MIL announced my pregnancy on Facebook before we even have had the chance to tell everybody we want to. Husband hit the roof…

Pretty much the title.

Last weekend we gave our parents the go ahead to tell their family and friends the happy news. We should have thought to caveat that with “but not on social media” because she’s a classic boomer that loves Facebook.

I’m currently really struggling with hyperemesis and when it happened, I hadn’t been able to eat and keep it down for 24 hrs. I struggled to care and didn’t want confrontation, but text her to ask her to remove our tags from the post so at least only her friends would see the news and we would still have control over telling ours. Soooo many people liked and commented, even my brother in laws ex girlfriend! The post was primarily centred about how excited she was to become a grandparent.

What I didn’t know was that my brother in law had seen the post as soon as it went up and he called her to tell her to take it down. She said “get off your high horse, they’ve told me I can tell people”. He tried to say yeah but not on Facebook and she just got defensive with him. She went to my FIL for support, he agreed with BIL and again she didn’t listen. Then she got the text from me. She replied with the classic “👍” and I thought it was taken care of.

But no..she rang my husband to whinge and say “she’s just asked me to take down the post that’s not fair” or something to that effect. My husband hadn’t seen the post so had no idea what she was talking about, but when she explained he was furious! He said it wasn’t her news to share publicly and Facebook isn’t just telling your friends and family, especially when you tag us. The argument went back a forth, she again tried to get support from FIL who was on our side. She said “look what you’re doing! You’re driving a wedge between me and your dad and we’ll get a divorce and it will be your fault!” Well, that was it then - husband went nuclear.

He called me almost in tears because he was worried about me and work and now this too. I felt so awful. We’ve had issues with her for years but it’s just getting worse and worse, as we predicted it would when a baby came into the picture. I just don’t know what to do and am still so sick so I’m really struggling to care. She’s not my mum and I want as little to do with her as possible. No matter what is explained to her, she just never gets it and just keeps pushing for what she wants and never truly apologises or proves her growth.

Anyway, now she’s texting me asking how I am like nothing has happened…she doesn’t know I was in the hospital yesterday getting iv fluids and strong anti sickness medicine because we just can’t be bothered to tell her. I’m at a loss for how to proceed and feel like my husband needs to have a serious, boundary setting, talk with her where every rule and expectation is explicitly laid out in front of her and see what happens next…either way, I want nothing to do with it.