Pushy Mother in law

[Happy-Carol]

My mother in law messages my husband every day. Once we fell pregnant, she started messaging me too gradually.She created a group chat with me, my husband, father in law and herself. My FIL didn’t like the idea and he asked her to remove him from the group chat. After our child was born, she was messaging me and my husband every single day. She usually messages about what her cats did, when the cats woke up, what my father in law said, or what my brother in law did (my brother in law is 35 years old and he still lives with his parents). If we answer her messages, she will send more messages. Even if we don’t reply to her, she will keep messaging us throughout the day about different things. We both work full time, own an house, first time parents.
I’m already overwhelmed with my own responsibilities and I’m not interested in having everyday conversations with her. So, I take my time to reply to her. Sometimes my husband doesn’t reply to her either as he works long hours.  She called him, she said to him “can you reply to my messages?” .

Now, he tries to reply to her 1-2 times a day.  He does it as an obligation not because he wants to. My in laws live 30min drive away. And we have always been seeing them 1-2 times a fortnight even before our child was born.   Thats mostly because either she invited herself/my FIL to our house or she invited us to their house.  She coordinates these plans with my husband asking “What are you doing this weekend; Do you want us to come over to your place?””Do you want visitors?”

Me nor the FIL Or BIL are not involved in initiating or making plans. My husband checks with me before he says yes though. 

And these visits are usually a whole day thing. They come around 10.30am-11am  and leave around 4.30pm-5pm. 

When our child was born (he is now 1.5 years old), we struggled to cope with the new responsibility. We didn’t have any help. My MIL would invite herself to our house,  only to cuddle the baby, didn’t offer us any help us around the house or with the baby, didn’t bring any food for us nor nappies nothing. She knows we would need help but she was waiting for us to ask rather than offering. She would send us passive aggressive messages like “the baby would be fully grown by the time we see him next”.
She said  “on our next fortnightly visits, I will bring blah blah”. So, she is telling us that she will be visiting us fortnightly, she didn’t ask us, just told us, that’s what annoyed me. 

[Happy-Carol]

Everytime they come over, we organise some snacks or food. She doesn’t bring anything. When our baby was 5 weeks old, it was my husbands birthday and my MIL invited herself to our house as usual. My husband said ok we will organise some snacks for afternoon tea, and he requested her that they come over for couple hours only,  because we are exhausted, sleep deprived and I was breastfeeding. She didn’t reply to his message. They came over around 12.30pm and stayed for 5 hours, I baked a cake and snacks for afternoon tea. She bought rum balls (she put rum in them) for my husband only, I’m breastfeeding and wasn’t having any alcohol.  When we were saying goodbyes, my husband said to me that he was thinking of ordering pizza for dinner (for me and him). My MIL heard that, she then texted him asking “was there a reason we couldn’t stay for dinner? This is the first time we didn’t have a meal on your birthday!”.

He replied to her that this is also the first time we have a 5 weeks old baby. 

Which reminds me that she brought us cold cooked prawns on Christmas. I was pregnant and was due in a week, I couldn’t have prawns, so she brought me two plums. Just two plum fruits! Gave it to me and said I didn’t wanted you to feel left out.

We always organise Christmas lunch at our house and I cook everything myself. She brings chocolates or a few cold prawns or rum balls. We buy the FIL and MIL gifts for Christmas. She also buys her own Christmas gift and gives it to us. So, we can pack and give it to her on Christmas Day along with the gift we bought her.

But that Christmas, my husband decided  himself and told his mother that we are not doing lunch or gifts this year because the baby was due Christmas week.

A month before Christmas, My FIL was helping my husband fix something’s in the yard. So my MIL invited herself and stayed for 8 hours just sitting on the couch, chatting, eating.

I organised breakfast, lunch and snacks that day. She proceeds to give me the gift that she bought for herself for Christmas, so we can pack and give it to her along with our gift. I said “didn’t  Xxx (her son)  say  no Christmas this year”.

She sarcastically replied “ oh, I thought you were going to cook us a feast, put a big Christmas tree and huge lights in the front yard”.

Two weeks after that she was at our  house again and brought her friend along with her to our house.

While we were all talking something, she brings up “ I was expecting to see a big Christmas tree in the front yard. I thought you were going to cook us a feast, put a big Christmas tree and huge lights in the l yard”. While her friend was staring at me if I’m going to say something, I just smiled and ignored her. 

[Happy-Carol]

Three years ago, while we were looking at buying a house, we had a few suburbs in mind, that would be less than 20-25min drive  from work for both of us. If we bought a house where my IL’s live, it would be aleast 1.5 hour drive each way during peak hours.

She messaged me asking “ is the reason you didn’t wanted to buy near our house because you think we will visit you often? Just to put your mind at ease, we won’t be visiting more often than what we do now”.  I replied saying we don’t want to spend 3 hours a day on the road driving.

When we  bought the  house, we took my IL’s to show the house before the settlement date. We were so excited. But my MIL,l  said so many negative things while we were there  at the house “ it’s looks like busy street (it’s not) , I wonder how bad  the traffic noise are going to be at night time. There is a train station and a private hospital within two kilometres, I wonder how bad the train noises going to be, how bad  the ambulance sirens will be”.

On our way back, husband,  FIL and I were talking about the house, but MIL says random things “my friend xxxx had a day surgery two weeks ago but he doesn’t want any visitors”.

We acknowledge her and go back to taking about the house. She again brings up about some other random person “xxxx is going to Fiji this weekend”

A year after that, when we first announced pregnancy,  she was happy but after an hour or so she said “too bad, if you had bought a house near our house, I would have helped you raise this kid".

[Happy-Carol]

A couple days before wedding day (we got married in 2021), she pulled my husband aside and told him don’t  plan anything yet (insinuating planning pregnancy on wedding night) she told him that I don’t look 100% (because I had  a headache that day and rested up a bit)

Once we got married , my MIL had been very vocal about “don’t have kids, just get cats”.  Because her second son who is 35 years old still lives with them and hasn’t moved out, he has some mental health issues like antisocial, dual personality. She says your kids are going to be the same, they will only burden you for the rest of your life, so don’t have kids. On many occasions, she said that to us. She even said that  to me personally not to have kids. I can only imagine how many times she must have told my husband that.

When we announced pregnancy in 2022, she had happy tears and hugged us. Since that day, she kept saying one is enough, only have one child, don’t plan for second plan. That continued even after we had the baby. She would  come to visit the baby and say that to us every time, she even got FIL on board this time to say - one is enough, don’t plan for another one.

I told her that I’m the second child (I’m the middle child of the 3 siblings). And my parents always said to  us that I was  most easy child among us. To which my MIL replied, then your mother should have stopped at two, why did she have three.