MIL question

Toni828

Being a new mom has brought me some distress that I never expected that has to do with my MIL.  Is it normal as a FTM to have conflict with your MIL?  To feel as if she is trying to "take over" your babies? Sometimes I feel that she is obsessed over them.  I don't want to go into all the other things that get on my nerves about her.  I never have had that great of a relationship with her, but since the babies were born, it has gotten worse. I dread the days that she comes over.  My husband says that I am being rude and that I need to let it go, so he doesn't have my back.  I am not a mean person, but I feel like all the stuff with her and the fact that my hubby doesn't back me up is making me mean towards her.  Anyways, I'm just wondering if this is a normal thing that happens to people when they first have kids.

thanks!

missfire

Absolutely normal! I was completely exhausted, with postpartum hormones turning me into a mama lion to boot. The last thing I wanted to worry about was being constantly polite to a visitor or houseguest! I was not trying to be rude to my MIL - I was absolutely not capable of it. She never understood and still doesn't, but I was very happy to have my husband backing me up.

It is not a good time for people who annoy you - you need helpful, patient visitors who are willing to follow your lead with your babies.

raraavis28

Omg you are not alone! Mine has been driving me craaazy and I feel bad bc it's over kinda stupid stuff....like her always calling LOs "her babies"....um they're MY babies! And, though I'm glad she's helping me out, I guess, she has this hyper nervous energy and just can't seem to chill out around the babies, and I feel like LOs pick up on that. She talks to them nonstop in this high pitched whiny voice and starts freaking out if they start making any noise that resembles fussing. She only had DH so I understand it's been a long time since she took care of a baby and only ever dealt with one, but I just find myself exhausted dealing with her. I also don't like that she has set herself up in competition with my mom, who I'm really close to, is awesome w/ babies and helps me a ton...like back when we were still in the hospital she outright said she's afraid the babies will love their other grandmother more...please! But like I said, none of this is a huge deal so I just kinda put up with it, but I feel bad bc MIL and I used to get along just great and now I feel like I just kind of "put up" with her and try not to appear annoyed when she's around. I guess it makes sense that relationships change a bit when there are new babies in the picture....gl w/ your situation...and thanks for listening to me vent too lol.

mommyof4boys

I caught mine calling herself mom to my boys when they were babies.  I flipped out!  Never happened again.  Yet again, she also ruined their 1st birthday party by changing the day.  She called uo her family and told them I didn't see if the day worked for her.  We got into it and didn't talk  from September until February that year.

katiebenes

haha, I'm at 10 weeks pregnant and my Mom, SIL and my MIL are both already giving me "must dos" with my babies... along with many other people. 

I didn't get along with my MIL before anyways... so... no big surprise there... 

And my DH thinks that her telling me "I'm sorry you took me bringing up weight loss surgery that way" as a genuine apology and that everything is fine.  So I get what you mean with DH thinking its rude...

*hugs* and hopefully soon it will get less annoying 

RobinR91

Same. Glad to know I'm not alone. We always had a great relationship until the babies. Now when she's here I'm SO stressed out. I talk to DH about it. He says that she is doing what I perceive her to be doing, but I feel she does it out of malice and he says she just does it. Either way, drives me UP the WALL! Like PP, if any baby makes any sound they are "a fussy bucket". It's stupid, but that term really wears on you when you hear it 254,796 times per day. And also she's "got their personalities pegged" but she's wrong. So she feels my firecracker is the "calm easy going one" and everytime she's firecrackery, ie most of her waking hours, MIL makes some comment like, "oh I wouldn't expect this behavior from YOU, LO". Anyone else despise when people refer to your kids as "this one" or "that one" and make ZERO Effort to keep them straight? I know I have identical triplets here, and maybe they only look different to me, but I color coded everything so helpers would be able to tell them apart. Apparently I needed to vent

LottaLattes

Not at all, but I am well aware that I am amazingly lucky to have a really sweet MIL. She is so conscious of offending and just a dreamboat. I am so thankful we live near them and not my mother, who isn't bossy or getting in my business but has a whole host of other problems. Sorry your MILs are so annoying, some of that does fade as the babies get older from a previous MIL knowledge ;

kproude

OMG Yes!  My MIL drives me crazy and has caused so much conflict and drama since the boys have arrived.  I won't get into all the crazy things but one example...she planned their christening and didn't tell us, at a church we've never been too with a minister we've never met and when my parents were going to be away (she new this, they winter in Florida). When my husband told her we had already decided to have the ministers who married us do the christening she starting crying and saying how we were being disrespectful.  She can be very controlling and manipulative.  That being said, she loves the babies and is really good with them.  It's too much sometimes though, she wants to be at my house everyday helping, and now she says she wants them at her house 4 days a week all day.  Which would be great if I were working but I'm a SAHM who gave up a professional career to raise my babies.  What would I do all day?  I'm also nursing. My husband had to have a talk with her in the beginning and tell her to relax, that he had a hormonal stressed out wife and they last thing we needed was her making the situation worse.  She's been a little more relaxed since he had the talk.    

s0ulchicken

My MIL has always been BSC, but with the arrival of "her" babies, she has only gotten crazier! It started with her sneaking into my hospital room after we expressly requested no visitors, and has escalated to her calling me to ask what I am cooking for dinner that night, so she knows if she needs to bring something for FIL and BIL, when I hadn't even invited them over for dinner! I think the birth of grandchildren flips the crazy train switch in some MILs!

