33 Times MILs Created Chaos Where There Didn’t Need To Be Any

Husband's birthday was last week, his (divorced) parents are in our pandemic bubble so we visit every now and then. Grandpa’s house was first, happy days, no problems. Grandpa asked if LO could have a little piece of cake and we said sure okay because why not, let the kid live a little lol (NEVERRRRR AGAIN because LO did not go to sleep until like 12am that night 😂 I brought this on myself).

Anyway, MILs the next day. We’re cutting birthday cake and I casually say “no cake for LO, he stayed up all night last night and I’m not dealing with that again haha” Queue the whinging. In a joking tone that everyone knows isn’t joking but she doesn’t want to sound like a [jekr]:
“I wanted to give him some cake!”

“Your father always ruins everything”

“now my day is ruined because I wanted to give him a piece of cake”

“Well we all know we can’t ever tell grandpa NO”

y’all. Its the end of the world because she wasn’t allowed to give my kid a piece of cake. Ended in a rant about SO’s dad. Like lady you’re 65 grow up?? Its not our fault grandpa actually respects our boundaries and asks permission in regards to everything to do with LO lol we don’t want to hear about your first marriage woes.

….said my MIL to me at a family party last night at her house.

First off lady, I’m a grown adult, not a 10 year old. If I want to have my phone out, I will do as I please.

Second, the only reason I even have my phone out checking my texts and scrolling Reddit is because you people insist on speaking only Spanish to each other at the dinner table, even though every single one of you can speak almost perfect English, leaving me out of the dinner conversation. This happens every time we get together. And yet you have the gall to call me out on manners….

She decided she wanted everyone over for Mother’s Day. Only problem with that is this will be my first Mother’s Day. I don’t want to spend it with her. Now my husband is upset because I’m making this a big deal when I can just go along with MILs plans since we don’t have any actual plans yet ourselves (another husband problem). My MIL had no idea if we had plans or not. She just expects us to go with her plans. I also can guarantee she is not planning on celebrating the other mothers in the family (aka her DILs).

These gatherings are just everyone eating and talking and then watching the kids play (ours is only 6 months old so he won’t be joining in the kid stuff) gatherings with my ILs are boring and absolutely nothing “special” happens. It’s possibly the worst way I’d want to spend my first Mother’s Day.

What do I do? I’m leaning towards not going but my husband wants to celebrate his mom. My mom passed away so that might make MIL think she matters more since I “don’t have one anymore.”

My MIL was never super nice to me. Tried to exclude me from conversations. Made snide/rude comments about me. Never made an effort to get to know me. Aside from all this, she's generally unlikable, so we never were close.

Now, I have a baby and I think she's finally realizing why she shouldn't have treated me like [garbage]. I'm the one who controls access to my baby, so if you're rude to me, guess what, I'm not going to want to hang out with you very much, which means you don't get to see the baby very much.

And she's always trying to overstep and I keep shutting it down. For example, she's always trying to buy my son's birthday/christmas/easter outfit, but as the mom, I want to be the one to pick the outfits for special occasions.

Maybe I would try to compromise more and let her be more involved with outfits if she were actually a nice person, but she's not so I just shut it down. I think she's getting upset that she's not as involved with the grandchild's life, but it's her own fault and the consequences of her actions are finally catching up to her. I just need to vent because I don't like feeling guilty if she's upset but I don't think I am in the wrong here.

My baby is 10 weeks old and I have another 10 weeks off work. I had (have?!) postpartum trauma and was separated from him for 4 days due to a hospitalization. Now, I’m loving being home and healthy and with him 24/7. I don’t really WANT my mil around because it’s just not comfortable for me but I try to make some time so my son can grow to have a relationship with his grandma.

But she only ever asks to babysit. She acts sulky and immature when I say no but offer to hang out as a group of 3. She texted me again begging to babysit and I explained there really is no need since I am on leave and no desire on my part since I like being with him and don’t really enjoy having to pump for bottles and while he is feeding.

I was not rude or dismissive, basically just said I’m not ready to leave him yet for a few reasons. I offered to set up some plans for us all to hang out together, and she has ignored my message for 3 days.

