Mothers-in-law.
“Can’t live with em…pass the beer nuts” – Norm from Cheers would say.
Seems like everyone has a horror story about one these days.
Well this first time mother has just the story for you.
My husband and I are expecting our first child. We moved to be closer to his family. I’m no contact with mine.
My mother in law has been referring to the baby as “her” baby this entire time. She will say things like “I can’t wait for my baby to be born.” “My baby is going to be so loved.” This rubs me the wrong way for reasons I cannot explain, but my husband tells me to ignore her.
Warning, warning. Red flag number one…”MY” baby, you say? The MIL then sets the stage for a baby shower. For which none of the mother’s friends are to be invited…?
My MIL wanted to throw me a baby shower and invite her friends. She said they made an agreement a long time ago that they would celebrate each other’s kids’ weddings and births.
My husband and I eloped and declined a reception for her friends since we don’t know them. My MIL told me that I owed it to her to let her throw the baby shower since I hurt her friends’ feelings by not having wedding reception.
I asked if I could invite my friends, and she said no, that this was for her friends, and that if my friends wanted to throw me a shower they could. I reluctantly agreed.
So OP goes on to spend a lot of time putting together a thoughtful registry, and come up with a holistic design for the party.
But of course none of those wishes were taken into consideration.
My husband and I spent hours on our registry, and my MIL asked for it so she could share with her friends. She said she forwarded the registry on. She asked me what design I wanted on my cake and cookies. I told her flowers because I am decorating the nursery in a garden theme.
At the shower they provided me with a “mother to be” sash and my MIL a “granny to be” sash to wear. I noticed that the theme of the shower was circus animals. The cake had an elephant and balloons on it, and the cookies were animals. At first I thought that maybe the floral theme was just too difficult, so I rolled with it until it was time to open presents.
Then even the presents all the guests bought had nothing to do with the mother’s original registry or design.
So the husband finally arrives and drives a stake right through this awkwardness.
Every present was some sort of circus animal. Onesies, blankets, toys – nothing on my registry.
I was a little confused and even went so far to check my registry to make sure I hadn’t goofed up and changed everything. I thanked everyone for their gifts and tried to sound as gracious as possible, but I was so confused.
My husband, who is a little less tactful than I am, showed up at the end of the shower and noticed the theme right away.
He goes “what’s up with all the circus animals?”
He looks at the presents and says, “This isn’t what we asked for.”
Then he looked at his mom and goes “MOM. What did you do?”
Cue devious, self-centered, ‘me first’ mother-in-law reaction.
She smiled and said, “I didn’t like the theme you chose for my baby. I’m going to decorate my baby’s nursery at my house with circus animals, so I created a registry for myself.”
My husband said, “YOU DID WHAT?”
She says, “My baby is going to need a room at my house so I threw a shower for myself.”
I lost my composure and told her that she would not see MY baby and to stop calling the baby hers, and my husband told his mom that she’s delusional if she thinks we’re going to allow this.
She started crying and said we are just withholding her baby from her.
We’ve been getting texts from his family since the shower, calling us selfish and ungrateful and saying we ruined her joy of being a grandma.
Are we the AH?
Well if that isn’t the most frustrating circumstance I’ve seen in ages.
Let’s see what the comments section had to say:
100% NTA votes. This is a unified group of commenters, including this person.
Another Reddit commenter is just creeped out beyond belief.
But the icing on the cake had to be this comment.
What did we take away from this here today?
A lesson in putting your foot down!
If you enjoyed that story, read this one about a mom who was forced to bring her three kids with her to apply for government benefits, but ended up getting the job of her dreams.