The in-laws visited and it was brutal. Lots of running around 5 weeks postpartum with a c section. I was in so much more pain than I have been, but my husband sees his family once or twice a year and they were in to see the baby so I sucked it up and kept our newborn strapped to my chest.
His niece kissed our newborn and I told everyone to definitely not do that. Niece never kissed her again. This was on day 4 and MIL was leaving the next morning. At this point she did not kiss our newborn and respected our boundaries. I was thinking maybe this could be a new normal. Maybe I could trust her to watch our kids for one evening to go to a wedding.
Well the next morning she removed all doubt that I had of who she is. My child was in my arms, she comes over and kisses her on the face right before she leaves. I did not scream, I did not give her any reaction.
She gets to live with the consequences of her actions now. She doesn’t get trusted to watch my children like she was with her other grandchild. She doesn’t get to hold my children. She’s coming to the baptism? Ok, I’m putting up signs about basic newborn etiquette in her honor. I’m letting my family know why MIL is getting this treatment. My family works in healthcare, kissing my newborn is the most egregious offense yet to them.
She also made a comment at one point about meeting all her other grandchildren at a day old. I guess being forced to wait a month wasn’t a serious enough consequence to take boundaries to heart, so not sure what she was complaining about.
The final annoying thing she did that I just want to vent about is she put her chapstick on my toddler. wtf. Why would you even want to do that?!? My one friend told me it feels like she is rage baiting to tell her friends how awful I am when I have a reaction.
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She probably is rage baiting but I would have slapped that chapstick out of her hands so fast. “Why yes I am a monster when protecting the health of my children”
My mil rage baits too. She loves to have a audience when she acts like an ass so she can show everyone how much I hate her. Jokes on her I don’t gaf if they know. They’re all dysfunctional and I don’t care what they think of me at this point. Especially her.
My mother rage baits and it sounds like she was rage baiting you. The only way to avoid that is by giving her very little contact and the contact she does have should be with supportive witness around. Your partner/her child should also be telling her “no, wtf is wrong with you”
Did you address it with her? You need to tell her what the consequences are of the boundary that she broke. She needs to know exactly what happens when you FA and now she’s gonna FO.
Putting her chapstick on the baby is worse than kissing her in the face (assuming not mouth kiss), all her mouth bacteria is on that thing and I assume she put it on baby’s lips?
You have to stop her next time. And yeah, I wouldn’t let her hold the baby or even come close enough to try something. Why do people act like this? It’s so deranged.
Ugggh my 3 yr old granddaughter goes in my purse and puts on my lipstick. Her mom thinks it’s hysterical but I still worry. I would have gone off on your mil then and there. The longer you wait the more emboldened they get.
A lot of the problem with kissing babies is the connotations of that verb, I think. “Kiss” suggests mutual love and affection and familiarity. What such people are actually doing is deliberately smearing germs and bacteria on medically-compromised, immunodeficient and vulnerable infants who can’t consent or defend themselves, for the adult’s own amusement or desires and in defiance of parental authority. It’s repugnant. Keep your disgusting slobbery mouth (and chapstick) off other people’s children.
“She also made a comment at one point about meeting all her other grandchildren at a day old.She also made a comment at one point about meeting all her other grandchildren at a day old.”
Those were the old days MIL.
Yeah your friend is right, she is baiting you.
Is your SO able & willing to back her off when she tries the kiss or chapstick thing again?
I’m a big fan of the silent consequence, it speaks volumes without saying a word
I think it’s great you’re not going to put up with it in the future, but speaking from experience these things HAVE to be addressed in the moment- “Stop! Do not do that, I told you not to!” Anything. IMO if you go around venting to others instead of confronting her, it will not give you the power you think it will. You can vent, but try to speak up in the moment.
>At this point she did not kiss our newborn and respected our boundaries. I was thinking maybe this could be a new normal.
I go through this regularly with my justnoMom- when things go well, hoping she’s changed. But old patterns really die hard and require intentional change, and it’s super common for people to slip into old patterns when feeling comfortable.
Who she is at her worst is who she is. Her nice moments are a reprieve but an anomaly. And you’ve gone through this enough with your first child that it’s okay to simply jump straight to long-term consequences with your second instead of continuing to try to correct someone who won’t listen. Whether it’s rage baiting, an accident, or some kind of power move- she can’t seem to keep her mouth off of children so children need to be kept out of reach of her mouth.
I also do have boundaries stomping ILs who happen to live far away. When ours do their thing the photo-gravy train stops. We ignore most of their messages. If we sent pictures it’s just crappy ones or you can’t see the child. The next visit gets delayed. As we don’t use social media at all this means they have no access to our children or pictures/info about them. I’d say you can ramp it up slowly in 2026. No first Christmas or Halloween outfit pics for grandma.
The chapstick made me gag. Why on earth would that be necessary?
My inlaws would always break our boundaries on the last day of a visit. They would always tell me that I would calm down by the time they could visit again. In their minds it didn’t matter as long as there was a big wait between visits. We finally went no contact with them
Isn’t it, like, common knowledge to not share cosmetics? People really are dumber than they look🙄🫡
i am so sorry. it’s at moments like this where it’s so clear that body autonomy violations don’t have to be sexual – while your baby is essentially still an extension of yourself, she’s using your daughter’s body to exert power over you.
edit: removed unwanted advice, oops!
DO share what your husband has to say about all of this??? Really interested to know!
I don’t understand why you are having to make the boundries/rules and enforce them. They are not your family and really don’t have to listen to you? That’s sorta what happened in my family. My brother has a problematic mom (he’s my half-brother, different moms) and my SIL has a problematic mom. My SIL was handling both mom’s and my, bro and sil fought lot until they came up with the agreement of, they handle each other’s family. And once my brother set boundries or took back privileges with the kids, his mom started to listen, and my sil went NC w her mom until she acted right. This was really long but what im saying is, he needs to step up and say no, or take away privileges because, unfortunately, that is when they will start to take things more seriously.