Injustice Unveiled: Tales of the Most Challenging Mother-In-Laws

Not a real horror story, but when we called my wife's parents to tell them we were engaged, her mom made a monotone sound like "aaaaeeaaaah aaaaeeaaahh aaaaeaaahh aaaaaeehhh" - sounded like a goat. 

We had been together for 9 years and they had pushed us to get married for years - this was no surprise to anyone.   

But despite my wife's attempts to convince me otherwise, I was aware of some long-standing reservations she had about me and her daughter.

But you'll be glad to know that, having not seen her in person between then and the wedding, when she arrived in town for the wedding, I was glad to greet her by saying, "aaaaeeaaaah aaaaeeaaahh aaaaeaaahh!"

HungryLikeTheWolf99

I'm adopted.

She has always thrown that in my face.

 I've always heard her say things like "Since nobody knows where you came from" to "You have no heritage" to "Aren't you afraid of what could be wrong with your baby?" 

Yes, I have a real winner of a monster in law.

Nedrow

I have quite a few experiences, here are some of them.

When in the hospital with our LO, we were FaceTiming. He spit up and I dropped the phone because my husband wasn’t good with body fluids at that time and she said “I love seeing my son's leg”

She demanded I send her pictures every day and did not take his allergic reaction seriously. This pissed me off. I asked her to stop wearing perfume and she continued to wear scented lotion. And told relatives he suffered from neonatal acne. 

Once she left, the “acne” cleared up

She would tell me to button his onesie while he was screaming and I rushed to feed him after changing his diaper. Also, called the baby a “little crap” for doing what babies do, crying because he need something. This also really pissed me off and I asked her not to do that.

She prioritized dressing him up and holding him over making sure he was fed and his diaper was changed. And repeatedly joked about putting him in her luggage and taking him home  

She repeatedly talked about us having another child even though my husband told her the joke made me feel uncomfortable. She also repeatedly criticized the neighborhood we live in calling it “ghetto” rather than congratulating us for buying a house (we live in south Philly?)

She offered “helpful advice” to shower before everyone wakes up…when?? I feed the baby every two hours

On a side note when FaceTiming with my own mother and talking about who the baby looks like I mentioned that people say he has my face shape and she said “That’s because you’re fat”.

Jessthebearx

My mother-in-law cropped me out of a picture holding my baby to post on social media (which we've previously asked people not to do). 

Not that crazy, except when my husband called to tell her that was inconsiderate to crop me out of a photo with my own daughter. 

She started crying and saying how I am so immature and unreasonable, which devolved into a weeklong campaign of my husband's entire family calling/texting about how childish and unreasonable I am... 

She was angry at me for saying I didn't appreciate being cropped out of a picture with my own kid.

Aggymama

My boyfriend's mom begged us to let her help us name the baby. She kept saying she liked the name Madison and was begging for us to let her have some input. 

Then when my boyfriend firmly said no, she got upset and started insulting the name we had picked. 

We named our daughter Juliet, and she kept saying “Every Julie I’ve ever known has been down on her luck” (ugly), and I told her well her name is Juliet, not Julie. But why would you even say that about your future grandchild?

Then she kept begging us to bring her to their house when she was a newborn (I will not because they smoke inside) because she needed to spend time alone with the baby to be able to bond with her. 

I’m sorry what? Why do you need to be alone to bond?

SaucyAsh

About 2 months before I married my husband, she took me to Sonic drive-in to have some “girl time”. It was my first time eating there. As she munched on her hamburger she decided to talk to me about pleasing her son in the bedroom. 

Almost 20 years later and I STILL can’t eat at Sonic because that conversation grossed me out so much!

For our first Christmas as a married couple, she gave me a red velour negligee. My husband told me I could never wear it. I wouldn’t have worn it regardless since I’m not in a 1970s porn movie.

Early in our marriage, she asked me if I saw an Oprah episode about making your life more exciting. 

I told her her son would agree that I don’t need any tips. She got this horrified look on her face that I would say such a thing!

When my husband’s brother was about to get married she insisted I go have “the talk” with his future wife. She kept trying to schedule a time for the two of us to get together to talk. 

Finally, the fiancé and I went out and agreed to tell her that we had had “the talk” if the mother-in-law asked. I now live over a thousand miles from my mother-in-law. She’s had a boyfriend for a couple of years. 

