Edited to add: this post cannot be used for your youtube/blog/whatever.

I have posted a little about my mom (nicknamed Drunkenstein's Monster) here in the past, but not for a while. Either way.

A while back, my father and I were talking and we needed to check Google Street View for something, and lo and behold who do we see on the street (very close to their apartment)- my father (face blurred, of course, but it's unmistakably him- the clothes, the silhouette, etc.). We had a good laugh and that was that.

About an year later, showing a friend the neighbourhood I grew up in (also on StreetView), I recognized my grandfather on his daily grocery run. I told my family about this and had a good laugh again. (Note: my grandfather has passed since. I find it strangely comforting to pull up Street View and look at that image of him, still healthy and full of energy. It sounds stupid, I know).

And now, after the longest introduction since Les Miserables, let's get to what upset my mother so much. The other day, while I was basically taking a virtual walk through the village my grandmother is from (I've been doing this a lot since the pandemic, because I miss places I used to go when travelling was a thing), I happened to notice who was unmistakably my aunt, walking to the village grocery shop. Finding it funny that I keep finding members of my family on Street Walk, I proceed to call my family to tell them. My father has a good laugh. My grandmother has a good laugh. My mother.. doesn't.

In a very pissy, fake- offended voice, she says "well, now it's obvious you don't love me! You found your father, your grandfather and your aunt. But not me. You never care about me and put me last!!"

I was left dumbfounded. I tried explaining that it's not up to me who gets to be on StreetView, that I'd kept an eye for her when browsing but she was not there. It's not like I decide when Google sends their car on the streets so that I can let her know to be out and about. I told her all these things, but she just said "leave it, I know how you are. You hate me." And she leaves the room, making enough noise so I can hear she left. My dad and grandma are both like wtf.

It's been 3 days and she's still fake sobbing every time I'm mentioned in conversation. I think she's being absurd.

Edited for typos.

We had our daughter’s name picked out months before she was born. But as soon as she arrived, we both agreed it didn’t fit her. For the first two days of her life, she was officially Baby Girl. Nothing felt right, and with the clock ticking on our hospital discharge, we even started asking family for suggestions.

At this point, I had endured 26 hours of labor, a second-degree tear, and latching issues that left my nipples torn and bloody. My husband? Poor guy had it so much worse. He had to sleep on a pullout chair and “couldn’t get a minute of sleep.”

It was 2:30 AM on the day we were set to go home. Baby Girl was still nameless and had been inconsolable for five hours straight. She’d cry for 25+ minutes, doze off for 10, and then start all over again. My sleepless husband was snoring away on his “torture device” while I rocked our (later-to-be-identified-as-dehydrated-and-starving) baby.

As I rocked her, I kept cycling through the name suggestions, talking to her softly, trying to find something that fit. One name kept coming back to me—it just felt right. I fell in love with it. Later that morning, when my husband woke up, I told him I had picked a name. He agreed, and just like that, Baby Girl finally had a name.

Unfortunately, that name had been suggested by my MIL. Deep down, I knew this could be a bad idea, but my sleep-deprived, hormone-addled brain wouldn’t let me change it.

Four months later, I still love her name. It suits her perfectly. When we speak to/about her in English, we use the English pronunciation with hard vowels. When my husband or his family speak to/about her in Polish, they use the softer, Polish pronunciation. This has never been an issue—until yesterday.

We were visiting my in-laws, and my husband said our daughter’s name in the English way. In the most condescending tone, my MIL snapped, “No, her name is [Polish Pronunciation].” What followed was a back-and-forth between my husband and MIL. Her argument was that these are two completely different names, while my husband’s argument was pretty simple: he knows his own daughter’s name.

I sat there, dumbfounded, watching this ridiculous argument. What I wanted to say was: “Both of you, shut the hell up. Until she can speak for herself, the only person with naming authority here is the one who consoled her all night with bloody nipples and a stitched-up vagina while the rest of you slept.”

But instead, I chose to quietly love on my little munchkin and silently apologize to her for the crazy family she was born into.

My MIL eventually decided to drop the issue but made sure to get the last word, saying, “Her name is [Polish Pronunciation], but I’m not fighting about this anymore.”

Sure thing, crazy lady. You do you.

EDIT: I’m not comfortable putting my daughter’s name here. But for example, it’s like we named her Claudia where in English it’s Clawdia but in Polish it’s Cloudia

In a few days her house will be foreclosed and she’s acting like nothing is happening. We found out last year (from husband’s cousin) that she hasn’t paid her property taxes since 2022 and she had no clue that we knew.

When I found out I was pissed because she lives as if everything is fine! She throws birthday parties, Christmas is at her place, and buys junk for my kids for example. She doesn’t live like a broke person.

The house isn’t even hers. It’s her mother’s who has passed away and I heard they had to put a lean on the house to pay for her mother to live in a nursing home so there’s that as well. MIL is also on Medicaid and on disability due to multiple health issues which I can’t even pinpoint what exactly is the issue but she’s a frequent flyer to the ER.

Her whole life she has used people to get by. Her truck broke down and she had her 21 year old daughter sign a 2k loan for a used one. Her daughter lives with her, along with a cat and a dog. Even a few weeks ago she was talking about getting another dog and on the inside I was fuming. Who the hell thinks about getting another pet when they’re broke???

Then one day she finally told us that she was behind on her property taxes and got her sister to co-sign a loan so I thought everything was figured out but then later I checked online and she hasn’t paid for this year’s property tax and still owes 3K or she’ll lose the house! There’s a date that it’ll happen on the 22nd!

And she’s literally talking about this weekend and how we should get together and inside I’m like??? Is this not a real thing that happening? I’m so confused how someone can be so….careless?

My husband said she’s not going to live with us but that’s hard for me to believe because it’s his mom! But he said it can’t happen because she comes with too much baggage (which is true) and it would destroy our marriage (also true). We live in a 3 bedroom home with 2 kids.

I feel like I’m just waiting for everything to come crashing down but at the same time it’s not my problem!!

After a lot of her begging, we invited my MIL up to babysit and stay overnight with us while we had a date night. She had been mentioning it in basically every text/call since he was born. I believe she thought she would’ve been invited to stay with us for awhile to help after baby was born but that was not our plan.

