the situation will constantly be changing. Because you’re family there’ll be times when you’re inevitably thrown back together (funerals, weddings, illnesses, wars) so I have preferred to keep things LC rather than NC. But it’s hard and I struggle with it all the time.

Yes, the counselling in 2014 was through university (I would’ve been 21ish?) and originally about having to go on a study abroad placement I desperately didn’t want to go on, but was part of the degree my parents wanted me to do. It was through that that I started to explore the idea of triangulation and enmeshment etc. Before that, I knew that I was scared of my mum and her behaviour, but I didn’t understand how wrong it was.

I’m disappointed in myself that I’ve not gone LC or NC before. She had an enormous meltdown in 2018 about me moving to DH’s hometown (half an hour from where I went to uni), telling everyone I’d left her without telling her where I was going (when I’d given her my address on a piece of paper), then reeling me back in by being diagnosed with MS, which I later learned she’d had for years and kept a secret, but presumably her diagnosis was more useful in that moment to bring me back into line, so that’s when it got used instead.

Looking back, I wish I had gone NC then (I started long-term therapy on the back of that incident), but I wasn’t ready at the time.

If I try to withdraw quietly, she lashes out and her behaviour escalates - that’s exactly how 2018 started, with me trying to quietly go LC.

My contact with her currently isn’t particularly regular, but we’ve had a family bereavement in the past month which means I’ve seen more of her than I’d have liked in the lead-up to having my baby.

Have you considered writing a letter to her? I doubt she would listen to your feeling if you tried to have a conversation but with a letter she can read it and hopefully digest the contents. You could explain that although she is looking forward to “playing grandma” you don’t feel that her expectations are going to be met due to how you feel about your own childhood and you can write down your boundaries for contact going forward. You can explain that you will want time alone to bond with baby and will not be having her visit until you are recovered and ready ect.
Im sure she will be angry (because you are setting boundaries that she will not understand or want) but having everything in writing will mean she can’t say “she didn’t realise” or “you never said I could do XYZ” ect and hopefully will make a bigger impact.
Good luck with the birth of your baby :)

Go No contact.

Definitely go NC. She's abusive and he's an enabler. They won't change.

I think reframing is key. Despite the narrative that has been fed to you for 31 years, you are not responsible for your parents' feelings or behaviour. The best way to manage your relationship with your parents is to focus really clearly on what you want and what is best for you and baby. Make sure your DH, and maybe your in-laws too if you think they could help, are fully aware and on board with this and then try to tune out the thoughts of what your mother may or may not do, and try to ignore any feelings of guilt or obligation. Could your DH take responsibility for keeping your parents informed and organising any visits, especially in the early days of baby's arrival? This could prove a perfect opportunity for resetting the dynamics and expectations between you and your parents in regards to what behaviour and contact you will and won't stand for.

I say this as someone who had similar feelings when I had my DCs, who is 6 years into counselling and unpicking that family script, and nearly 4 years into VLC/ NC (personally I think trying to label your relationship as one or the other is unhelpful- just take it a day at a time). I'm still fighting the thought that I'm somehow being selfish by putting myself first, but even if you're just protecting your baby from seeing you stressed out and anxious, it's worth it.

I think all the therapy is at risk of making a problem more convoluted than it is. It's very helpful to help get through it but if you look at the problem written on paper then the answer is to not invite her round. To stop contacting her. If she starts turning up at your door or harassing you then you call the police. As hard as it is forget she is your mother during the actual problem solving. Then you can discuss along side this with your therapist for the longer turn help.

Don't write a letter. She won't understand what you mean and will share bits out of context to make you look bad.

Agreed. It will just become "my daughter wrote me a horrible letter"

That’s so true - I often end up thinking that there’s no way I’d have tolerated years of this from anyone else, but because it’s my mum and I’ve been ‘trained’, basically, to put her first in everything, I’m overcomplicating things. The long and the short of it is that she’s not a stable or healthy person, or pleasant to be around.

Good advice.

Do whatever works for you, OP. I am, for instance, in regular contact with my parents, but I tell them little or nothing about my life. It works for me. They would love a very different kind of daughter, but that’s not in my gift. Your mother ‘lashing out’ is not your problem. You don’t need to accept phone calls or let her in if she shows up at your door, or take calls from your father. It still sounds to me as if you’re giving her a lot of headspace. Are you frightened of her?