EVERY time I talk to her she finds a way to explain to me that she’s saving herself for marriage with him. I keep telling her that’s her private business between her and her boyfriend. 

NovaNerdMonica

My in-laws are weirdly obsessed with family resemblance. When I had my anatomy scan my MIL wanted pictures so she could see if my son looked like my husband at that gestational age. Like ma’am, they all look like grainy potatoes at that stage.

The funny thing is, their family resemblance is pretty weak, my husband looks like he could be adopted. Whereas my family all look alike, but I don’t talk about it because I don’t care.

My SIL has been pretty annoying too. She can’t go more than two sentences deep into a conversation about the baby without making it about herself somehow. 

She’s significantly younger, doesn’t have a boyfriend, and isn’t anywhere near a place to be a mother but always has to bring up her theoretical baby and how it’s already being treated unfairly to my actual living baby.

Commercial-Durian-31

My mother and I were at a party the other day and we were talking about my one-month-old, her first grandchild, who is mostly formula-fed. We use the Enfamil gentlease for her, and she is taking down huge quantities for her age at every feeding (up to 7.5 oz sometimes). 

I called the pediatrician a couple of weeks ago to ask if this was normal, or okay. She told me that if the baby isn't spitting up a lot or having any trouble eating that much then it's totally okay to stick with the gentle formula and feed her essentially as much as she wants of it. It could be a growth spurt, could just have a hungry baby, etc.

For some reason, though, my mother is OBSESSED with whether or not we should start her on "normal" formula so she stays full longer and doesn't eat as much. 

No matter how many times I tell her that I'm taking the pediatrician's advice, she tells me to ask the doctor again at our next appointment.

Anyway, so the other day at this party, when talking about my daughter's formula and eating habits, she said "Yeah, we've been thinking about putting her on a more substantial formula because of how much she eats in a sitting"

I just looked at her like...WHAT?! lol, all I could do was reiterate (for the thousandth time) what the pediatrician said and make it clear that her mother (along with her father)  were going to listen to my pediatrician's advice and follow that until she told me something different. 

Like who is this "WE?!" like, just sit down and be a first-time grandma, I'll decide what she eats and how much! 

You-a-buggaboo

My MIL broke her hip two days after my son was born. 

She was appalled that my husband was not going to visit her (she's a six-hour drive from us) in the hospital or help take care of her once she was home. 

She told me she felt "abandoned by him during one of the hardest times of her life." She blamed me for not 'allowing' him to go help her, I had my mom local to help me with the baby, why did I need him? 

Shelyea

Every single time my MIL sees my girls she has to comment something like, "Oh they get their curls from me."they have tiny feet just like grandma!!" And the list goes on. Like sheesh, they're my children. Not hers. 

She also reminds me constantly that when my husband was a newborn she kept him on the other end of their huge house to sleep through the night cause only crazy ppl wake their babies every two hours to feed them!! 

He was the same weight from birth till he was a month old!!! The first thing she told me after having my first was to put her in another room because SIDS happens quietly anyway so next to me or not, it can still happen. 

Like wtf. Not what I wanted or needed to hear as a first-time mom.

Hyphyxhyna

Seems like MIL are on their own planet. Here's my rant:

She had me cook a full Christmas dinner and host when LO was 2 mos old. Never once offered to bring a dish or help clean up.

She refuses to babysit or take their only grandchild to anything without us having to be there

When they come for a "visit" it's an all-day affair and we have to host them. They only live 40 minutes away so they can just come for an hour but refuse to.

My FIL has no boundaries and has tried to give our kid soda, coffee, and food from his fingers. He never asks if it's okay to give our daughter food just assumes so we are constantly on edge with him.

MIL and FIL are obsessed with crash dieting and we've asked her not to mention it around our daughter. They don't listen and are always making comments about food.

Altruistic_Rabbit_21

My MIL sat me down for a long lecture about why I need to stop holding my baby all of the time, and why my mom (who is living with us to help) needs to stop holding her as well. 

I told her it’s normal in our culture to carry your children until they can walk like literally wrap your children onto you and take them everywhere. She told me “Well this is America”.

  Sorry but in my culture we don’t glorify struggle. 

Your family is supposed to help you. Your mom is supposed to do laundry, cook, and take things off your plate for the first year, or sometimes until the child is school-age. 

