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[quote=Anonymous]She used to. It was really bad when I was pregnant and for the first year after I had a kid. I think she was really jealous. I know how that sounds but it's just very clearly what it was. I think seeing me pregnant and with a newborn just made her feel really sad that she'd never do that again, and reminded her of the passage of time, and also I had a girl and she only had boys and this was a HUGE thing for her. But she really took it out on me, just constant comments on how I looked, what I was doing, what I was eating. Not just criticism but also things like openly coveting my stuff. Like every time she saw my diaper bag (which wasn't even fancy or anything, just a SkipHop backpack I got on discount from Amazon for like $40) she's say "Oh all your baby stuff is so fancy, I never had anything that fancy when I had my kids." If it was an isolated incident I'd just feel bad for her, but it was pretty much constant and eventually I just could not take it anymore. Around my DD's first birthday, I took my MIL aside and told her that her comments were hurtful and felt unsupportive and made me not want to be around her as much. I told her I'd had PPD and that there were issues with my own family (my mom is clinical depression and had become suicidal around the time my baby was born) and to also have to deal with these comments and behaviors from her just felt like piling on.

She cried and didn't really respond but after that she stopped, and now we have a perfectly pleasant relationship.

I wouldn't always recommend confronting someone over this kind of behavior, but in my case I felt like I had to (or I was just going to refuse to see my ILs anymore because I just did not want to deal with it anymore) and it paid off. We're not best friends and never will be, and she still does stuff that annoys me sometimes, but she's no longer antagonizing me every time I see her and that's good enough for me. There's a huge difference between "this person has qualities I find annoying" and "this person is pushing all my buttons, seemingly on purpose." The former is normal IL stuff. The latter is not acceptable.[/quote]

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