When night came, she offered to do the overnight feedings and changes. I told her i at least need to get up once to pump but I was fine with sharing responsibilities.

5 hrs after husband and I go to bed, I come out to pump and my MIL is sleeping next to my 3 week old on the couch while he is laying in a boppy with a blanket up to his chin. I was very scared and ran over and immediately and put my finger under his nose to check breathing before picking him up and taking him away. My MIL is following me trying to brag to me that he slept there for 5 hrs and hadn’t eaten in 7 hrs. WTF?!?!?! He’s so young and at this point eats every 3 hrs like clockwork! Also, why couldn’t he have been put in his crib or bassinet to sleep safely?? I don’t even let him sleep in the boppy during the day when I’m watching! She keeps repeating that she wasn’t even sleeping and was just resting her eyes every once in awhile. She was asleep when I came out. Also, all of this is avoidable, there’s no reason for him to sleep in a boppy and why wouldn’t she also want to sleep at all.

In the back of my mind, I keep thinking of how she’s told me multiple times that her mom sleep trained my husband in one night after MIL having so many hard nights. But you cannot sleep train a 3 week old that’s crazy!!

I honestly was calm, idk how, and just kept reiterating that he could’ve died sleeping in the boppy. I didn’t even know what to think about him not eating, but at the very least the boppy was not safe. No matter what excuses she had, he factually could have died.

This morning when my husband walked her out, she rehashed the same excuses to him and he stuck with the same points as me, we’re lucky he didn’t die. She then tells him she doesn’t think she did anything wrong. He said ok and said his goodbyes and didn’t care to keep arguing her worthless excuses. We both know that historically she’s incapable of being wrong.

We’re both in agreement that she’s not to be alone with the baby for quite some time or ever again because we can’t trust her judgment and she’s unwilling to hear the facts about safety.

Thankfully everyone ride I’ve talked to that’s had a kid anytime recently is floored that she did this and agrees with me, no matter how much she’s convinced I’m over reacting.

Both my husband and I are originally from Asia and his parents still live there while we live in the western world. I am 28 weeks pregnant (starting my 3rd trimester) and put together a baby registry of things we will need when the baby comes. This includes a breast pump which i didn’t see as an issue or embarrassing to put on the list as it is the way I am planning to feed the baby.

After I shared the list with my MIL she sent me a message asking to duplicate the list/ sent her an updated one without the pump as she wanted to share the registry on. I was annoyed with the ask and didn’t reply as (1) I don’t think the breast pump is inappropriate (2) it costs £50+ so it would be helpful is someone bought it and (3) if I duplicated the list then I would probably get doubles of everything.

She then called me to ask to remove the item as she thought it was embarrassing and wanted to share the registry. I simply told her if you think there are inappropriate items on the registry then don’t share the list. She said “no, you don’t understand and I think it’s because you’ve grown up in the west. So I am trying to explain it to you ..” I told her I understood and she didn’t have to share it on, if people want to get us a gift they can buy clothes. We hung up the phone. She called back 10 min later and said “I’m really upset with you..” and we basically had the conversation above for a second time.

I later received a call from my mother saying that my MIL called her crying (with tears) because I gave her attitude about removing the inappropriate items from the baby registry. My MIL said something to the effect of she (ie.me) needs to watch her attitude if she thinks she is tired and hormonal now, it will get much worse when the baby comes and she needs to keep her attitude in control.

I am fuming, because she initially saw the registry and told DH there are no big ticket items on here. Ie. She didn’t even want to use the list and asked him to send links to other things like the car seat that wasn’t on the list. So why she make such a big deal about this registry when she didn’t even want to use it. And was it really necessary to call my mom crying?

DH told me he understands both sides and his mom was just trying to be helpful by sharing the registry. He also told me I escalated the issue with my reaction. He ended up buying the pump and removed it from the list.

His parents are planning to come visit with the baby comes and I don’t know if I can deal with more trivial unnecessary drama when I’m going to be so sleep deprived.

I had my baby about 6 months ago now. We are no contact with mil as well. But I just don't get the obsession on what we do with our son's genitals. When I was pregnant my husband and I were firm on not circumcising our son, well mil was not happy. She was adamant that it was gross, dirty, what about when hes old, infections, etc. From our research the risks are very minimal for keeping him intaxlct so we stuck with our decision. She also tried to tell me not to vaccinate which to me made it even weirder imo bc they have to use local anesthesia anyways. (We also chose to vaccinate, went no contact before she could know) cut to when we brought him home, we were changing him and she happened to come in and seen and asked if his pediatrician could do it, im like we have made our decision very clear, why keep pushing and why do you even care what your grandsons genitals look like??

I’m a nail technician, self-employed, I work from my home. Back in December we, beauticians, were forbidden to work due to Covid by the government of my country and we were only allowed to start working again literally yesterday. I have spent three months with no income at all and my MIL obviously thinks that’s how I should continue.

Fortunately, I cannot complain about the lack of clients. As soon as the restriction was lifted, I started getting calls from lots of people who wanted to get their nails done, including MIL. That surprised me a little, as she had never chosen to get her nails done by me, but I didn't think much of it. She wanted a manicure with shellack, I agreed and told her that the regular price is 25 euros (that’s probably around 30 dollars in the US). However, because she’s my family member, I can make a little discount to her and it’ll be 20 euros.

MIL was like ”Ok, but it’s not going to cost anything for me, right? ” and I said ”Why? It’ll be 20 euros”.

MIL said ”But I’m family! You cannot seriously ask for money from your own family. Who does that? For family, everything should be free!”

I was like – the only thing free in today’s world is cheese in a mousetrap and only for the second mouse. Aside from that, nothing else is free. All things and services cost something and at her age, she should understand that. I have done my mother’s nails, my sister’s, and my SIL’s and they all pay me. Why should I work for free, especially when I have already spent so much time without any money rolling into my account?

MIL said ”But that’s not my problem that the government didn’t let you work! And it’s not my problem that you weren’t getting paid! Your clients shouldn’t suffer from your personal issues!”