I told her I’ll do the same for my child if they ask. But she said “I’m just getting lazy” and “living in Lala land”

She was deep in addiction years ago and didn’t raise my husband. She had the audacity to say that while she was using drugs she left her daughter to play with her toys and “she learned how to handle herself and be independent. Look at her now!”

Sari1019

My MIL wants to babysit my daughter, who has a chronic illness that can lead to frequent projectile vomiting... 

"Oh, I don't know how you do it. I couldn't handle that. I couldn't hold her if she vomits." 

Like, what's your plan? Drop her?

And she wonders why I don't ask her to babysit.

MyDogsAreRealCute

My aunt told me if anything happens to me she’s taking the baby and my mom's just gonna have to deal with it. 

I’m like uhhh she has a dad who’s right here? 

Kinda pissed me off because she bashes me for listening to the doctors when I had a 27 weeker like no I’m not taking your advice that’s the opposite of a trained professional when you’ve never had a preemie.

Small_Grocery_4990

I have a belief that these kind of MILs have their own hang-ups with their own parenting with our spouses and are so insecure that we see the final products of that (sometimes) failed/bad parenting, so they just gaslight their In-Laws.

Like when my MIL told me that I was "babying" my 2-year-old son and that he would grow up weak (?), meanwhile my husband threw tantrums over the littlest inconvenience in life.

rchlXo6

These MILs are always the same in terms of boundaries being stomped on and overstepping in terms of how THEY want to care for their grandchild. 

It fascinates me bc my monster MIL is actually on the opposite end of this spectrum. We flew overseas to visit her when LO was 6 months old and the whole time she was a nightmare because she had to compete for attention with our baby…Yeah. 

She screamed at me to (direct quote) “Why don’t you put him down and let him cry and cry and cry and do something useful for a change”. That “useful” thing being “make her a tea” and “tend to her needs”. 

Because apparently, I flew across an ocean with an infant to make her a freaking tea and kiss her ass, not so she could meet and spend time with her grandchild. 

She then told my husband, referring to our child/ her grandchild, that her dog took priority. 

Her dog. Took priority. Over her infant grandchild. Who, again, flew over an ocean for hours to see her. Then she has the nerve to cry on the phone to my husband about how she is so “hurt” that she “lost her grandchild”

Which is something she decided, not us. (Obviously, even if she did want a relationship that is out of the question unless some serious change occurs on her part which I do not see happening) 

She is a scary person. I feel very strongly she’s a covert narcissist, but if anyone wants to weigh in or give me a similar story with your MIL, I’m all ears.

 level 1 BeccaASkywalker

My baby is 13 days old and exclusively nursing and MIL was dropping hints and asking 2 days ago if she could bring him to meet his 6-month-old cousin. She knew I wasn't buying it and then said "Oh right he's too young to leave right now" and decided to bring a 6-month-old here next time. 

She insisted on taking him 3 times without asking me but in front of me and when I didn't respond and my 6 year old questioned her then she changed her story.

She also asked me if I was pumping at all and seemed disappointed when I said no I don't want to.

When I was pregnant she practically begged me several times to get to watch him. I quit my career to be a SAHM because I want to nurse and be with him all the time, I like being a mom. 

I don't want my nursing infant to be taken from my care and honestly, I won't be OK with it for probably over a year.

She works 2 jobs and watches the 6 month old on Fridays and is constantly busy so I'm not sure why she's so desperate to take him. She's allowed over here anytime and we always go over there when invited.

Cyclecycleaddict

My MIL is weird about food. On our most recent visit (she lives across the country), she wouldn't let me help with the cooking, but her idea of portion sizes is tiny and there were no seconds. 

I was nursing our 1-year-old, who came down with a bad cold on day 2 of our visit and who only wanted to nurse and didn't want to eat solid foods. 

So I was the primary food source of a congested 20lb baby and for breakfast, we were offered a single piece of French toast and one sausage each or the equivalent of 1.5 eggs and one piece of regular toast. 

Our 10-year-old daughter would finish her portion and then I would offer her some of mine because there was no way I'd want her to be hangry. 

Lunch would be a sandwich with 2 slices of meat and one slice of cheese (couldn't have more because the single package of each was supposed to last all week), and dinner one night was a single thin-crust frozen pizza for 3 adults, a 10-year-old, and the baby. 