Brummy14

Yup. MIL and I haven't exactly seen eye to eye...ever. She's the type of person who likes to make things all about her. Honestly, all if her phone calls to DH the entire time I've known him are entirely one sided...he often mutes his headpiece and multitasks when on the phone with her. Lol.

MIL demanded she fly out to visit us the day I delivered. Literally. And, when DH said he'd consider it if she stayed in a hotel, and not with us, she was furious. So, then he told her it was just too early to visit, and she took it waaaay personally. Like on the phone in tears. She apparently forgot she should be comforting her son who was terrified because he wasn't sure his daughters would survive. Yeah, she doesn't get it.

When we did let her visit a month later, the NICU experience completely freaked her out, but she said she had to see it 'in person to appreciate how difficult this was for us.' While I was still an emotional wreck at that point, to say nothing of the sleep deprivation as a result of the insane pumping schedule I was on, that visit has been enough to get her off our backs for a while. She finally gave us the right to let HER know when we're comfortable having her visit again.

...given she's in Florida, which has the longest RSV season in the country, and they would be coming by plane, which to me is the equivalent of licking a phone booth on the way to our house ... I have no idea when I'll ever be comfortable. Argh. Forget about the fact that having her here is stressful and exhausting as frick.

Dragonfly1226

I am so sorry hon. I know from experience how stressful this can be. Unfortunately, the same thing has happened in our case. MIL and I actually used to have a great relationship! Now it is very tense. She second guesses every decision we make as parents and judges us all the time. She is very passive agressive about it. Like when we told her about the twins one of the first things she said was, "You need to get DS potty trained right away." She has been on our case about PTing for amlittle while. I find it helps to have a rational comeback. In this instance i told her about the research i had done and the signs that a child is teady to PT that DS is not showing at all yet. At least the conversation usually ends there. Luckily the ILs live a plane ride away so it is only at its worst when we go visit and stay with them. After our last visit we decided that we would never stay at their house again - even if it means cramming into a hotel room. I do think it is important for your dh to have your back. DH and I are on the same page about it and it makes it easier when we have a united front. I wish I could say it gets better. For us it hasn't but we have gotten better at dealing with it. (((((hugehugs)))))

Ruthie04

So normal. DH thinks his mother is a bit crazy, so it's not hard to convince him something she did/said was out of line. There was one morning we awoke to see that both babies were not in the PnPs in our room. I ran to the guest bedroom (they were staying with us) and saw my ILs weren't there either. For a brief moment, DH and I actually thought our ILs took them! They were just downstairs with the babies trying to give us some time to sleep in. Sending big hugs...I hope things improve!

mmbench

My kids are 7 1/2, and it's been a mess since they were born.  If DH doesn't back you up, then it's only going to get worse.  I swear I spent 90% of my PPD psychiatrist sessions just talking about her crazy.  They insisted on visiting every weekend the first 2 years of the girls' lives, which is hard when DH and I both work full time.  I felt like we never got a lot of time to bond as a family.  When I tried to talk to DH about it he would say that he's never going to tell his mom that she can't see the girls.

 

 

MuseumMaven

I've had real conflict with my inlaws since the boys arrived, but mostly with my father in law, who drove us completely nuts at his first visit when the babies first arrived. Sorry you are dealing with that. I hope that you and your husband can have a talk and you can explain what is upsetting to you in a way that he understands.

kristen6

I had a tough time with my MIL after my son was born.  He was her first grandchild (still is, until these babies), and she went totally overboard.  I think the worst was she just invited herself to the house for my first Mother's Day, which I would have rather spent with my mom.  And she would sometimes "accidentally" refer to herself as Mommy, which drove me nuts.  She would come to help and I would run and errand and when I came home, she would be giving him a bottle of formula even if I wanted to nurse him when I got home (I had to supplement, so it wasn't like he wasn't getting formula, but still).  

The bottom line is, I think it was a combo of my PP hormones and her being overbearing.  We eventually just worked through it.  She still drives me a little nuts sometimes, but I try to remember that she adores her grandson and would do anything for him and it makes it a little easier to grin and bear it. 

