'AITA for taking my baby and leaving after my MIL secretly fed him?'
"AITA for taking my baby and leaving after my MIL secretly fed him?"
I (29F) have two kids with my husband (31M): a 3-year-old daughter and a 3 month old son. Our families live in a different country and we only get to see them once a year or so. We’d been staying between my in-laws and parents houses for the holidays and this is the first time they meet our son.
Ever since my son was born, my MIL has been absolutely obsessed with him. She wants pictures and videos of him everyday, calls him “my baby”, wants to know how every pediatrician visit went, etc. This would have been fine except she was always distant with my daughter and I had assumed she was getting older and probably had little patience for smaller babies/kids.
I exclusively breastfeed my son and she hates this. She constantly makes remarks to my husband that the baby is never full or questioning why I keep holding him to sleep, saying I’m too attached.
During our stay with them, she always wanted to hold him, which is fine on its own but she has made irritating remarks like "oh, he still wants to eat? He needs more than what you’re giving him" if he starts crying after I’ve fed him.
Last night, I went take a shower and when I stepped out, I heard the baby screaming. When I walked into the kitchen I saw MIL trying to feed him formula from a bottle. We don’t have bottles! She bought one and had been keeping it in her house to feed him. When I said what the hell?
She just went you took so long in the shower and he was starving. I was so angry and told her she had no right to feed my baby without consulting me. She went off on me telling me it is her right as his grandma and that I need to stop hogging the baby, that I am jealous of her bond with him, and that she knows how to raise a son and I don’t.
I lost it. I took my son from her and went to my husband telling him I won’t spend another minute in her house. My FIL came out and told me to calm down and stop overreacting, that I should be grateful MIL loves her grandson so much.
I told him it was the disrespect and disregard that I have issue with. As we were leaving, she accused me of taking her grandson away from her like I took her son (my husband) away from her.
As soon as we left, she must have called up their relatives to complain about me because my husband’s phone has been blowing up with calls and messages from family saying I was way out of line and I needed to apologize to my MIL for disrespecting her. AITA for what I did?
Here's what people had to say to OP:
Witty-Stock-4913 said:
NTA. Block her, block the rest of the family, and move on. It is now exclusively your husband's responsibility to deal with his family. And by the way, traveling internationally is a two parent consent thing, so she's now lost all access.
z00mz00mshr00m said:
She has no rights as a "grandmother" barring whatever grandparents' rights laws in her jurisdiction. NTA. She's dangerous and unsafe for your child since she ignores your boundaries for YOUR child.
alisonlou said:
NTA. What on earth. I'm so sorry any of this is happening. Number one, she's nuts. You didn't take her son, you got married. Number two - everything else. Everything else! You are not the ahole. I'm so glad you live in another country, and you have your parent's house to go to!
BobbyPinBabe said:
Her comment about you taking away her son speaks volumes.
JellyBelly1042 said:
NTA, but his mom needs professional help, his dad isn't crap, and your husband will hopefully put everyone in their place and go no contact. His mom is lucky all she got was yelled at, I know a lot of people who will smile in a mug shot if someone messing with their kids.
After reading the comments, OP updated the post to include:
Thank you all for your responses and validation. There are many comments so I won’t be able to respond to all, but to respond to the most recurring ones: 1) No, we are not from South East Asia. We are white (Caucasian).
2) I had my husband read my post along with the comments. Unfortunately, he is not taking it as seriously as I would like him to and while he recognizes that his mom was incredibly inappropriate, he is not willing to cut contact.
He sees how his mom treats our daughter differently and he hates it, but that’s still jot enough for him to stop or minimize contact with his mom. 1) I will have to distance myself and the kids as best I can.
2) Totally forgot to mention - no, there is absolutely nothing wrong with formula. My first was combo fed. The problem is that I did not give MIL consent to give my baby formula when breastfeeding is working just fine.