I was hungry all week and lost a couple of pounds.

The one night when we were responsible for food (for a picnic/ concert in the park), my husband and I borrowed the car and picked up two big trays of pinwheel sandwiches, 2 bags of chips, veggies, dip, humus, grapes, pickles, and a big container of cookies. 

My MIL's eyes went wide when we showed up and she said "Wow, it looks like we will have leftovers." We did not. Everyone was hungry after a week on a diet and we ate all but a half bag of chips, some humus, and a few cookies.

ElleAnn42

I don't think that my MIL has an eating disorder, but she's so cheap that she will drive around to three grocery stores to only shop from whatever items are on discount or that she has a coupon for. 

We were at a vacation spot with a kitchen and not her house, so it was neutral ground... which made it even weirder that I wasn't allowed to plan/cook any of the meals besides that one picnic. 

I had even packed recipes and a grocery list because I knew that she is weird about food and the baby (when she will eat solid foods) is on a high-fiber diet. 

My MIL had packed some food from home. The yogurts she had brought had expired two months prior... she ate them while we were there) and the pancake syrup had expired in 2014 (this trip was in 2022). 

We had offered to buy all of the food for the entire trip, and she had said no. We were sharing a car, so it wasn't possible to go rogue and just run out and buy food and I see her so infrequently that I didn't want to offend her.

It was just so weird and awkward. I've long suspected that she's on the autism spectrum and this is just one of her weird quirks.

We're visiting for a wedding later this fall and I plan to stuff my suitcases with jerky and granola bars and other non-perishables and plenty of pouches for the littlest one.

ElleAnn42

Omg the competitiveness between my mom and MIL is so annoying. 

The last thing I want to do as a new, sleep-deprived parent is mediate between two fully grown women. Especially when they ask questions where it’s clearly digging for info to compare notes.

InitiativeImaginary1

We had a friend living with us at the time and if we didn’t text MIL back fast enough she would text our friend to “make sure we were okay”. 

I asked her to stop doing this cause it was annoying and made my friend uncomfortable. 

Anyway, she decides to show up unannounced one day as I’m pumping and the baby is sleeping so I tell her no, she can’t come in. 

She calls the friend and asks if she will let her in.

Olive1243

My MIL doesn't understand that obviously I trust my mom way more and know she'll stick to whatever boundaries I set with her watching the baby.

Like why would I let MIL watch my baby when she's already so critical and judgmental about everything?

GemTaur15

My step-mil made me cry within the first 5 minutes of meeting her by instantly challenging me on why our parents were not listed on the wedding announcement. 

Short answer: both of us have divorced/remarried parents... for a total of 8 parents. 

We kind of wanted OUR names to be the memorable thing on the announcement, not the list of people at the top. Secondly, we are in our 30s and paid for our own wedding, so it's not like they threw the party. 

It's not hideous, but it set the tone for our relationship and I've been terrified of her since that first "chat".

MonsteraDeliciosa

My ex-mil was the WORST! She would call me Heather or Rachel. My name is Amber. I was with her son for 6 years. She bought me a moo-moo once, for Christmas. Little did anyone know, I was pregnant and rocked that thing ALL the time.

She called my son a mistake.

When I met her, she called me "exotic" (I have dark brown hair, light blue eyes, and olive skin) Apparently that meant I looked like a stripper.

TX_ambrosia

I could go on for hours! My in-laws need to be institutionalized.

When they found out their precious boy was seeing me, they would invite girls from their church over for dinner to set him up with them.

They would also send him texts with the phone numbers of girls when he was with me.

They started telling everyone including my bf, that I was a drug dealer because their daughter (30-year-old school teacher) said she "has a friend who knows this other girl who knows my ex" and he is a drug dealer too. 

They naturally couldn't name which ex because they didn't know anything about me and I'm certainly not a drug dealer.

The same sister and her husband decided to show up at my door at 10:45 pm one night to fight with my then bf about him sleeping over at my house, banging on the door and just being fudge heads. 

We had no idea how the fudge they found my address which was a 45 min drive from them. Turns out they had gone through my boyfriend's bedroom with a fine tooth comb and had discovered an old receipt from a rental car that I'd hired on a holiday we took a year earlier, in his suitcase that was buried in the bottom of his wardrobe. 