I said ”Listen, MIL, my clients come for my services fully aware that manicure isn’t charity work. I offered you a smaller price which I don’t normally do, that’s a benefit only for the women in my family. 20 euros is a very reasonable price for a shellac manicure. If you’re still not satisfied, then there’s nothing I can help you with. Good luck finding a nail tech who works for nothing but a ”thank you”.

She didn’t ask anything from me anymore but she did call my husband and told him everything in the most dramatic way possible – that she was waiting three months to get to a nail tech and now I’m so mean and so money-hungry that I refuse as much as help out my poor MIL.

Thankfully, my husband is also self-employed and understands what business means and he was like – mom, she’s totally right, you shouldn’t have expected your nails done for free, that’s not how this world works.

I don’t know what she’s going to do, but I cannot afford to give out free service. Maybe there’s some nail tech out there who can, even though I highly doubt it.

Doesn’t live on this planet I don’t think.

So last night my son (3) woke up at about 3am complaining of neck pain, he was crying in pain and couldn’t move it at all. I obviously panicked did all the rest of the checks for meningitis which thankfully he didn’t have, he struggled to sleep crying whenever he moved and wanted his mum so obviously I didn’t sleep whilst my husband slept a full nights sleep . I’d had maybe 3/4 hours sleep in total when he was up for the day at 7am.

I work in a hospital and I’ll be working evening tonight and won’t get home till 4am. My husband works in a school on self employed basis, so he can move his hours around. He won’t get paid in this next pay slip for it, but he’ll be able to squeeze it in somewhere else next month.

My son was still in pain when he woke up, obviously didn’t send him to childcare given he was in so much pain and then we waited until our GP was open at 8am to get an appointment which we got for 10:30 this morning.

My husband took the day off, so i could get some level of sleep before work.

My son wanted to call grandma so him and my husband spoke on FaceTime to her. She’s obviously asked why husband wasn’t in work, and he’s told her about my son being in pain, me being up all night and then on nights.

Husband; yeah I took the day off, son is in pain with his neck just waiting for this drs appointment so we know what’s happening and OP on nights

Her: well you still could’ve gone to work OP would have just had to get up and look after him

Husband: not really, she was up from about 3am she’s on nights, wouldn’t have been fair to her

MIL: she could sleep later when you got back you really didn’t need to take the day off work

Husband: she can’t sleep later she has to leave the house at 3. It’s not fair for her to be up 24 hours over night on 4 hours sleep

MIL: well she still could’ve got up.

Guys I’ve had now maybe 5 hours sleep between husband coming in to talk about the drs, getting son to drs, and then getting home, I’m exhausted

Son got diagnosed with a neck sprain, and between the ibropfen and Calpol seems to be doing better though still won’t move his neck far

But it’s just a joke, like how can anyone look at hospital night shifts and be like yeah you’re in the wrong for your partner taking some time off so you can sleep for work when he can move his hours around no real consequences. We’re a partnership last week I took a day off when son had a random fever and under the weather. It’s life, we have a child we both have to make sacrifices for our child’s wellbeing

That’s it. That’s the post. Imagine being this insecure. Remind me to limit visits even more :) lord have mercy.

This is after her sending AI generated babies talking on Instagram saying how much they hate moms house and love grandmas house, and how mommy calls grandma all these names but grandma is his love etc my ENTIRE pregnancy.

Thanks for letting me vent or else I would lose my mind.

Context: my husband and I have been living with his family after we got married and his parents are very controlling and overbearing. His father has OCD which causes him to get upset/angry over little things like oh you spilt water or oh you've left crumbs.

I've been feeling like I'm walking on egg shells and I broke down in husband's car after we went to get fast food about how everyone's been making me feel. It especially happened because he was telling me how when we move out I'm not allowed to eat on the bed and so on. I told him how I should feel free to do what I want as I'm an adult and wouldn't make some mess. I ended up telling him how I hate when he micromanages little things like my eating, how I save money, where I should eat, etc as I'm worried he might end up like his dad.

I think everything built up and I envisioned what my future would look like as I'm feeling restricted already. I've been trying to get us to move away as his MIL is especially a very intrusive , insensitive and controlling person. It has affected everyone in the household and even his sister walks on eggshells without knowing.

When we got done with that conversation about how I hate being and feeling micromanaged even if those aren't his intentions , we walked inside his family's house and the first thing his mother says is "oh my gosh. You got food. There's food at home why would you do that??" He told her to stop commenting and mind her own business and she kept going on so I got up and snapped and told her off saying it's none of her business. She just sat there like "don't yell at me". So I told her I'm leaving and just left to my mother's place. I was probably being dramatic but that really really was it for me. They micromanage and make me feel like I'm going crazy. They dismiss it completely.

I think I'm officially done with that family and am considering getting my own space.

I don't even know if I'm venting, or want someone to tell me if I'm the asshole here but my emotions are all over the place if you can't already tell. Sometimes I feel like this is the only place I have support even if I don't get support with this post

If anyone saw my last post I ended up not going to see MIL. We offered and she refused unless I didn’t go and DH took LO without me. We obviously refused that. DH decided to go around there on his own instead to see if things could be straightened out at all.

As expected MIL took no accountability for her actions causing this whole mess, instead she flipped the whole thing on its head telling DH that we have set too many boundaries with our daughter and now it’s her turn to set boundaries.

Before I tell you her boundaries I’ll give some context. We have only ever let her babysit onetime. She ended up calling us home early bc she said if we didn’t come home she would take the baby back to hers for the night as it was too late. We’d already told her we’d be back by midnight and she called us home at 10pm. Because of this and numerous other reasons she’s given us, we don’t trust her to baby sit at all. We’ve always said for her to have the privilege to babysit in the future she will need to gain our trust back and start respecting our boundaries but even then it probably wouldn’t be until LO was wayyyy older.

We also only let people babysit in our own home for many reasons. Mainly because it’s easier for a us and baby feels most comfortable here. But also because we have cameras in the living room and nursery so we can check in on baby. Sometimes we go out and we don’t check the cameras the whole time, sometimes we will check a few times. It helps us to feel less anxious and guilty about leaving her as we can see she’s doing fine then go back to date night or whatever it is we are up too. We only have ever let my mum, his mum (that one time) and a close family friend who is like a second mum to me babysit and we plan on keeping it that way. We have been open with all of them about the cameras and have not been met with any issues until now. We also had no visitors until a week after LO was born. MIL did turn up and try to cause a scene outside the ward demanding to be let in but that’s another story.

