Liars don’t get to play Grandma

I think JNMIL has finally taken “fuck around” too far and is about to enter “find out” with DH. Buckle up, this is a long one.

I took LO (9 weeks) on a trip to a cabin this past week with my JYMom and and JYStepdad to meet some of stepdad’s family, and then DH came down Thursday. Several weeks ago, JNMIL had told DH that his aunts MIL, who DH has known since he was a kid, has alzheimers and is going downhill fast. He said he wanted her to meet me and LO, and JNMIL made it sound super urgent. The cabin is in the same state as DH’s family 6 hours away and there’s really not the time or another free weekend coming up to make a second trip there with a 2 month old, so I said fine. I really didn’t want to bc LO wouldn’t be vaccinated yet and we would be tired from the travel, but since it was so time sensitive, I said that when we leave the cabin Saturday morning, we can go down, see aunt’s MIL, spend Saturday night at your JNMIL’s, and then go home Sunday. JNMIL says she thinks that’s a great idea, she’ll talk to Aunt when she sees her the next day and make a plan for us.

So I’m at the cabin, and DH mentions something about a couple of JNMIL’s friends meeting LO. I point out that we really won’t have time for that given the travel time to see Aunt’s MIL,, and DH tells me that JNMIL has told him that Aunt won’t get back to her about seeing Aunt’s MIL because her in laws won’t include her in things for the MIL, and “you know how Aunt is, ” so she’s invited a few people over to meet LO at her house instead. I’m like wtf and tell DH to remind her that LO is unvaccinated and to keep things small. MIL tells DH “only 5 or 6 people, and not all at once.”
So we get there Saturday, and I find out that she actually invited well over a dozen people, it’s just that only 6 could come. So I’m feeling incredibly steamrolled and manipulated, plus super pissed because I wasn’t super comfortable to start with extending the travel, especially right before her vaccinations, but seeing Aunt’s MIL was important to DH, so i was already majorly compromising. When that was no longer the plan, JNMIL didn’t check in to ask about alternatives or whether it was OK for her to invite people over, she just informed DH that a bunch of people were coming over to meet my baby. By the time I knew it was happening, people had already been invited, and i felt like I couldn’t back out or delay without putting DH in a bad position.

We get to JNMIL’s house and she held LO when we first got there, but I wasn’t comfortable with LO being passed around, so I held her the whole time people were there. After all, if JNMIL didn’t feel the need to ask me about the plan to start with, I couldn’t trust she would ask before handing my baby off to everyone. And after people left, I didn’t offer to let her hold LO because I was still salty and was irritated about several comments her friends had made (“oh, you say that now, my DIL said that too, but just you wait” about a kid show i said i wasn’t ok with, everyone constantly saying to wake the baby up, “you need to visit your mother more” to DH like it’s any of their business and like we didn’t just have a damn baby, shit like that).

In the evening, I got up to make night bottles and JNMIL started crying at DH, but wouldn’t say why until he pushed it. First she was saying that “you don’t want to hear it” and she can’t say anything or we’ll “get mad” and she’ll “get punished.” Eventually it turned into this big manipulative thing about how she hasn’t seen LO in “months” (it’s been 6 weeks, LO had barely been ALIVE for “months”) and she’s only held her once all day! And we’ve been in the state “all damn week” but couldn’t come down Friday night so she got more than “one damn day.” If I wasn’t comfortable traveling before LO got vaccinated I should have said so and not come and JNMIL knows “you don’t do this to your mom, i know she gets to hold LO all the damn time”

I smoothed things over for the moment by saying that I really wasn’t comfortable with all the people yet or extending the trip, but I was told this trip would be about seeing Aunt’s MIL and it was a time crunch, and it’s been a long week, so yeah, I probably should have offered to let her hold the baby, but she also had to actually talk to us if something bothered her.
The whole rant pissed me off bc a) No one is punishing her or has punished her, even the times she’s been shitty and we probably should have. b) Her relationship with LO is separate from my mother’s and it isn’t a competition or comparison. c) We were with family that I see once every few years, some of them had never even gotten to meet DH yet, who didn’t even get there until Thursday afternoon. Plus we had also taken time on Friday to go see one of my best friends, so no, I wasn’t going to cut the trip I’d already committed to short and trying to guilt us for that was not ok. And d) when the fuck did i ever have a chance to say i wasn’t comfortable and choose to not come? She never fucking asked us if she could do what she did, she just steamrolled it into happening then informed us afterwards!

AND THEN, Sunday, after I’d talked to DH about how fucked up this whole thing was and how not ok I am about it, I told him that one of the things I needed him to do to help me feel secure with him again was call Aunt, with me listening, because either she had known he wanted to see her MIL and just ignored that and needed to be called out on how shitty that was or, I suspected, JNMIL hadn’t actually talked to her and had lied about it to manipulate us into getting what she wanted even though she knew we wouldn’t be ok with it.

Y’ALL. AUNT DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WE WERE IN THE STATE. JNMIL had mentioned to her that “DH wants to see your MIL and introduce [me] and LO” but never told her when, never tried to make a plan, nothing. Just made up the excuse she gave DH about the in-laws shutting Auntout, which apparently also isn’t actually happening!

TLDR, JNMIL lied to us because showing off to her friends was more important to her than my unvaccinated child’s health. DH is PISSED and I don’t think pissed even BEGINS to cover what I am.