This is after a rocky thanksgiving (long story, can share more if needed). This felt generous of me as her lack of support for my husband and I as we became parents and I suffered health complications was hurtful. She hasn’t asked me ONCE during pregnancy or postpartum how I am doing or how she can help, she only demands to see the baby on her terms and at her house.

She gets soooo upset and sulky when we won’t let her babysit and I am growing increasingly irritated that she acts like time with the baby with my husband and I there isn’t good enough for her. I am starting to consider never letting my son be alone with her because it’s so strange to me that she seems to want something out of time with him that she can’t get with one of his parents present.

Any other new parents go through this? For the record my husband feels as strongly about this/her as I do, if not more strongly, and handles 90% of the communication with her.

Normally my MIL is a good person, she just says the most awkward and hurtful things by accident. I think that makes her a mildly noMIL. I have so many of these stories unfortunately.

This happend when I was pregnant with our youngest, we had multiple miscarriages and two pregnancies that ended in abdominal surgery. I cannot become pregnant anymore without IVF but I can still have biological children with these procedures.

When we where around 32 weeks pregnant, my MiL told me it would be nice if it turned out that the little baby I was carrying was not actually ours but a mix up at the hospital during the procedure so we could collect cash for the mistake. At the time I was so shocked I didn’t react but thinking about it now still makes me so angry.

I’m asthmatic, I have an autoimmune disorder and most importantly I’m pregnant. I also have a toddler at home. This morning I log onto my health portal to email my midwife regarding my scan I had yesterday.

After the log in screen I was informed that I could register for the vaccine. I got really excited and I secured a spot. It’s 90 miles away but I got it. A few minutes later after confirmation of the appointment my MIL comes in for her weekly brunch and her visit. I’m so excited and I tell her I have a spot.

She immediately complains that SHE should get my spot because she’s older. She’s 61. Not 65. She doesn’t have any health issues other than being rude. I was really hurt. I actually said something this time- ‘please be happy for me, I need this healthcare because I’m pregnant’.

Then I slapped on a smile and served her food and coffee because she’s my husband’s mom and she’s my sons grandma. But wow, I wanted her to get out of my kitchen.

My mother in law wrote a book about my husband and daughter, and left me out. It’s a children’s story she wrote in the 90s about a little girl playing in the snow, so obviously isn’t actually about my daughter, but she recently decided to get it published.

She hired a longtime friend of mine to do the illustrations, which were of a father and his little girl. My friend very sweetly drew the father to look like my husband. Then my MIL dedicated the book to my husband and my daughter. There is no mother in the story. The book is beautiful and the story is charming. But everyone who knows me who has seen it has been like “Where is OP, this is weird”.

When MIL presented the book to us (we didn’t know the project was happening, it was a surprise), my husband took me aside and asked if I was okay. My sister also thought it was strange. My friend the illustrator realized partway through what was happening, and altered her drawings so the father character would look a little bit less like my husband.

But like… yeah. MIL wrote a book about my husband and kid, dedicated to them, where my husband is obviously a single father. There’s even an illustration of the family eating dinner with an empty chair where a mother could have been. MIL is incredibly proud of her achievement and has been sending copies to everyone she knows. I’ve been tasked with gifting copies to all our friends. She recently let us know that the book has been so successful, it’s going to a second printing. So forever out in the world there is just going to be a book, written by my mother in law, about my family without me in it. Feels great.

I feel pregnant with my surprise/pandemic baby, even though it was a surprise my husband were more than happy with another baby, and our other children were super excited as well. Family were surprised as we had said four years before that we had told everyone we were done having kids. But at the same time have been very excited.

My husband and I decided at the 25 week mark we wanted to know the gender, we were told we were having a boy, we had family members who gave us stuff from thier pregnancies or stuff we had given them. I had kept a good stash of boy's clothes from both my sons, so we only really needed to replace 2 things.

Well come to the birth in January, and we have a girl, there was no real issue for us, and we laughed about it when my OBGYN came to apologise. The rest of the family thought it was funny to, and even though my kids were hyped up to having a brother they have adjusted well to a sister especially our daughter, whom now she can watch over.