They then proceeded to call me for almost 48 hours straight, at all times of day and night with the number they found on the receipt. We went on a holiday, and they called him and told him they were throwing his things out on the lawn and changing the locks knowing that it was impossible for him to jump on a plane and get his things. 

Their aim was to ruin his holiday because they never did it.

They said I was a gold digger, only after his money. I called his mother out on that saying he'd moved straight from their house to MY place, with MY entire houseful of goods that I'd bought by myself long before I met him, with nothing but his clothes. 

I also owned my car outright and worked 5 days a week which they flat-out refused to believe.

They asked us to cancel our wedding..2 months before the day. I refused and told them we had paid thousands in deposits and had dresses custom-made for 2 of my bridesmaids who were heavily pregnant. 

They offered to give us the money to cover our loss if we canceled it. A crap fight ensued. They convinced almost their entire family to boycott the wedding..including my husband's best man. Only his grandmother, an Uncle, an Aunt, and 3 cousins showed up.

His sister threatened to show up at the wedding and cause a scene. We hired security.

On the day, his father sent him a text at 7 am saying 'I hope you are happy ruining your life with that slut'.

I have so many stories but these paint a good enough picture!

Tinybutterrifying

My MiL is too crazy to cover in one quick post. 

But to give you an idea - we had no contact with her over a year ago after she threatened to end her life because my husband wanted to have a beer on his 25th birthday.

dollfaise

Not so bad with me but why do they think they know baby so well?

Spent a weekend with my mil for a family wedding and she kept saying ‘He’s hungry, oh look how sleepy he is but he’s fighting it’. 

Never mind that he’d not long had a long sleep and I’d recently offered food (he’s ebf on demand). I had to keep telling her that he’d just eaten/ slept. 

I think though she’s just so out of touch with babies she doesn’t know what else to say.

TheWelshMrsM

MIL was very insistent my DH was sitting at 3 months, walking at 6 months, and speaking in full sentences somewhere in between.

While I can attribute those to grandparent amnesia, I was most baffled that she insists DH slept through the night from week one. 

Upon asking follow-up questions, DH spent his nights alone in a nursery with the door closed on a different floor from his parents with no baby monitor, so they never would’ve heard him cry.

I’m pretty sure he wasn’t sleeping through the night, MIL.

TinyBearsWithCake

I guess they had their own agenda, a picture perfect of being grandparents. They were the last of their own siblings and friends to have a grandchild, and they just wanted the pictures and stories, not the real deal with a baby crying and all the hard parts. 

They didn't want to babysit, they wanted to tell their friends about babysitting. 

They wanted to tell their friends how important they were, that we couldn't cope without them, that the baby loved them more, etc. 

They still tried telling those stories even after our relationship soured. They didn't try to do better, just demanded more pictures because 'aunt so and so asked for new pictures and it is embarrassing if we don't have any', 'what should we tell the neighbors'.

mmmmmmmsmith

Wow, I thought my MIL was tough when she accused me of feeding my husband improperly when he got type 1 diabetes (genetic) at age 25, which is pretty late compared to most cases. 

She said it was cause I baked cakes (I only baked cakes twice when she was coming over cause I was trying to be a good host).

Plastic-Bookkeeper74

My MIL has literally seen my 4 1/2month old less than 6 times but in those times she visits it's ALWAYS something negative to say/remark and throwing shade on my parenting skills AND acting like she knows my baby better than I do.

She is very clever though and always comes by whenever my husband isn't home so it's her word against mine.

The worst was she got visibly upset that my daughter is now starting to look EXACTLY like me and not her side of the family (like really woman? She IS MY daughter, she has MY DNA)

She's also butthurt that my Mom will be taking care of the baby when I go back to work. I'm cordial with her but try and avoid her at all costs.

GemTaur15

Oh, I relate to my little one looking like me, and yet MIL is adamant that his blue eyes are from her great grandma or his pale skin is from her cousin??? 

My LO is beginning to get a dimple, the exact same as me, and when I said “Oh you’re getting dimples like mummy”, MIL picked him up and said the dimples come from her father literally nothing about the child I grew up and pushed out could possibly be from me!

Weary-Banana77

Just know that MILs leave lasting damage. I don’t have one but my own MIL did. She’s told me many times how afraid she is of becoming her own MIL who constantly questions and oversteps her boundaries. 