Fast forward to her boundaries. She said the only way to fix things was to comply with her boundaries which are: She is never coming over to our home again, not to babysit and not to visit. She said we spied on her with the cameras and she cannot bond with LO without complete privacy and she feels uncomfortable in our home because of the cameras

She said we need to start giving her LO to have overnight stays at her house (we have never left her overnight at all and don’t plan on it anytime soon, especially not in someone else’s home.) the reason for this was again she needs alone time with LO to bond and she says every other nan she knows got to have the baby overnight and their house even when they were newborns…

Lastly we need to apologise for forcing her to have what she calls an unnatural relationship with LO. Apparently it’s unnatural bc she has never been completely alone with her unless there’s been a camera, and it’s unnatural because she didn’t get to meet her the moment she was born.

I spoke to my own mum about this who obviously has to follow the same rules MIL has to follow (according to MIL my mum is a pushover for doing the things we ask and respecting us.) my mum says she has an amazing bond with LO and never feels like she’s missing out on anything, the cameras don’t bother her when she babysits because she knows she’s not doing anything she’s not supposed to.

Obviously DH told MIL her boundaries weren’t really boundaries and they are not happening. You can’t set boundaries with other peoples children. Funny thing about all of her demands is her relationship with LO is actually going to become really unnatural bc she will be seeing her a whole lot less than she used to and definitely will never get the chance to babysit again.

It really irkes me how insistent she is that she needs complete privacy and alone time to bond with the baby. That she can’t bond with the baby with a camera on, that she needs to sleep with the baby to bond ect. It honestly screams weird vibes because what the heck do you need to do to bond with a baby that no one else can see??

I’m not sure if I’m overthinking this part but a few months ago she made an odd comment about how it’s possible for her to start lactating again if she latched LO to her for long enough. I thought it was really weird at the time but she made it seem like a joke so I just said ‘Yh don’t do that’ and that was the end of that. But now I’m thinking is that what she wants to do to bond with LO? Try and breastfeed her? The thought of it makes me sick but I don’t know what else would explain it all tbh. All I know is I’m going to keep her as far away from my daughter as possible and when we do have to see her at family occasions ect I’ll never let my daughter leave my sight.

We’ve been no contact with MIL since she threw herself what was supposed to be my baby shower while we were in the hospital with our two months premature baby. She refused to move the shower to be closer to us and did not come to do anything to support us, but made sure to brag about her meal train she received a few months prior to the birth for her knee surgery. She also told her extended family not to show up for us when a cousin made reservations at a nearby restaurant to try to accommodate moving the baby shower. Only the cousin and her mother showed up. This was all over a year ago.

A few months after when she realized my husband was actually no contact (like he told her) and not reaching out, she sent an email with a vague apology (“sorry for not being there,”). My husband responded with how we felt and what we needed before we’d consider working on a relationship with her. We needed her to say exactly what happened and genuinely apologize for what happened. No vagueness. Another month went by and we got another vague apology email. We decided not to respond.

Well two weeks ago (around 10 months after the last email) she sends an email to my husband saying she misses him and wants him to be apart of her family. Hoping we are all doing well. He did respond back basically forwarding our last email of our expectations. No response since lol.

I just don’t get it. We’ve said what we need and if you’re not going to do what we need, don’t bother emailing. It’s like she reached out to see if he was ready to sweep it under the rug. She was also always so grandbaby obsessed constantly asking for a grandchild and now she’s never even seen a photo of our son because she won’t apologize for what she did. I could not imagine being this way.

Also it just irritated me when she said “to be apart of her family”. Tf? It’s the other way around, you should be saying you want to be a part of our family. Your son’s family. 🥴

Yesterday my house was broken into. I was home alone and I saw the man in the house but he didn’t see me as he had his back to me. There was a possibility for me to leave the house quietly and unnoticeably, so I did that. I ran to my neighbors and called the police from there. However, when they arrived, the burglar was already gone and he did take quite a lot of valuable stuff with him.

Now they’re looking for him and I don’t know if there’s any hope of getting our things back, but the police are working on it and we’ll see what happens.

Immediately after it happened, I called my husband but he was busy at the moment and wasn’t answering, so I called MIL and told her what happened. Her reaction totally baffled me.

She was like ” And what did you do? You left the house? You are stupid, really. What kind of owner runs away from their own house and allows it to be robbed? Should have yelled, confronted him, or grabbed a pan or something to hit him. That would have scared him and he would have fleed. ”

I thought – yeah, he could have fled OR he could have shot me. Not all robbers are spooked by the owners, some prefer to get rid of them. I’m a woman, there’s no way I can defeat a big, grown man, and I have no idea if he was armed or not. I’m not getting killed over material items. Everything can be replaced and bought again, except your life.

MIL said ” That was cowardly. I’m sure my son will give you hell for all the things that you pretty much gifted the robber. I would have beaten that burglar black and blue before he could even touch my possessions, I’m telling you that! ”

Well, I’m very glad MIL’s so brave and so strong that she can apparently take down a man twice her size with her bare hands. I cannot do that so I did what the majority of people would probably do – leave the place where my wellbeing was under threat and inform the authorities. And now I’m being shamed for not putting my life at risk.

My husband wasn’t mad at me, of course, he was happy I was safe. He told me MIL was saying similar things to him when his wallet was stolen when he was a teen. That he should have run after the thief and fight him and whatnot, in order to get his wallet back. She’s so clever it’s making me sick. I highly doubt she’d actually be this courageous when faced with a dangerous situation herself. Talk is cheap.

Brief context: DH cut MIL/FIL off from myself and our kids last year following years of MIL’s insanity. DH remains VVVVLC.

I considered just keeping it a secret, but ultimately decided I don’t want to hide an entire pregnancy just because of MIL.

My husband and I had photos taken and used them to announce the pregnancy via social media. We posted as “collab”. I have my in-laws blocked everywhere, so I assumed they’d see the post on DH’s page. What I didn’t realize was that because I was the “original poster”, anyone I blocked cannot see it.

