I’m finding my relationship with my MIL so difficult - AIBU?

[Milquandry]

Please tell me if I’m the one who’s BU!

My first baby is 5 months old and since just after he was born, I’ve been finding MIL really tricky. We got on really well before he was born, she seemed very supportive and I didn’t have any concerns about how she’d be with me once the baby was here. My relationship with my own mum sadly isn’t great, and I was grateful that DS and I would have one stable grandmother in his life who would support me postpartum.

Quite soon after he was born, it was like I disappeared or turned invisible, which occasionally alternated with being a right nuisance. MIL only wanted to hold DS and once she had hold of him, it was like I didn’t exist, only Daddy and Grandma. We spent our first Christmas day with MIL and DH’s family and several times she took DS (then 6-ish weeks) out of the room away from me. When I asked where she was going, she’d do a tinkly laugh and say ‘I’ll bring him back’ like she was rolling her eyes at me.

There’s been other little niggly stuff like taking DS to the far corner of the room when we tried to show her how to soothe him, not giving him back when he cried, saying ‘ooooh Grandma will protect you’ when it’s time for me to change his nappy, telling him she’s going to send me and DH home and keep DS for herself.

She won’t interact with him when anyone else holds him, and when she holds him, I become invisible. I share photos of DS to DH’s family whatsapp group, and shared one of me carrying DS in his new backpack carrier. Within a minute of me sending the photo, she replied ‘oooooh did he use Daddy’s head like a drum?’ - well no, because if you look at the photo I was carrying him.

She gets coldsores (which nobody noticed before DS arrived) and apparently didn’t know they were contagious and doesn’t notice she gets them. DH spoke to her because I was getting so worked up about her not being careful and potentially passing them on to DS. She was very upset and agreed that she wouldn’t hold or touch DS when she had one. This was a few months ago and I thought it was resolved. Our relationship still isn’t great but it felt like the worst had blown over.

Today she turned up at our house with what looked like a newish coldsore (not scabbed over, just a pink spot) by her mouth. DH wanted her to have a cuddle with DS and I thought ‘I need to speak up’, so I did, and asked in a tiny pathetic voice if she was OK at the moment coldsore-wise (because I could see one on her face). I felt like the rudest DIL in the world. She started touching her face all over going ‘oh no I don’t think I have one’, DH says he can’t see it either, and hands DS over!

AIBU not to be able to stand this? I feel like the worst/most difficult DIL when I just want to keep my DS safe from an entirely preventable virus and to occasionally be acknowledged as his mum. Even my own mum will point out ‘mummy’ when she’s holding DS and will bring him straight over when he cries for me. I don’t understand what’s gone wrong in my relationship with MIL but I feel so lonely and in the wrong. Am I the one at fault here and being difficult?

sorry this is so long and rambling!

To add in case it’s relevant, ILs live about 10 minutes away and are an ‘in each others’ pockets’ kind of family, which I find a bit overwhelming (i.e. turning up on our holidays at the same campsite in the past). Before DS I could tolerate it, but MIL genuinely makes me feel very uneasy now.

Bump

These kinds of posts usually aim for OP wanting to be told you are not being unreasonable as presumably if you thought you were you’d correct any behaviour you thought was.
Many new Mums can be a pain in the *rse. I know I was. Must’ve got on my own Mum’s nerves.
Of course you can set boundaries and ask people to do what you think is in best interest of your child but why the tiny voice and need to be acknowledged as Mummy when his Grandmother has him? Presumably you have him most of the time?
Loving wee people isn’t a competition. +It’s a marathon not a sprint raising kids. Letting him bond with his Grandmother absolutely in his best interests and you’ll maybe be grateful in years to come as you’ll have a sitter. Daft comments or sweating the small stuff I’d ignore. Others may have different view. New Mums can be hyper vigilant. +MN does seem to be a haven at times for mountain/molehill and overanalysing trivia.
Then again many of us older Mum’s maybe at the other end of ‘but did anyone die’ spectrum 🤪!

Many new Mums can be a pain in the rse. I know I was. Must’ve got on my own Mum’s nerves.*

And from the evidence of threads on MN there are many grandmothers who think that once the mother has produced the baby she should be reduced to little more than a supporting role while what grandma says goes and what grandma wants she gets. Holding the baby is one thing, physically taking him away from the OP (his mother) and into another room is a woman who only wants to assert her own dominance.

