Anonymous wrote:Your house, your kid, your spouse. THEY are your first priority.

Do not invite her. She's sounds incredibly toxic. Your sister can invite whomever she wants to her home. You are under no obligation to invite anyone you feel will cause distress and drama, even if that person is your mother.

Life is too short for this shit.

+1. I opened this thread frankly ready to encourage OP to include the mother because excluding a grandma from a baby's life sounded a bit extreme. but after reading your post, you should simply cut her out of your life for good. you should not allow your sister to have a say on this either and make you feel guilty. this is your life and your decision and you should tell her never to mention it again or you will cut her off as well. she can make her decisions about your mother, but needs to respect yours. you don't want to expose your child to what you were exposed as a child. your mother may be sick but if she refuses to get treatment, there is nothing you owe her. good luck

OP, my father is the issue and he's never been to any birthday party for either of my kids or been at any of our holiday celebrations. He's a drug addict who put me through hell growing up. However, he has a kind heart and loves me in his own way and adores my kids, his only grandkids, and wants to be involved in their lives. And I allow him to love them, with strict boundaries. I'm certainly not having him come to celebrations at my house where he would embarrass everyone and ruin the occasion. We see him once a year, usually by meeting somewhere fun to visit that's a distraction from his craziness. The couple times he's visited our house have not turned out well, so we don't invite him any more. My kids have never been to his home because it's a filthy meth lab. But we do call him on every holiday, I constantly text pictures and videos and we frequently send care packages with crafts the kids made at school, pictures they draw for him and little gifts. It's a way I and my kids can maintain a relationship with him without further damage. I would have once described our relationship as strained but okay like you did, but since I've had kids and figured out how to include him with boundaries it's actually much better. Good luck.

You may find it helpful to read/post here:

http://community.babycenter.com/groups/a4725/dwil_nation

Don't invite her. Tell your sister you want a nice party for you child with no drama. If sister is drama. Have DC party with peaceful, joyful people and celebrate with the drama queens separately. If you feel you need to tell them, do not give details just say you are having a separate party with friends and another party with family. If they ask why just say you want DC to have all of their attention.

Your life, your boundaries. Sometimes it has it down side.

Anonymous wrote:I don't know if you should send her a letter ceasing the relationship. Sometimes such moves just make things worse with people like your mom.

Just don't invite her. Don't engage.

This. I would limit contact, but I wouldn't necessarily invite more drama by drafting a letter. I think the real problem here is getting your sister on board and having her respect your wishes. Hopefully, she's not a shit-stirrer.

Let her go, move on. Just because she's your bio mom doesn't mean she deserves your friendship.

Nice post, 17:12. I grew up similar to you, OP. I agree about not inviting your mother to the party and not feeling like you have to have her in your life. I know a lot of people don't understand it but to paraphrase a PP, some parents don't deserve love or respect. Congratulations on getting through all this and creating the live you want to live. Hugs.

I think PP had a good idea - if you're going to include her in the birthday festivities, invite her to a separate thing on neutral territory. I'd go for breakfast at IHOP that day after. If she starts to throw a fit, get up and leave. Don't engage.

I'd stick to breakfast at IHOP as the one & only offer to keep the relationship open. I'd start with once every 3 months if she's local and if it goes well, you can up it to once a month.

Don't invite her. Don't subject your child to her mercurial moods. If you want to see her, do it in a neutral location at another time when she doesn't have an audience and the ability to ruin a special day.

Anonymous wrote:I don't know if you should send her a letter ceasing the relationship. Sometimes such moves just make things worse with people like your mom.

Just don't invite her. Don't engage.

This.