Reply to Is there any expectation on a family member who stays “postpartum”?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think for my in laws especially my MIL, she never dealt with her own MIL in this sense so she had no clue about how fraught the relationship could be and how in the end, the DIL holds all the cards. Her own MIL lived far away and was unwell.

She had only sons and my experience was mirrored with her second son’s wife’s experience having her own first baby. Thanks to my husband (and probably his brother too, for his brothers wife) she has shaped up. But the stuff she pulled at first- it was insane. She’s the one who came and refused to clean/ said she’d only hold the baby, and had us come visit her for a baby shower and put us up on the couch. She was like that for 2-3 years. Like- we’d show up and she’d just reach over and try to take my daughter out of my arms, without asking and without preamble, as if she were her own. I remember once she tried to do that in front of a bunch of people and I just held on. She tried for a full 5-6 seconds! And I just held on. And my daughter started crying. Everyone was looking at my MIL like she was insane and she got so embarassed and irritated. Her own sister even came up later and was like “we all see you just so you know”. She once told my daughter when she was like 18 months- so, not understanding anything MIL was saying- “one day you’ll be a teenager who hates her mother and you can come live with grandma!” And laughed. In front of me and many others. She announced to us when my daughter was 2 or 3 that it was time for us to drop the baby off with her for a month in the summer because “you can’t say she isn’t old enough anymore and this is what I’ve always planned- to have my grandchildren with me all summer”. I mean I could go on and on and on. Waking her up from naps early as soon as I wasn’t looking so that she could play with her, giving her an iPad when she was 3 despite me specifically saying no, and crying when I took it and gave it away. The final straw was when my oldest was maybe 5 years old and I overheard my daughter telling MIL she wasn’t allowed to watch cartoons before bed and my MIL goes “it doesn’t matter what your mother says, you’re with grandma now and you don’t need to listen to your mothers rules, only to grandmas rules. And it will just be a secret.” After that we went no contact for a couple years and it was liberating. She still doesn’t get it either.

We barely see her anymore and she calls and yells at us that we are keeping her grandkids away from her. But my husband is amazing and he tells her very plainly that they are not “her grandkids” they are “wife’s (my) children” and that she has burned that bridge long ago. [/quote]

This is a full-on battle for control. Everyone loses. [/quote]

Keep telling yourself that but we actually have a very happy family life and good relationships with the other grandparents (my parents and my husbands father and stepmom!). And aunts, uncles, great aunts including my MILs own sister. No one lost here except for my MIL, and she was given like a thousand chances to shape up and stop being nasty to me, the mother of her grandkids. [b]She really, really didn’t realize that I held all the cards until it was too late. [/b]

We see her once a year or so now and like I said, she has shaped up in her outward behavior towards me and our kids. She only complains now to my husband, who tells her again and again that she needs to take what she can get at this point. He is fully on my side.

Again- I don’t feel like we have lost a thing at all. I know my husband doesn’t. Maybe MIL does but I do not care. [/quote]

LOL. You proved my point. [/quote]

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