OP sadly it seems you have a DH problem as well as an MIL one, the way he was insisting there was no reason why his mother couldn't hold the baby. Does he often side with his mother at your expense?

Any new mum would be irked by this. Your baby is your moon, earth and sun.

You MIL is displaced as the paternal grandparent as maternal grandparents are naturally closer, as they are closer to the mother.

She is clearly in love with the baby and you are in the way of the perfect triangle of her, her son and her grandchild. You are an interloper of sorts.

it will all wear off but keep that woman’s lips away from your baby. The cold sore fear is completely reasonable. It lasts forever!

Not ok at all. She is overreaching and boundary crossing. Taking a six week old to another room and not handing him back when crying - absolutely not! Would’ve raised hell.

Also cold sore issue - unacceptable!

you need to talk to dh and enforce boundaries

My sister is the paternal grandmother. Her daughter in law said to me a few days ago “how lucky am I that my mother in law turned out to be my best mate”

I think you're being unreasonable and you sound quite difficult (sorry!).

Thank you for all the replies. It’s really been getting me down and DH wants me to seek support for PND.

Do you think you have PND?
The issues you have with your MIL are not indications of PND, so be careful that your DH isn’t gaslighting you into believing that. Your MIL is the problem, not you. Overbearing MILs are awful.

I remember my baby being 6 months old, she cried when my MIL grabbed her from her arms and she was calling ‘mumma’ and reaching her arms back out to me and my MIL roughly threw her back to me and got in a massive sulk about it and left our house!
She also would refuse to acknowledge me as mum and would use my first name to my child. So would say things like “show Rachel (not my real name ) your teddy’.
Some MILs are pains and it can get you down.

I don’t know, because I don’t find the baby difficult at all, he’s amazing.

I find it difficult when we go to my ILs house and everyone is there and he’s been whipped out of his car seat and is being passed around before I’ve even got my coat off, or MIL is holding him flat to her in a feeding position and letting him put his hands into and around her mouth, or he’s crying and she passes him to SIL instead of me.

There’s a lot of pressure from both sides of the family to have equal time with DS, and each side thinks the other gets more than them. DH has a big family so nobody ever gets ‘enough’ DS time when we’re all together because he needs to be passed around each family member.

We invited MIL and FIL to ours for dinner the other weekend specifically so they could have more time with DS, and they turned up separately (they don’t speak, or MIL doesn’t speak to FIL at least), with MIL arriving over an hour after the time we’d invited them for and also having invited my BIL and SIL to ours as well, so it became just as big a family thing as usual.

It’s not the baby I find difficult at all, but navigating all of the other relationships in my life and what is OK/too much, and how much is my issue and me being unreasonable, and how much is others’ behaviour, if that makes sense?

It makes perfect sense because your extended family are overbearing by most peoples standards.

If you are fine with the baby when you aren’t with your extended family then it is not PND, you are just fed up with the extended family like a lot of people would be in your shoes. You don’t need medication to help with that, you need to put in boundaries and get them to back off!

It sounds like you might have a battle on your hands though because your DH seems to back his mother’s actions, which isn’t on. You and his baby should be his priority now, not the rest of his family.

I would limit the amount of time you spend with them. Now the weather is warming up I would arrange day trips for as much of your free time as you can, even if it’s a pre-planned walk and picnic in the park. That way you can legitimately have the “we would love to visit, but we already have plans” excuse if you are worried your DH will pander to his mother.

They turned up on your holidays in the past? That fact alone tells me YANBU

That said, your biggest problem appears to be a spineless mummies boy of a husband. This would easily be resolved if he would advocate for you and tell his family to back off! It sounds absolutely suffocating

Yes this would fill me with rage. What I really can’t stand is the almost mocking behaviour of ‘don’t worry I’ll bring him back!’ It’s so belittling and it’s like they know it’s not something you’re comfortable with and then deliberately doing it anyway. This would make me not want to hand him over at all!

Thank you for your replies. I think it’s become apparent that our relationship was really very superficial/surface level before the baby, and now he’s here it feels quite false/forced/fake, all of her sing song voices and tinkly laughs. I thought she’d be a great support to me as she’s raised her children and knows/knew what it was like, but she just seems to want cuddles to herself/her family and hasn’t been interested in actually helping at all. If I try to share something even as mundane like DS not sleeping, just a tinkly laugh, for instance.