My MIL on the other hand was pissed and has tried to say that we put into so much effort into having a boy, and how something should be done about the OBGYN. We told her to relax because it was a mistake, mistakes happen, but she won't let this go, my husband told his mom that whatever she ended up doing we were going to be standing by our OBGYN.

I’ve been baby wearing my newborn a lot and especially when the ILs visit. Because of past behavior and because they had visitors from out of state, I decided that no one would be holding him this visit and baby wore the whole time. LO loves being worn and slept peacefully the whole time, only waking once for a feed. MIL wouldn’t stop with the annoying “concerns” “Don’t his feet hurt in that position?” “I don’t think he likes being in there. He wants to stretch.” “Isn’t he uncomfortable?”

Um. MIL, have you ever met a baby before? Do you really think my son would be sleeping if he were so uncomfortable and in so much pain? Don’t you think he’d be loudly letting us know that he wasn’t happy? Why do you think I’d let my baby be uncomfortable or in pain? Why do you think you know what he wants better than I do? Just admit that you hate that my wrap reinforces my status as mommy and makes it hard for you to ask to hold him.

And every time he stirred even a little bit in his sleep she made an annoying and judgemental “uh-huh” sound. That’s all. I’m just irritated and wanted to rant. I’m still pretty recently postpartum so I might be more irritated than the situation calls for.

"Well, MIL, that means you bought children's books for yourself. They really aren't for DD if she can't take them home."

I get some people buy kids things to have at a relatives house so they can use it there. That's great. MIL literally took them away from our three year old so she can keep it at their place and DD can read it every once and a while. One of them is DD's new favorite and we had been reading it multiple times in a row at both nap and bed time, but nope. It's not DD's.

So guess who is going out to buy a second copy of the book? It's a small thing, yeah, but when you know a kid really likes it and it's actually for them anyway, why take it away so they can only use it sometimes?

My daughter went to prom last weekend. My MIL told my daughter she wanted to come over while she got ready. We took individual and family photos and then I left with my daughter to take group photos of her with her friends at a location they chose.

Within an hour of me arriving home I get a Facebook message from my MIL stating, “Can you not post your pictures? I’m waiting patiently.” I didn’t immediately respond, and 15 minutes later I get a phone call from her saying she’s waiting for me to post pictures. I told her prom started an hour ago and I wasn’t planning on posting anything that quickly. She knows my daughter doesn’t like us posting pictures of her on Facebook and I wanted to give my daughter the chance to see them and decide whether she wanted to post anything about prom first. It’s her day.

The next day I told my daughter that Grandma was dying for me to post pictures and she said she really didn’t want any posted. I asked “None at all?” to clarify, and she again said she didn’t want anything posted.

I then texted my MIL some photos and said my daughter didn’t want them posted on Facebook, but she said Grandma could see them. I immediately started receiving a flurry of texts:

MIL: Can’t I just post that one by herself? Why not? Is she against that?

Me: She doesn’t want anything posted on Facebook.

MIL: How am i going to show my friends my beautiful granddaughter? Oh geez, can’t I just post a picture of her and me?

Me: She said she didn’t want anything on Facebook.

MIL: Ok

A couple hours later she calls my daughter begging her to let her post a photo of the two of them. My daughter doesn’t want to but agrees because she doesn’t want to make her Grandma sad.

She could have just texted some photos to her friends but she HAD to post them to Facebook and refused to take no for an answer. It drives me crazy.

My MIL ranges from just yes to very much no, so I figured this sub is perfect for this story. (Also the usual: on mobile and English is not my first language).

I'm currently pregnant with baby 2, a girl, and we have a list of possible names with one favorite on top. MIL calls yesterday to ask how we are and how pregnancy is going and of course starts asking if we have a name yet (we choose to not let anyone know the name, because we refuse to hear opinions and have people trying to change our minds about the chosen name). We tell her that we have a list, but she wants to make a suggestion as well... Of course she mentions our nr1 name as her favorite name.

This might be petty, but I now refuse to use the name, because, as soon as she hears we picked that name, she will tell everyone, and I mean everyone, that we used her suggestion and how we listened to her, and I just can't.. Telling her it was already on our list won't help since she will refuse to believe us. So, thanks for letting me vent about this!