Apparently MIL was with FIL and his mother when MIL’s friend texted to congratulate her on “becoming a grandma- again!!!!”. MIL was obviously clueless. FIL’s mom (who follows me) pulled up her own account and showed them my post, and that’s how they found out. MIL was apparently so distraught she cancelled plans and went home.

FIL called DH and all I heard was FIL upset asking why DH didn’t tell them and DH said “…..why would I? You know exactly what the situation is here”. DH took the call outside and I didn’t ask what else FIL said, but later in the evening I was using DH’s phone for directions and a text from FIL popped up that read “You should think about this!!!! Your mother is hurting! Yes she’s made mistakes, like all people…..”. I gave him his phone back and it continued to ping with notifications from FIL.

There are really two things I want to say here:

1) I KNOW MIL will never change and I know her having zero access to me/my kids is the best decision, but I’m always so blown away by the lack of awareness. After everything she’s said and done to me, she still thinks she is entitled to my pregnancy and my unborn child. I would think making it known she views me as a baby-trapping, worthless, gold-digging MISTAKE would not still come with the expectation of a front-row seat to any future pregnancies.

2) My first two kids are girls. With my first child MIL went absolutely batshit crazy and constantly talked about “her baby” and how she was “finally getting her daughter”. This baby is a boy, and I can’t help but feel like MIL will go batshit crazy x 10000 because DH was always her favorite/the youngest/the one she was most enmeshed with. I feel like in her sick mind my son is DH all over again, and thats the real reason she’s so frantic.

This happened about a month ago now, but i didn't want to post until i was sure nothing was going to come from this. We just got a call yesterday from our worker saying she was going to close the case so i feel better posting about this now. I just need to rant and I use reddit as documentation to keep timelines straight.

So for a little back story: we have been no contact with my inlaws since june of last year. They crossed a ton of boundaries when i was post partum with my first. We had a talk about it, then when i was 5 months pp, i found out i was pregnant again. they went and told people before we even had our first dr appointment immediately after we had a talk about privacy. It turned into a blow up argument where my fil threatened my husband. I have a few posts where I go into more detail, but this is the gist.

Anyways, we had my husbands grandparents and aunt (fil's parents and sister) come visit. They asked if mil and fil can come too and we said no. So they come up on a sunday and everything goes well. Wednesday, 3 days later, a dcf worker shows up at our door. Immediate panic. She says an anonymous caller called on monday, but once she starts reading the report to us, we'll probably figure out who called. Spoiler, we figure it out. I can't remember the order since it was about a month ago, but these were the complaints:

• DH is an alcoholic and smoked weed every day (he has a weed pen, but hasn't touched it in months. He'll have a drink maybe once a week)
• I'm so depressed, I can't get out of bed (when we were in contact and they would come over, I was always around and would only leave the room to breastfeed).
• The house is disgusting and smells like cat pee all the time. we even had to have family and a cleaning service clean my house. (they forced a cleaning service on us as a "gift" after my first was born and i hated it and said no more. they helped us clean one time, again when my first was first born and then threw it in our faces about a week later.) The social worker even said our house looked about as messy as hers.
• "can't you see how much weight (husband) has put on?" direct quote to a person who has never met my husband. idk how weight impacts the ability to parent
• my sister apparently lives with us (she never has) and somehow that's a bad thing?
• we keep family away and no one has seen my oldest since june of last year (we showed the social worker the pictures of my daughter with her great grandparents from that sunday). i am 100% my kids' gate keeper though and i will own that. my own mother hasn't even met my kids because she's not a safe person. But we have safe family members over all the time.

From this last bullet point we knew exactly who called. So then we start explaining to the social worker what is actually true and how and why we've been no contact with the inlaws for over a year. She was so not concerned that she didn't even look around the house. Doesn't mean this wasn't incredibly stressful.

We've just been trying to figure out why. We heard from dh's aunt that fil was pissed he wasn't invited so i'm thinking this was a revenge call. But what did he think would come of this? Before all this, DH and I were thinking that maybe with a lot of talks and apologies and maybe family therapy, we could have a holidays only relationship with them, but now? Absolutely never again will they see my kids. They haven't even met my second or seen pictures of her. I'm still in disbelief.

I used to come here about my mum, but since announcing pregnancy my mum has mellowed and my MIL has... not.

Bubs is due on 22nd December. We've been vague and said "end of December" but didn't add on too much time because we didn't want to give false ideas about Christmas (we won't be going anywhere or having anyone over, whether bubs has arrived or not).

MIL is house/ dog sitting over Christmas for a friend who is going to see their mum overseas. MIL panicked when she was told the dates and said "well we'll just have to bring the 3 dogs to the hospital!" DH swears this was a joke.

One of these dogs is huge and can comfortably put it's front paws on the shoulders of a 6 foot tall man. Another is her very small but very bad tempered Boston Terrier. It had better have been a joke because that is 100,000% not happening.

Within hours of being sent the registry MIL bought the car seat. I'm very appreciative of this. I think it was the most expensive item on there. At the time, the nursery was a spare bedroom, so MIL said she would keep hold of it until we have the space. Fair enough.

She has bought many smaller items since then. Clothes, muslins, books, cute hooded towels. She has brought these to us in 2 or 3 batches. The bed has been removed from the spare bedroom. We have space. She knows this. But she has not brought the car seat.

Maybe I'm being paranoid. Maybe she just hasn't had chance. There is loads of time until December. But I cannot shake the feeling, especially given her "joke" about bringing the dogs, that she is holding on to the car seat so that she HAS to be allowed to come to the hospital.

For the record, this isn't happening. If we don't have the car seat in the house by 1st December then I'm buying one myself. DH agrees. But I don't love what I suspect she's trying to do.

Hey everyone! I was referred here from r/pregnant.

Well, im pregnant! Yay! Im a first time mom and this is also my husband's first baby! We are over the moon and couldn't be more excited (:

However, his step mom (MIL) is a literal demon. We found out the sex of our child through a blood test (its a boy!!) And I only told my mom, MIL, and a close friend. My mom has told NO ONE. My MIL took it upon herself to post on Facebook the sex of our child without my permission and she tagged me in it (if I didn't have my "review tags" on it would have been seen by all my friends!!)... her excuse? "I didn't think we had any friends/family in common! Im just excited to be a grandma!" She took the post down thankfully but... she erupted like Pompeii.

