Can I tell my MIL to bugger off? She has no life and keeps sending me texts for the kids. Even for the two month old. I want her to leave me alone. She's the complete opposite of how she said she'd be before the first baby arrived. Said she wasn't going to help but instead she's possessive and over bearing!
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Ha. I think the best way is to just ignore the texts. I feel you though, I totally feel you. I get passive aggressive texts at 6 in the morning asking if I have taken any new pictures of my son lately..... Yup, lots of pictures being taken at 6 am on a workday. I always just write back like 6-7 hours later being like oh sorry I just saw this, I'm at work and LO is at school sorry!
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Yeah, just ignore. When she asks why you haven't answered, you can act like she's crazy to not realize you're busy.
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I just have to ignore like 80% of my mother's texts because she's always trying to guilt me into seeing her. She lives two hours away and my toddler can't nap at her house, and we only have one car (that my husband uses for work!). And so I constantly remind her that I saw my grandmother ONE time each year. I know it offends her that I compare my relationship with her to hers with her mother because she views her mother as being abusive and neglectful. Which honestly my mother was too! A court of law wouldn't even allow her to have custody of my sisters! Ugh. Becoming a mother has really just reinforced how little I am able to get along with my mother! I'm always up for an overbearing mom/MIL vent!
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My mom is like this. No advice! She's also super passive aggressive. @psw27: my mom will text DH individually for a photo that has me in it if most the pics on our group grandparent text has most ones of LO or LO and DH. I'm still there! I'm taking the photos! Maybe I don't want photos of my 30 wk bloated self sent out...sigh. And she flies in tonight for a spontaneous week of visiting. I'd rather have my MIL!
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@MenagerieMama: God help you, a week. I could go on and on about the long visits. I have one coming up when I'm estimated to be 38 weeks pregnant. So excited. She already mailed custom pillows for my guest bed so that she is more comfortable and asked my DH about potential weather issues. In April. I repeat....Weather. In April. Her anxiety about my giving birth is crushing me already....
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I just ignore my MIL's texts and now she only texts DH. She would text crazy early as well and I'm like why aren't you sleeping?!
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@alphagam84: That's my other problem. DH and his mother talk almost daily and 50% of what she tells me or tries to tell me because I told her I don't want her advice/suggestions or two cents, then comes out of DHs mouth too, later. This makes me dislike her more and more everyday.
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@psw27: Omg a MIL visit at 38 weeks? No way José!
My MIL has a history of expecting us to visit every time we don't have plans. I finally lost it at my husband last fall and told him she has to stop calling him at 8am every Saturday to ask about our weekend plans and demand a visit if we have free time. I look forward to my down time with my family, and she is not allowed to swoop in and steal it at the last minute. If she wants to make plans they need to be made in advance, and they can't always be on her terms. She always wants it to be at her house, and she pouts when we leave. She is pretty judgmental about our lifestyle -- we live in an urban environment, and she thinks it's terrible that we don't have a yard -- and after she got so demanding over the past year I am totally over it. My husband needs to stop letting her guilt trip him all the time.
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Ugh MIL's should be banned from texting. Mine used to request photos so I would send them and never hear anything back but she would send them out in a group text to other family members thanking DH for the photo. I stopped contacting her or sending her anything. She complains to DH a lot so he tells her to call/text/email me because I am with the kids all day and she never does. Whatever, it's her loss that she can't lower herself to contact me because she doesn't have nearly as good a relationship with our kids as she could.
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@ElbieKay: It is an open ended plane ticket... so she's just going to stay until the baby arrives. I can't even...... Pros and Cons to a MIL on the other side of the country but the visits don't tend to be for a day of course! I would literally never say we had a free Saturday I were you.
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@psw27: oh god. Pillows?? At least my mom has only requested we buy her decaf coffee as well because she mixes (we buy her coffee when she comes since we don't drink it). We just bought my mom tickets for coming out at the end of April to help with LO1 when 2 arrives because we have no other support options and I'm already dreading it. She wanted an open ended ticket but I said nope! There is an endpoint for baby to be out and there is an endpoint to your stay. We paid for the tickets and she was picky about what times she could or couldn't fly. When she's here if LO gets cranky (as 2 yr olds do sometimes apparently...) she just fades away and has me take over. She doesn't even help her with the potty if she asks.
