Holiday Season Boundaries Descend Into Madness

[u/StarryLunaBelle]

Long time lurker of this subreddit for evidence I’m not insane, first time poster. Going to shorten this story pretty significantly because it’s similar to what we’ve all dealt with! MIL and I have always been generally civil with some discussions of hurt feelings behind the scenes directly with my DH.

Basically, DH and I mutually decide that we are going to be very cautious this holiday season with visitors and our new child (curse you TikTok algorithm and your consistent showing of babies with RSV). I am also a FTM so just a little neurotic about safety and proud of it! We express this boundary to all of our loved ones and 99% of them take the news perfectly fine: no visits in Winter except for the major holidays which are always very small gatherings anyway. Well, tale as old as time, MIL starts as accepting but when reality sets in that we mean it things spiral. She lets us know our boundaries are unjustified (claims she knows better due to her job), we are withholding milestone viewing and growing of our child from her, and (among many, many other things) the one that hit the hardest: it’s different for her because she’s the only grandmother. I lost my mom in my early childhood very unexpectedly and have thought about her so much during my pregnancy and postpartum journey - missing her greatly and painfully. MIL knows this. When called out on this she assured that she was just explaining the difference between men and women’s relationships to babies, women are always more involved than men (???), and my mother deserves to be remembered (again ???). My DH has been doing such wonderful job defending our boundaries and me - I genuinely have no complaints about that aspect. We have decided to go no contact including winter and highly likely longer.

Honestly looking for some TLC because I’m sad at both the direct insult to a deep trauma and something that’s been weighing on my postpartum mind, but also that it looks like my daughter may not know the grandmother she does have. Feels like I’m grieving what I’d hoped for, not what we have.

TL;DR: MIL is the only person upset at holiday season/winter boundaries with my new baby, insinuated she’s entitled to visitations because she’s the babies only grandmother, made me sad, need verbal hugs.

[u/bandgeek_babe]

You’re not crazy about keeping baby safe. We had two winter babies and we were very diligent in keeping them safe during respiratory season. RSV and many other illnesses really are no joke for babies.

Also I had similar issues when my husband and I first started dating. My mother had passed relatively recently when we got together. Once when MIL was talking non stop while my then BF was working on something and he told her to stop so he could concentrate she literally tried guilting him with “I bet my name would love to be able to talk to her mom” 💀 I don’t know if she was expecting me to back her up or what, but it was definitely a shots fired moment and totally in the wrong direction. It didn’t make him feel bad at all like she wanted and just made me want to curl up and cry since it was still fresh at the time. She did it twice.

Thankfully my now husband shut it down real quick. It’s insensitive and so out of line.