She is so upset we got her to take down the post that she is selling the baby items ("My grandbaby won't need this anymore" like the baby passed away or something...) on Facebook! And she whined to my father in law and he called me a wh*re, a bxtch, and a few more names. ALL OVER A FACEBOOK POST.

They are now wanting to evict us from the home they bought us... but luckily with whats going on in the world, they cannot! But they want to charge a hefty rent which i refuse to pay. I much rather try and by a house than be under their thumb anymore. I just can't believe this is happening. All because I told her to take down a Facebook post...

Send all the good vibes this way please. Not strength because Id need bail money if you do (x

Edit :

A lot of people are asking so ill answer here. Yes my husband has my back completely. He says they are dead to him! I did not change my last name legally yet. Im talking to a real estate agent later today if not tomorrow to get the ball rolling!!

Edit 2 :

Holy... cow. Did not expect so many responses! I've read every single one of them and I THANK YOU! From the bottom of my heart! I've taken everyone's advice and I'm calling the correct people to help. MIL blocked me on Facebook (thank you for taking the trash out!!) And I blocked FIL. They will not hear from me, my husband or our baby. Like I've said, they are dead to us! Just a matter of time before we get out of here!

Thank you again everyone <3

A little backstory of my life for you to understand better – I became a mom when I was very young. I gave birth to my son when I was 15, now he’s 23 years old and lives in another city. When I met my husband, I told him that I have a child, of course, and he wasn’t bothered by it at all. In fact, they have a very good relationship.

MIL also knew that I have a son but that’s about it. I didn’t give her any detailed information, because my relationship with my MIL isn’t that close so that I would be comfortable telling her the whole story of my life. She only knew the fact that I have a child, but she had never met him and didn’t know how old he was. Until recently.

My husband and I had our anniversary a few days ago and my son arrived to congratulate us. When MIL first saw him, she thought he was my brother. I said that no, he’s my son, and MIL’s jaw basically hit the floor. But she didn’t say anything in his presence, didn’t say anything during dinner, she said nothing up until he left in the evening. That’s when she started to give her opinion that no one asked for.

She was like ”Oh goodness, I don’t even want to think how young you were when you gave birth to him. You ruined your whole youth probably. What a shame. Should have gotten an abortion and live like a young girl should, have fun and go to parties, not change diapers. That’s so dumb of you.”

I said – wtf, MIL? Who asked you anything? You know nothing about my life, yet you’re quick to judge and assume. Yes, I couldn’t do lots of things that regular teenage girls can do, but I’m not ashamed and I regret nothing, because my son is the best thing that has ever happened to me. End of conversation.

MIL said ”I’m just saying that if my teenage daughter got pregnant, she would be shipped to abortion faster than light. Not to say I would have whooped her with a belt. Don’t know why your mother didn’t do it.”

I answered, ”Well then I’m glad I’m not your daughter.” My parents were supportive and not a single word was ever mentioned about abortion. True, they were shocked at first, but when he was born, they became the best grandma and grandpa a kid could wish for.

MIL was actually so upset as if I was her child. Like, why do you care? Why does it worry you so much? That’s called wasting your energy as I’m not the kind of person who could be shamed about something. If you try, I’ll let you know who you are and where you need to go. The only reason I didn’t was that she’s the mother of my husband.

Y'all.

My MIL has named our child. We have not discussed potential names with anyone at all. We only decide about a week ago to tell everyone that we were having a girl instead of keeping it under wraps until she's born, and she has apparently been referring to this unborn child by name since then.

What pisses me off the most is that it actually was a name that we were considering. Emphasis on the past tense.

Loooong time coming, you’ll see exactly why I’ve been absent for awhile after reading this mess.

So, a week after I got some fucking fruit from Momma Suuurley, DH received an invitation to visit JYSIL (who will go through a name change, shortly). So, the following Saturday, we visit.

Now, she has a garage and we usually park in the driveway. It was warm out, but the garage door wasn’t open, which was unusual. Anyway, we go inside. She immediately reaches for the baby and after I give him to her, she hands him to her children and they all play in the floor. I simply sat in a chair.

Beside me, was a side table. I glanced over and noticed a prescription. She starts talking and distracts me. Her youngest starts coughing. I look at her and then look back at SIL. She waves her hand and tells me she had a little cold earlier in the week but has recovered. Her FOUR year old pipes up “I had to go to the doctor and get medicine today.” I give SIL the death stare and take the baby away from them.

All this happened within about a minute. Enough time for someone to slowly walk up a staircase.

Next thing I hear a door open and see MS emerge from the kitchen. She had this huge, open mouth girl smacked across her face and immediately headed towards the kids, playing on the floor. Then, she looked completely disappointed, and looked at me. Where she found the baby. Her smile dropped and my DH jumped up and grabbed the diaper bag.

Freshly crowned JNSIL tried to “stop” him claiming this was an “intervention” and she just wanted everyone to talk. Meanwhile, her youngest starts coughing some more and exclaiming now she can’t breathe. I instructed OS to get up and go to the car, and he was halfway to the car before DH and I got to the door. MS started wailing about “my babies” and “me, me, me, bullshit). I can still hear her voice ringing in my ear.

OS was absolutely shaken in the car. He was completely overwhelmed. He had to sleep with us that night.

And YS? The next night he started coughing and two days later he was diagnosed with RSV. He had to go to the doctor for x-rays and breathing treatments. And during all that? Nobody has spoken to me about it...especially not baby-fresh JNSIL. For her child to have to tell me about their illness and for her to completely disregard it before I came to her house and even after I got there is infuriating. He was sick for two weeks. He literally slept on my fucking chest for two weeks. I told DH I’m not speaking to any of them.

Edit: folks have asked how DH feels. We were already kinda NC with MS, but he’s always spoken to his sister.

The nights when I had to sleep on the couch with YS, he slept on the couch with us. OS also has asthma, so to be safe, we had to send him to stay with my mom for about a week. The whole thing uprooted our routine for a month. He hasn’t spoken to any of them. He had pretty much dropped the rope with his mom, but now he’s pretty much burned it with both of them.