Even years later I can see how hard it is for my MIL to talk about those times. Instead of remembering pleasant times, she remembers all the hardships her own MIL put her through.

Vya398isa

My father-in-law and his wife keep "joking" about us sending our THREE-year-old alone on a plane to visit them. 

We visited them last month and I couldn't leave our child alone with them for 10 minutes in good conscience because their house is not childproof and they get distracted and don't watch him. 

They had a decorative knife right at child height! Which of course our kid found and then when I asked if I could put it up out of reach somewhere father-in-law said no, just shove it to the back of the table. 

The same table the three-year-old had easily picked it up from.

Gay_Deanna_Troi

My son is 9 weeks old, and my husband and I are both back at work. We’re able to work opposite shifts so one of us is always home with our son. My husband was talking to his mom about it, and she said that we were “both of his moms” since he’s doing his equal share of raising our son… 

No, I’m his mother, and he’s his father. It's so demeaning to both of us to call him a mother. Fathers are capable of raising their children too. And I’m still just as much his mother even though I don’t do 100% of the work.

Slightly unrelated but I just have to rant.

 That same week she made that comment, she posted a picture of my husband and his sister from a few years ago on Facebook and then added a comment saying “They would make a great couple… but they’re sister and brother”   

Who says that about their own children?? Never mind the fact that he’s happily married to me, and my SIL is happily married to another guy.

Thankfully this woman doesn’t really like to be involved in any of her children’s lives, or her first grandchild’s, so I don’t have to deal with her too much.

The_FO_Cat_28

Dropped the baby, and the baby started crying and she wouldn’t let me pick him up. She swooped in to take him, he started crying because he had separation anxiety and she locked him in the nursery with her because “he has to learn”

Took over the baby every time she was over and called it “helping” and tried really hard to establish herself as the elder authority in my house

We moved two hours away and I never talk to her anymore. She’s not allowed to stay with us when I have my next baby, and she gets zero alone time with him either.

FantasmagoriaFuga

Food and body image issues are so ingrained in our parent's generation. My mom is relatively progressive and open-minded yet is so fat-phobic that it’s shocking. 

My MIL is even worse and I audibly gasped when she called one of her sons “disgusting” for how he looked since he gained weight (thankfully not to his face but still). 

When I told my mom how horrible it was to hear my MIL say that, my mom tried to defend her!

InitiativeImaginary1

I always think it is very telling how many stories there start with ' my MIL used to be okay but she went crazy when I was pregnant'. 

It was the same with us, we had a pretty decent to even good relationship, I got pregnant and it went a bit wobbly, baby was born and MIL and FIL went crazy.

It took us a long time, way too long when looking back, to realize that it wasn't just a communication thing or an expectation thing, but that they really had not the best intentions.

Mmmmmmmsmith

Oh my! Yes!!! When a lot of them retire they try to make OUR LOs their "purpose..." All of this makes sense. I really think my MIL was ready to post on SM with my LO and get all the "likes" and "comments" to fit in... But we stopped it before it even started.

And she didn't like that. She never offered to be available to help me clean/cook/do laundry when I came home from giving birth. 

And I honestly don't know how much she'd help with the baby given that she herself had a ton of help when she became a mom. 

According to my DH even when her kids were teenagers, a lot of other family members helped her in many, many ways. I just don't want to have her "help" and then have to deal with the fact that in reality she's actually not helping…

Diosdeisrael

How did we all survive these people as our parents/how did our spouses survive?! No wonder so many of us are processing traumas and such as we parent our own kids. I'm no exception. 

My MIL is great but my mom is everything it and it's A LOT.

The only thing my MIL does that bugs me is rile up the baby in a ton of instances where she needs calm and quiet eg. At a restaurant or when we are out past bedtime and baby is starting to wind down and want to snuggle. 

And she talks all the time about how "next year" I'm going to send my kid to grandma for a month over the summer. Uhm my kid will be 1.5-1.75 years old, no sorry she's not going away without me. We can visit for a week or two together but that's it (we live 4hrs apart).

My mom on the other hand... has threatened to call CPS on me because I took my baby for a road trip to visit paternal grandparents and great-grandparents when she was 2 months old. 

Because I did BLW and this was nonsense made up by researchers who never had kids and I was starving my child (she recommended all puree and making her banana smoothie milk and giving her chamomile and fennel tea in a bottle at 4 months old). 