QBall27

Another "I can totally relate..." post here.  I've never been really close to or fond of my MIL, but I could tolerate her annoyances & just move on.  When our first DD arrived 3 years ago, I found myself actually wanting to cry on days I knew she was going to show up (and did start sobbing when they showed up 2 hours early for Easter when DD was 2 weeks old & I was taking a shower).  In my situation, she's not usually outwardly crazy or rude or even super controlling - but she just does & says things that drive me batty.  She also has the tendency to stand very close to me and follow me around, which makes me want to freak out!  Oh - she also has issues with always wanting to know what my parents spent on DD/us...and took it so far as to go to a store she knew my mom got our baby shower stuff at & asked the sales people if they could look up prices for various items, so she'd know how much my mom spent.  She then proceeded to tell DH's cousin about all of this, which is how I found out.  

I will say that I think having DH support you & be understanding of however you feel about it all is so important.  Like another PP said, my DH knows his mom is annoying (also mutes while on the phone, because she talks on & on & on...) - and he never makes me feel bad when I'm frustrated with her.  Hopefully you & DH can have a heart-to-heart so he knows exactly how you feel & what he can do to be most supportive of you  

Jen0204

It's normal to butt ears with your MIL, babies or not! My MIL drove me nuts from the second we told her that I was pregnant until a few months ago. She still makes dumb comments every once in a while, but they've slowed down a lot. 

How was your H before the babies came? And how was your relationship with your MIL? The reason I ask is because my relationship with my ILs has always been a little difficult but H was always great about standing up for me. Knowing that, if he had said to me after the babies came that I was being rude I would have taken a step back and looked at my behavior, especially given the post-partum hormones and sheer exhaustion. But if he hadn't always been supportive then I definitely wouldn't have listened to him.  

We've gotten to a good place now where we let my MIL do most things her way when the girls to there to spend time with them and we ignore 99% of the "advice" she gives us. I also am forever grateful to her (which I NEVER would have imagined before the babies were born!) because she came over a lot after they were born so we could sleep and whenever H and I want to go out or need a night to catch up on sleep she is more then happy to take them. The helps makes life a million times easier. 

caden

I had never been so rude to my MIL as I was when she stayed at my house when my twins were about 2m old. Looking back I feel terrible about how I handled some of our issues. Not all of them though - I still think she was wrong about 1 or 2 things. But I was hormonal, stressed, sleep deprived, confused, etc and went WAY overboard caring about stuff that didn't make a damn bit of difference in the long run.

Toni828

Jen, to answer your questions, we had a fairly distant relationship with my MIL until I was pregnant.  It was then that she started to spend more time with us.  She lives about an hour away.  My H would rarely call her or make the effort to see her and she would only call us every 5-6 months before I was pregnant.  We would see her a few times a year.  She was rarely there for her sons and their grandparents pretty much raised them, so I'm wondering if she is trying to "make up" for her past mistakes.  I really think that on top of the major change of going from no kids to twins, having her around all the time is just more than I was expecting.  I feel bad to tell her not to come. She comes every weekend and usually spends the whole day.  Which  is also frustrating because my H works and I stay home with my mom all week to care for the babies. So to have my weekends free of company would be soooo nice! I have thought about taking her to lunch and having a talk with her, but not sure how that would go over.  I feel like this woman is just determined to do what she wants and my H does not like conflict so he is going to let her do it to keep the peace.  The problem is, he has no idea how troubling this is to me.  He just thinks that I have a bad attitude and refuses to talk to me about it. Or if we do talk, it seems that she always wins.   He even gave me an ultimatum....if my mom can't come over then neither can yours. So now, I just vent to my friends about it since I can't talk to him.  It sucks because we have had a great marriage for the past 13 year, and now that we have kids (the one thing we have wanted for so long) there is more conflict than ever before. 

Toni828

To everyone who has responded, I think it's funny (and sad) that all the things I didn't want to go into, you have pretty much filled in the blanks.  So many of the things you have described are what I am dealing with. On top of that....well, I'll just keep it at that.  I could rant all day about the woman but it just makes me feel worse.  I wish this would just go away.

radiant05

It would take me all afternoon to write all my MIL intrusive stories. I'll just add the most recent one. We found out yesterday that we are having two girls. MIL has all sons and has always said she wished she had a daughter (she's even introduced her 3rd son as her daughter). When I was pregnant with DS she was disappointed it wasn't a granddaughter. I've actually been terrified to tell her that we're having two girls because I know she'll think that they are HERS! She proved this point last night while we were making the phone calls to family to share the news of two girls. She actually called DH's brother and told him before DH got the chance to! When we got a hold of BIL, he says oh yeah, MIL already told me. She may be the last phone call we make when the girls actually arrive!