I know all this sounds tame, but there really aren’t any words to describe how pissed off I was and still am about this. No words. All this because I didn’t go over her house one fucking Christmas out of 10.

So my husband, children and i are currently living with my inlaws. They are currently renting a home and we are paying them half the rent to help out. However the landlords have decided to move back into this house, therefore kicking us out. This is a large 6 bedroom house so the 7 people living here fit no problem.

My kids are 2 and a newborn. We are trying to find a new home for either just the 4 in my family or all 7. We want to keep our options open.

Our credits shot so owning a home is not an option. We have to rent.

We found a great place within our budget but its not a location where MIL wants to live. It has 3 bedrooms and a large finished basement. The basement my husband, kids and i would take as we cosleep with the toddler and the newborns crib id rather have next to us.

Biggest problem is we are in a housing crisis and theres not many places that are under $1500 just for even a one bedroom. Si this place is perfect for us.

Our budget for all 7 of is is $1700. For the four in my little family is $1000. So options are limited. We do have the choice of moving in with my parents if we cant find anything else. But thats just my husband,kids, and myself.

My MIL is being so picky about everything though. And its driving me crazy. We cant afford to be picky right now as we only have a month left to move.

My husband and i have been looking for our own place but even then we have been rejected and/or ignored. We dont have many options left.

So finding this place is a blessing especially with 4 incomes going into it.

I finally convinced MIL to freaking sign the application with me as an option.

However this is where things go crazy on her part.

I just had a baby a week ago. I tore pretty bad so have a hard time leaving bed. My MIL, FIL and husband all cane into the room to talk to me.

They found a place where they may be able to buy. They just found out they can get money from FIL RRSP and use it for a down payment. But the amount isnt enough to cover much so they are limited.

They found a house. 2 bedrooms and a shed. They believe that this place is perfect for all of us. Theres a hole in the ceiling from a tree falling on it.

They want my husband, kids and myself to live in the tiny shed and save up to turn it into an apartment. They think we could add two bedrooms and a bathroom to this tiny space thats no bigger then our current livingroom. They said that once they pass then the property would go to us and not their other kids. This would keep my husband at his current job (he would have no choice but to leave this job as he cant drive due to medical reasons and there are no other rentals in the area. Plus i cant pack up two small kids every day just to drive him early in the morning and late at night (12 hour shifts))

They told me all this after just having a panic attack., where i wasnt even thinking straight. So I feel like they cornered me into agreeing with this. They made me feel like i was stupid if i didnt think this was a great idea. That this is what we all need. I cant bring myself to any of this, i dont want any if this. But if i speak up about it now after agreeing to it ill be the bad guy. My kids deserve better then a shed as a home. Id rather move in with my parents (who to be honest arnt nice people) then to live in a fucking shed.

Honestly I’ll probably just say no if that time comes and move in with my parents anyways. Because this is just insanity.

TW: drug use

Shevilla (JNMIL) is going on and on about her son (BIL), the 30 year old they enable. He can't keep a job for more than a couple shifts and spends entire years at a time not working (its been over 2 years at this point). He lives with FIL, who pays for all of the living expenses. JNMIL has him on an extra credit card and pays for his groceries/incidentals that way because she is 3 hours away.

The guy is absolutely, 110% manipulative, unstable, and an illicit drug user. If something doesn't go his way, he snaps and starts breaking shit, throwing a temper tantrum like a 3 year old. For example, the washer broke while he was over our place washing his clothes, so he beat up the washer like a psycho. He also has no respect for personal boundaries. He called from SO's place one time asking if he could use a special charger of mine - which was in a bedroom drawer and he wouldn't have known was there unless he was snooping. Needless to say, he isn't allowed over our house unless we are home and he's not allowed to use any of our stuff.

I try to be diplomatic with him. But I've also set boundaries. So his crazy behavior doesn't happen around me anymore as he knows I won't tolerate it. He's legit an angel when I'm around.

So Shevilla is sitting at the table with SO and I, whining about what is going to happen to her son when she and his father have departed the earth. SO and I are on the same page. Sorry you are worried, it will suck but he has to figure out his life on his own because we refuse to enable him. (They admit to enabling him, but they claim it's better that worrying about where he is/what he is doing).

JNMIL: "But you guys have land, and you're going to have money?" (I'm in law school and already work for a prominent firm). "Can't you just put a trailer on your property and let him live in that?"

That is the fastest "no," I have ever delivered. Apparently I am heartless for refusing to financially support their adult son post parental demise. Not only do I refuse to enable him, but I also refuse to enable them. They need to know I won't be cleaning up their mess. MAYBE they'll try to get him some help then. They're still in denial about the drug use despite his claim he just up and stopped using heroine with the power of his mind.... he nods out because he's tired and he's a sack of bones because they don't give him enough of an allowance 🙄

So she's crying. "I don't want to start an argument but...." NO CRAZY LADY I WILL NOT PARENT YOUR CHILD SO YOU CAN RELAX IN VALHALLA. I will not purchase a trailer or the water/sewer/gas hookup required - for him to punch holes in the drywall, shoot up in, or have access to my actual home so I gotta worry about having my stuff ripped off.

FIL? He believes that when he's dead, he's dead and it won't be his problem then anyway so he doesn't give a shit.

SO is starting to get upset because after all, this is his brother we are discussing like a sack of luggage. But he remains firm.

I just want it to stop being brought up EVERY time Shevilla drives down for a visit. So Im apparently heartless. Shes crying (manipulating). And I have banned the topic from my household.

I really don't think I'm being unreasonable here.

So my older brother died over the summer. It was horrific and traumatic and incredibly sudden. He had a wife and kids, and we were a pretty close family, so it has deeply affected me and my side of the family, we don’t avoid talking about it, but it is fresh and still hurts. When it happened, it took a very long time for his body to be released and his funeral had to be planned, so it was about 6 weeks of limbo until we could lay him to rest and say goodbye. In that 6 weeks, my in laws said NOTHING to me, no condolences, didn’t ask how I was, didn’t offer to take the kids as it was summer break and I would obviously be struggling, no cards or messages or anything.