Every little while she would bother me about why I was using formula instead of getting donor milk from someone until my baby was at least 2 years old (I had an extremely low supply and couldn't even pump a full bottle feed per day but pumped till I was 6mpp). 

She was constantly obsessed with everything I did being child abuse or reckless abandonment. She would make up stories and tell me how she knew I was just leaving the baby lying all alone for hours at a time so I could clean the house...after I told her I babywear pretty much 24/7 with ring slings and woven wraps. That's only a few examples.

The kicker, besides none of that being remotely true, is that my mom has never met my daughter or been to the house where I currently live.

RareGeometry

I thought I struggled with my FMIL but some of you are literal saints for what you deal with lol.

FMIL asked if she could add “suggestions” for names when we were clear we were between 2 specific names only -when my little first home from the hospital, FMIL was texting my fiancé and me multiple times a day for “baby updates”.

Keeps telling me to add rice cereal to bottles since I’m clearly not feeding her enough to sleep through the night. Keeps asking when I’m going to allow her to take the baby overnight. 

She has mobility issues, can barely hold her, and hands her back to me as soon as she gets fussy when visiting -told me the baby told her she wants her to come to visit weekly.

She gets jealous that the baby knows who I am when I come into the room. Laughs that the baby doesn’t really look like me and takes credit for every single milestone despite not even being there for any of them

Geez writing this out reminds me of how nuts she is.

Thelastredskittle

Refused to acknowledge my second pregnancy at all until a few weeks before I gave birth. She wouldn’t allow my husband to tell her, because she had been giving us the silent treatment over some perceived slight that was so inconsequential I don’t even remember what it was.

Bought my first baby a hideous vintage porcelain doll that scared her so bad she started crying. I told her that babies should not be playing with toys that might shatter into a billion shards when they inevitably get dropped.

Overheard her calling herself mom to my kid.

elleebee

My MIL was visiting us right after I gave birth. I had gone into our bedroom for some privacy and breastfed. Not even a minute later, my MIL walked in (without knocking) and proceeded to watch me. 

I’m a pretty private person and I’m also not close with my MIL at all, so I immediately tried to cover myself up (I was completely topless). She just stood there for a few minutes staring, and eventually, she decided to use her bare hands to move my boobs around to “help” baby latch better. 

Keep in mind I was a new mom. The baby was 3 days old, so I was still figuring things out, and having someone literally STARE and TOUCH my boobs was making me flustered. 

She doesn’t really speak English, so she proceeded to bring in my two SILs to translate while she critiqued my breastfeeding “skills”. So now I had three people staring at me while I was breastfeeding, boobs out and all.

Anyway, I kept my cool and smiled the entire time. I knew she meant well and just wanted to help. She just… apparently had no boundaries and no concept of what was appropriate.

Hubby saw what happened and immediately talked to his family afterward. 

Thank goodness it never happened again. 

coralhippo

I had a breakdown and snapped at my husband when my mil would give my baby a bath and she would be screaming at the top of her lungs. My husband took a video and was laughing and saying "She's so helpless". 

Why do they have no empathy? My mil would say, "Oh poor baby, you shouldn't cry" but make 0 attempt to understand why she is crying.

After that only I give baths and she loves it. And now my husband learnt my way too and bath time is such a wonderful bonding time.

MoistBanana9245

My MIL came to visit when my daughter was 2 weeks old. We suggested they get an air bnb and rent a car, since we only have one full bath in our whole house and the spare bedroom shares a wall with us.. 

They refused and insisted on staying with us and asking to borrow our car when they were here. I had the car seats in my car so didn’t want them driving that around, and my husband works every day. 

So it was always a big deal if they wanted to go anywhere, even though we warned them of this weeks before they came. 

Oh and did I mention they were planned to stay for 1 week but my MIL “didn’t feel well enough to fly home” so my FIL flew back without her and she stayed with us another THREE WEEKS. 

Also gave soooo much unsolicited advice on sleep, feeding, how to hold my own baby, how to dress her… yet when we asked her to watch the baby she would say “the newborn stage isn’t for me, I enjoy when they are a little older and can interact” ughhhhh those are just the tips of the ice berg. 

Luckily they live 2,000 miles away so we don’t see them often. It would not be good for any of us if they lived closer.

daisybluebird9