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Washington Babies
Grandma Rivalry? Long.
So my mom was visting from Portland this past weekend. She mentioned a few times how we spend more time with hubby's mom than we do with her. Back story: MIL lives in Ellensburg (so she's closer and traffic is much less of an issue) and has a huge garage. In making room for baby, she's offered to let us store a bunch of our crap in her garage. We've gone over a couple of times in the last 2 months to take a load of stuff to drop off.
Anywho, over the weekend my mom kept saying that she wanted our son to call her "baba" because she wants him to say her name before MIL's, who wants to be called "nana." Apparently, she thinks "baba" is going to be one of his first words. I proceeded to tell her that for most babies, "baba" means bottle. She didn't care, and doesn't think it'll confuse our child to have a person called "baba" and also associate that with eating eventually.
Here's the kicker: Every summer we rent a house somewhere on the water and get everyone together for a long family weekend. This has always included MIL in previous years. So now my mom's saying this year, she just wants it to be our family, and basically MIL is not invited. Ouch. She said she wants the chance to bond with our son without having to share him with anyone else. I guess I can understand that, but couldn't we do that at her house or ours at other times? Why do I feel like she's being really selfish and immature? This is all rubbing me the wrong way.
Has anyone else's mom (or other relatives) acted like this? How did you handle it? I'm trying to blow it off, but it's been almost a week now and it's still nagging at me. Thanks for reading this far!
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Re: Grandma Rivalry? Long.
My mom was kinda like this too. She refers to ds as "her" baby and it drives me nuts.
I would tell her you would like to keep the family vacay the same, and it would be better for her to have "bonding time" sooner after baby is born anyway, and then you can do it at her house. That way everyone can just enjoy the weekend just like every other year.
I also seem to find that when relatives get like this, they just want to be involved, so maybe think of a "job" for her that has to do with baby, and maybe she will be preoccupied with that? I dont know, I really just started ignoring my mom when she would say stuff like that, and then all was fine once the baby was actually born.
My mom is insanely jealous of my MIL and my MIL hates to share my DS. Our parents live 1 mile from each other so everytime we go back to Iowa it's a constant struggle and I spend most of the time in tears.
Huge hugs, I wish I had some suggestions for you but it seems to be getting worse!
What part of Iowa are you from? I'm from there too!
Quad Cities born and raised: Went to UNI and lived in Des Moines for 2 years. So kinda all over
I didn't read everyone else's reponses...but my MIL is the say dang way.
And *we* make decisions about what Madelyn will and won't do - including names. If you don't want the term baba used, that's your decision, you're the parent. It may be hard, but hold firm with that.
That having been said, we do our best to keep the time equal - or make equal offers of time. If they can't make it, that's their bad.
And for the lake thing, I'd tell her that if she is excluding one member of the family (and fwiw, her family now includes your MIL), then she's excluding everyone. I, personally, wouldn't put up with that. Tell her you an offer up other 1:1 time, but you won't suddenly exclude someone to make her feel better.
But - I'm hard core with my MIL like that.
I love you.
I'm hardcore with my mom like too, so no one messes around.
Ooh, I do not envy that. My situation is a tad different: My mom and DH's parents all live within 10 minutes of us ... my mom sees Collin pretty much every day ... and his parents haven't seen him since January. They just don't care. Because they suck.
If your mom is serious, what about suggesting to MIL that you guys take a little trip this summer, too, even somewhere local like the San Juans, with her/whomever/etc. That may soften the blow?
My MIL is like that. She is very jealous of my Mom and Grandma b/c they get to watch Blake a lot. MIL I used to be very close when DH and I started dating and then she lost her mind and I don't trust her or put up with her crap. I just stand my ground and she has realized that she isn't going to get her way. We do let her come down and visit Blake when we are home but she gets upset b/c she can't watch him all by herself.
My mom doesn't know my FMIL so she just kinda acts like she doesn't exist. When she's talking about holidays she never takes into consideration that we will be spending time with my SO's side of the family too. Both sets of our parents live oos and in different states. I think she's also trying to buy more stuff for the baby which makes me feel bad because my FMIL doesn't have extra spending cash like my mom.
Sigh... parents are so wierd and they seem to get wierder when grandkids are involved.
Boy do I feel you pain,
My MIL has not come out directly and said anything like that but she does it indirectly.
When we lived in Western WA, my mom lived in Eastern WA., and my In laws lived in Western WA also.
We determined before having DD that MIL would watch DD during the week when we were at work, she obviously was very excited about it and had fun, however she started really bugging me with how much she had something to do with how DD was growing up, and she would take DD out of our arms anytime she started to cry, (that royally pissed me off and it took me over a year to finally tell to stop doing that)
Thank fully my Mom and MIL get along great, but every time over the course of the 7 months that MIL watched DD she always had to share with people how well DD is doing with talking and reading etc as if she was the one raising her (um no, she was with her 4 days a week and DH and I were the ones raising DD not her)
Then when we moved to Eastern WA so I could SAHM with our DD she comments is your mom excited to get to be a grandma ( WTF she has always been her grandma, it does not matter whether they live 5 miles or 280 miles she has been her grandma since she was born)
And then there have been two instance in the last year that have proved even more that there is underlying rivalry with my MIL her issue with my Mom.
Last summer we were all staying together at a condo at Lake chelan, and DD had woken up and I had to take DH downtown to get ready for his trialthon, so I asked my mom to hang out with DD will I was gone, (since my mom was already awake anyway and MIL was still asleep) well DD started to cry and get upset when I left (it usually takes her like 5 min and then she is fine) and my mom had it under control, but MIL didn?t think she did and comes running out of her room and takes DD out of my moms arms and takes DD back to her room. (I found this out when I got back after being gone for 20 min and did not see DD with my mom)
And then last October we were at kids musical performance and DD was wanting to climb from DH lap over to my moms lap (she was asking for Grandma Kay) which involved going from DH to MIL to me to Grandma Kay but as soon as she got to MIL?s lap, MIL took out of the room since she thought she was fussing and DD missed the end of the performance (and she was not fussing she just wanted to sit in Grandma Kay?s lap)
Anyway I recommend nipped it in the bud ASAP my DD is 28 months old and now especially since we live 15 miles away from my mom and 280 miles away from MIL (however we go over for 4 day trips to see them every 6 weeks) my Mil still had issues with not being able to see DD and is extremely jealous of my mom (although my mom travels with her job so she only sees DD once a week for like 4 hours. )
Sorry so long I guess what I am trying to say is please make sure you are up front and honest with them as soon as a problem happens because if you don?t it will continue to get worse it tell something is said.,
I have not fully addressed my MIL on her jealousy yet but I know it needs to be addressed before my Mom finally stops being polite and goes off on my MIL for being taking over when she does not need too.