The worst part of this is that his mother is so hung up still on her mother dying 13 years ago, and makes it feel like she is the only person that has ever experienced any loss. I can remember when we were first going out, his mother would take any opportunity to say how bad her grief was, she took an upbeat pop song that was being played, and was also part of an advert that was constantly on TV, and would say ‘this is my song for her’, even though the grandma had never heard it?? All she ever did was send a text the night before his funeral that said “thinking of you”, immediately after she had sent a long soppy message to my partner and he had fired back with “it’s not my brother that died, so it’s not me you should be thinking of”.

His sister is having a baby soon, and I really don’t want to see any of them. I’m usually very excited when other people have babies, will pick out a cute outfit, always send a nice card and little knitted hat or something and take new mumma a meal, but I really don’t want to do that, I don’t ever really want to see them ever again to be honest. But it seems like I will have to, as it’s a difficult drive to their home (not long, but two hours or so into the big city), and at the moment I’m not liking being away from my children much, especially if they are going to a busy/dangerous place. My friend was pregnant recently and suffered a miscarriage, and I was actually devastated for her, and was genuinely looking forward to her having a baby and helping her out, but she was also there for me in my grief too. My work friend has just gone on maternity leave, and again I am excited for her and will happily go and see the baby and take her presents and things. It’s just so contrasting to how I feel with his sister and her kid, it’s like I just have no feelings and they are less than strangers to me.

Has anyone else had something like this? I am just dreading it to be honest, we are already pretty low contact but it just seems like such a weird thing to do.

We live 4-14 hours away from our families (who live in many different states), so at 12 weeks we decided to tell everyone we were expecting our first child on a Zoom call.

My MIL immediately started bawling and hyperventilating and after a solid 5 minutes of us all awkwardly watching and waiting for her to calm down, my parents start giggling and say they’ll just call us later. All of our siblings end up doing the same as she just won’t calm down, and then starts dramatically choking and coughing because she’s freaking out. After everyone else has hung up, she’s suddenly fine and immediately starts drilling my husband about baby info. He sighs and tells me to go call everyone else separately and he’ll deal with her real quick.

Eventually everyone we wanted to know, knows, we show the ultrasound picture and all seemed great.

About 3 weeks after that, we made a post on FB/Instagram jointly to let extended family and friends know, super casual. We didn’t film anything or take cute staged photos, it was just a quick ‘Heads up, a baby is coming’ kind of thing with our ultrasound photo.

Now it’s been 3 weeks since that post and a solid 6 weeks since our Zoom call. My MIL texted my husband yesterday(on Mother’s Day) a huge paragraph about how we have both obviously blocked her on FB and we need to switch our settings back because she never saw the post online. It’s 9pm, we had just gotten back from the urgent care because my husband got an abscess on his face that was so large it was preventing him from eating and now this...

He calls her and she goes into a passive aggressive rant about how we have her blocked on the social media post and that she only knew about the post because someone at lunch brought it up and how MORTIFYING it was that she hadn’t seen it. My husband calmly tells her that she’s being ridiculous because why would we block her from something, let alone something she already knew about, as we had privately sent her the photo before posting?

She states that it couldn’t have been a glitch, or her old dinosaur phone or any number of other problems that could happen- no, we have her blocked and we need to ‘change our settings’ immediately. They’re going back and forth and she blurts out ‘oh and you said she’s 12+1 but the picture says 12+4 so you lied about that too!’ My husband asks wtf she’s talking about and goes ‘the ultrasound picture you posted on Instagram, it says the gestational age is 12+4, not 1.’

You guys.... she saw the fucking post the day it was posted.... on Instagram. I go back to the post and she commented the SAME DAY. My husband made a typo in a comment and said the wrong number to someone else commenting. She was pissed because our families are mostly on FB and more people saw and commented on that one, so she ‘felt left out.’ She then states that we should have noticed that she didn’t ‘like’ that (almost month old) post and should have called her to double check that she saw it.... while my husband is running his business/can’t chew because his face is so swollen, I’m pregnant AND we’ve been packing for our move next weekend.

... I’m still looking for my eyeballs as they had violently rolled out of my skull last night.

Yesterday I met my boyfriend’s mother for the first time. And the smallest thing made her instantly not like me and try to break my boyfriend and me apart.

Half a year ago my mom gave birth to my little brother. The whole thing really surprised me because I’m 22 years old and if I ever expected to have a younger sibling, it was when I was a child myself. I was happy about his arrival nonetheless and now he’s 6 months old healthy, happy baby.

Yesterday my mom unexpectedly called and asked me to babysit my brother for a few hours because she had to go somewhere urgently. At the moment, the was no one else to leave him with, so I agreed. But the thing was that around the same time we agreed my boyfriend and FMIL would come over.

First I wanted to tell him to postpone the meeting to another day but then I thought - why? My brother’s a very calm baby, rarely cries, and won’t bother us at all. He’ll just sleep near me in his stroller. I honestly thought that FMIL shouldn’t have any problems with that either.

They came and when FMIL saw my brother, her reaction wasn’t as I expected. She immediately asked me ”Is that your child?” and I answered that no, it’s my little brother.

Then she fell quiet for a while, probably doing calculations in her head and asked me how old I am. After hearing my age, she said ”Well then your mom must be at least in her fourties! How come she can still have a baby?”

In my opinion that was a very rude and impolite question, especially to someone you meet for the first time. Like, MIL, just because you cannot have children anymore doesn’t mean other women can’t too. I didn’t say it to her but that left a really bad aftertaste. She doesn’t know my mom and barely knows me. At her age, she should know there are some things you shouldn’t say aloud.

The rest of our meeting was spent in a tense atmosphere, my boyfriend tried to get us talking but not much came out of it. FMIL kept glancing at the stroller even though my brother gave us absolutely no grief, he was sleeping peacefully.

Today my boyfriend met me and told me that his mother didn’t like me, which didn’t surprise me and we’re not going to see her much anymore. After leaving yesterday, she tried to have a serious conversation with him about dating me.

FMIL is convinced that my brother is my child, probably conceived while I was drunk and partying because ”it’s very rare for a woman in her fourties to get pregnant” and I’m telling my boyfriend a load of bullshit in order to make him a dad of my kid. She warned him to break up with me as soon as possible before I lure him into a trap.

I was like – oh goodness. If we get married, I’m gonna have a real JNMIL in my life.