I find her so uncomfortable to be around and so overbearing. She’ll stare at me across the room if I’m holding DS, but the second she gets hold of him, she doesn’t so much as make eye contact with me. DH was showing everyone a cute picture he took of me with DS on a day out and MIL totally ignored the photo being handed round in front of her, even though she’d joined in the conversation up until then.

If FIL is holding the baby, MIL won’t interact with either of them, she’ll sit in silence on the other side of the room. When someone else in DH’s family is holding him, she sits all kind of moping and downcast until she gets ‘her turn’ and then it’s all ooooh little cherub and over the top cutesy voices. It drives me up the wall and is so grating.

This is exactly it. She did it multiple times and seemed 100% aware that it made me uncomfortable because he was so small.

Your mother in law is toxic and enabled by her wet lettuce of a son that she has emasculated. He needs therapy re his mother and you do not need treatment for PND by the sounds of it. People from such dysfunctional families end up playing roles and what are your Hs roles here?. He’s been conditioned by her over many years and thus regards her behaviour as normal when it is clearly not. He’s inertia too along with Fog (fear obligation and guilt) are hurting him as much as you. His mother regards you as a brood mare who has now served her purpose ie providing her with a grandchild who she wants to parent. Given the crap job she’s done with your now H you and baby need to stay well away from his mother and all
that side of the family.

I would also consider moving house as you need to put physical distance in too as well as mental. You need to apply form and consistent boundaries and do not worry about appearing to be rude, these people have really thick skin and are not bothered about mistreating you.

Read Toxic in-laws by Susan Forward to further understand the power and control
dynamics within your hs family.

And it’s not you, it’s his mother. All that side of the family are dysfunctional. Stay away from them going forward. There were and are many red flags re that lot.

You would not tolerate this from a friend so do not tolerate it from his mother. Stand firm and no longer be a pushover to your h or his meddlesome toxic mother.

Does your h have siblings?. If so how are they treated?.

It IS possible you have PND but your MIL sounds like a pain as well.
How much do you trust your H to have your back because if you don't then be very careful as a PND diagnosis would work very well for your MIL
I am not saying don't talk to your GP or MW about it but don't let your perfectly understandable feelings be written off as PND when they are valid.
Spend less time with them and don't feel obligated to be enmeshed with them if you don't want to

Oof, no. Find your anger and assertiveness. Cards on the table with DH, he MUST back you up.

you need to sit your dh down and say it’s not pnd, it’s an overbearing mother in law and a vulnerable new mum who isn’t getting support from her partner. You’re the partner. That baby is my universe. I need some standards to agree where you will support me. But first you need to go read up about cold sores and babies and come back and tell me what you think they do, since you’re so cool with it I presume you know. If you don’t have time to do that tonight baby and I are going to stay with my mum until you’ve found the time. At my mums I will have amazing mental health because I’m being supported. I’m done with this equal time until you’re on board with the fact I’m this baby’s mum, your mum is the grandma.

some of your rules need to be: if baby cries, pass baby back to you or dh, not some other family member.
step in when your mum pretends I don’t exist or I and baby wont be going to their place. I can phone and explain that she’d clearly prefer me not to be there, since she pretends I don’t exist once she’s taken my baby off me, but baby is a package with me at this age and we are both staying home.

Other rules are- I need to be able to hold my baby sometimes when your family are around, or we limit all family contact to 1.5 hours as that’s the max I think I can cope with. If they are at ours you need to either take baby and give them back to me, or we bundle your family out the door.

Honestly OP, I think finding your MIL annoying when you've had a baby is a given.
Mine was and still is weirdly possessive of my DS and he's 8. She used to call him my DHs name or refer to herself as mama because she said he felt like hers. I'm a people pleaser but finally built up the courage to say "MIL, remember, this (gestures to DH) is your baby, that one there is mine" tinkly laugh.
I do like her and know she comes from a good place and a place of love, but it can be incredibly annoying. On the flip side, now DS is older, he has a great relationship with her, but also says no to her or defers to me (for example she offered him a hard, round lolly which I've not allowed him to have, he came straight over to me to ask if it was okay).

Babies always change the dynamic in a family. Especially first babies. It'll take a bit for it to settle. When your baby is a bit older, are you going to ask her for childcare? We did and I actually found it helped settle MIL as she had "her" time with DS when we all saw her, she was back to being interested in us. Only you will know if that's likely to happen though

You've had good advice. It's definitely a MIL/DH problem - time to push back and do what's right for you and your baby, and not the extended family.