my MIL drives me nuts sometimes

Vent

recently my partner and i travelled to see his family for thanksgiving which also happened to be my birthday weekend. during our time there i had to bite my tongue watching her feed him, tipping the bottle up so much so he was choking on the milk and when he was clearly done and had fallen asleep she was rubbing the nipple on his gums to get him to finish the rest, despite me telling her he had just had a bottle an hour ago. after feeding and he was dead asleep she did the same rubbing movement with a pacifier and i finally snapped and said he clearly didn’t want it and there’s no need to force it in his mouth. since it was my birthday weekend we decided to go out and have his parents watch the baby for the few hours we were gone, and the next morning she let me know that she let him sleep on his stomach, and he cried for a little but she let him cry it out until he “self soothed” and told me that i need to start doing that with him waiting longer to pick him up each time. MY BABY IS 8 WEEKS OLD!!! i was fuming. i told her that i will not be doing the cry it out method and putting him on his stomach other than supervised tummy time is unsafe as he doesn’t have full head control yet. throughout the weekend she gives me parenting advice and at this point im completely tuning it out because we clearly have different parenting styles and half of the things she mentioned are so outdated. i don’t know why but i can’t stop thinking about that weekend and how awful i feel leaving him with her and what could’ve went terribly wrong when i wasn’t there. fast forward to now, she invited herself to christmas and expects to stay with us for god knows how long, and the whole point of us traveling 8 hours away with a newborn was so they would have their holiday with him. my family isn’t thrilled about sharing their holiday either, because they’ve met her and don’t vibe with her loud personality lol. my partner told me that he would talk to her about this, but ugh, im just so annoyed and do NOT want to see her with my baby anytime soon. and once she’s around him she basically holds him hostage and i have to have my partner ask for him back. i know she comes from a good place but this is so hard. she’s done a lot for our family like getting us a lot of things for him and offering support to me postpartum, so part of me feels guilty for feeling this way.

Posted Dec 7, 2025, 4:47 AM UTC

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