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@MenagerieMama: omg same. I'm due end of April, I had my first 5.5 weeks early so god knows when this one will come so yeah, the open ended ticket happened. Ugh.
The "he seems like he's being difficult and needs his mom" fade out is the best! My son is 2.5 and she couldn't handle him over Thanksgiving at ALL.
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@ElbieKay: My MIL is shaping up to be this way too. DD will be 5 weeks tomorrow, and the ILs have visited 3 out of the 4 weekends we've been home with her! MIL will call and ask if we have plans, DH will say no (because obviously at this point our plans are surviving the newborn days) and she'll be like "Oh great, we'll come visit for the day!" Ugh. How does she not realize with DH working long hours during the week we might want our weekends to ourselves?? She makes a lot of passive aggressive comments about needing to get to know her only grandchild. Uhhh yeah there's plenty of time for that. After this past weekend I told DH he needs to start being blunt and tell her we don't want visitors. To hell with the fallout.
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@IRunForFun: this is my in laws too! They want to visit every weekend (sorry I don't) and then my mil cried when lo was 6 mo old because she "didn't know her" because we couldn't see them for 2 weekends. Barf. I've resorted to avoidance and wine
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My MIL recently got an iPhone to FaceTime with LO
One day she called just after I dropped him off at daycare. She asked what time he gets up and if she should call at that time. Noooo! Not when we are trying to get up and out in the morning. @gotkimchi: @IRunForFun: @ElbieKay: my dad is the visit all the time in law. He bothers me more than DH, so that's good. He would love to visit probably every week, but it's pretty consistent every other weekend and he even sneaks in a weekday visit sometimes.
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@psw27: I don't tell her we're free. My husband just answers the question honestly without thinking about how she will reply. Drives me crazy.
@IRunForFun: You need your husband to get them in line. Otherwise you will be the bad guy.
@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: I wish my MIL would just come during the week while we are at work. But she doesn't want to drive to our town, and she doesn't want to hang out with our sitter there.
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@Lilmrsm: I would flip out on DH if he started parroting his mother's nonsense to me after I shut a conversation with her down. Hell to the no!
One way that we manage the demands for pictures in videos is by sending them through a whole family iMessage thread. This way,everybody gets the same thing at the same time and nobody is butthurt. If there are complaints about the frequency of messages, ee wait longer until sending out another. At daycare, they tell the kids "you get what you get and you don't get upset," which is the principle we are working on with family haha.
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It probably sounds silly, but my biggest point of irritation with DH's family is the excess of perfume and make up that the ladies wear and then get all over DS. Seriously, his eczema is badly inflamed by makeup and fragrance and they don't care that their Lipstick kisses make him break out in an itchy rash almost instantly. They think it is okay, because it comes from love. Gah!
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@azjax: I stopped sending my MIL pictures because she would print every single one out and put them in her brag book. I rarely post on FB anymore for this reason too. Bothers me to go to their house and see them all around everywhere! I think they are obsessed/have no life.
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@Lilmrsm: my MIL doesn't do FB but she does print a boatload of pictures of DS and then plasters them all over her house. That doesn't bother me at all, since she has always been photo obsessed and I think DS is awesome too, haha.
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@ElbieKay: oof. DH needs to back you up! (easier said than done, trust me. It's why we have an open ended plane ticket situation... he thinks its "fine" and "helpful" to have her around.)
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I agree with the ignore advice. If I don't have the time or patience to deal with my MIL's texts at that moment I just don't respond.
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@Lilmrsm: My MIL is OBSESSED with pictures... She makes approximately zero effort to see her grandkids (the entire responsibility of creating and maintaining a close relationship falls to DH and me apparently) and then when we do see her, she spends at least half the time trying to make my kids pose for pictures and shoving a camera in their faces. She then sends all of these pictures to her whole side of the family but not to DH or me...
One day she called just after I dropped him off at daycare. She asked what time he gets up and if she should call at that time. Noooo! Not when we are trying to get up and out in the morning. Reply
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