I’m looking for some advice from other mamas (and a safe place to slightly vent). My favorite cousin is having her first baby. Twins- boy and girl. And I have a girl (17 months).
She is married and alone she makes over $70k per year and receives a healthy stipend from an incident causing ptsd while she was deployed. Her husband works career military. They own a home. Just bought a brand new vehicle. Full va insurance for everyone in their family.
I am a single mother who is lucky to see $45k a year with over time. Child support is $39 a week and he doesn’t pay. I live with someone to help with the cost of housing. I live the definition of living pay check to pay check to survive.
Alright, now the story at hand. Last Saturday I gave my cousin A LOT of baby stuff. Examples 10 bags/boxes of clothes/sheets/blankets/bibs/swaddles/burp rags, a baby breeza, 2 puree steam makers, a cart, infant car seat and base, 2 angel care bath seats, baby toys, 15 bottles, several sleeves of diapers I couldn’t exchange, shoes, socks.
Anything I could bag/box up and pass along. When she picked the items up she made very negative comments about the stuff that was there but insisted on taking it all. She made a nasty comment about the breeza and formula feeding parents.
Within 5 hours of her taking the items almost EVERYTHING was posted for sale on our local nosey neighbors fb page and from the post she sold everything within a few hours of posting. I feel very wronged and bamboozled by her taking my items.
I was planning on creating her an approximate $300 postpartum care kit for her baby shower. But from evidence of the fb post she got more than that from selling all my stuff. I feel so deeply hurt and like anything/everything I gave her wasn’t good enough. Do I even buy her a baby shower gift at this time?
Further backstory- she has only seen my daughter 4x since she’s been born. And one of them was the day she was born and my cousin made repeated nasty/insulting comments towards my daughter and her looks (note my baby won a gerber baby advertisement contest at 4 months old because of her cuteness).
The most recent interaction was Christmas and my cousin purposefully avoided me and my daughter through the whole Christmas. And I have such a hard time parting with baby stuff because it feels like giving away memories of my child’s babyhood and I thought the items would of been used to make memories with my cousins baby like it did.
And to trash the baby breeza really gets to me. I feel like she’s living in a delusional world like she’ll never ever use any form of formula. The hurt from this situation has me question our years of relationship and future involvement in each others lives honestly. I vowed to never let someone claim to be in my village but not participate.
She has shown you repeatedly, who she is. Why are you interacting with her? Why are you being generous and giving her things when she has enough money that what you give her she won't consider good enough, but she'll sell so she can buy more things for herself.
Why are you even in touch with her when she insults your babies and insults the things you give her? Why are you giving her all those things? Just chalk it up to your learning curve and don't do it again. Be sick or have something you absolutely have to do on the day of the baby shower.. Leave off this relationship. Smile at family gatherings.
This OP skip gifts going forward. If she asks say, "You make twice what I do, and you have a husband. I gave you gifts, that you thought were trash and sold them knowing how much more I could have used the money. You used me and insulted me, buy your own gifts".
I would personally; amicable, talk to both of them. You could have used that money but thought of your family and did not expect them to profit from gifts that you also cherished. Yikes! Sorry OP.
Oh friend - your cousin is a taker and a user. I wouldn't even GO to her shower. If you do, bring nothing! Make a point of saying how you gifted her an entire carload of things and she sold them within hours! You and your daughter deserve better!
This is your favorite cousin? From the way you describe her she sounds like an awful person.
OP sounds like a doormat. She got exactly what anyone with half a brain would have predicted she'd get from someone with cousin's past behavior. Imagine someone insulting your infant, and you still call them your "favorite cousin"? Get some therapy, OP, or your poor daughter is going to suffer.
How many times does she have to show you who she is for you to finally see it?
Nuclear Option. Go to the shower but don't bring anything, and when others ask why tell them the truth. That you gave her over $2000 of stuff which she turned around and sold on Facebook marketplace, so you guess she doesn't actually need material items?? Nothing like some good old fashioned public shaming. The others will start looking to see if their stuff ends up sold on Facebook too.
You gave her the stuff, she could sell it. It was an awful thing for her to do. With all your further backstory, why is this person in your life exactly?
Further context-
She’s 25 and I’m 30. I considered her my favorite cousin because in her late teens and my early/mid 20s we really bonded. We also come from a very separated family.
The only time the “family” sees or talks to each other is obligatory holidays or celebrations. And even then it’s basic boring conversation you’d have with a coworker you only kind of know at the break room microwave.
Between now and then we’ve gone on trips together, helped each other move, support when we were down, plan weddings, college graduations. Talk pretty often. I do realize she can do with the items what she wants after she obtains them. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for a few days so I don’t cry or cuss her out.
Through the few messages here I quickly logged what our relationship has been for the last few years and it has weighed heavier on me giving and she taking in some way. And I am starting to see that she has in fact showed me her true colors and I’ve had rosey colored glasses on through the years.
Ex- I sent her care packages every couples months while she was on deployment never a thank you, helped her throw parties for her college house and never a place for me to stay so I’d have to drive a few hours home, elopement planner for her wedding.
I couldn’t even go to the dinner afterwards (they were adamant about it being him and her and a officiant and a photographer. And I respected that. Her special day). I am leaning towards not going to the shower at all and taking her gift back (yes it’s January and the shower is in March but I have several items of the gift bought).
I like the idea thrown out there of putting money aside for her kiddos or giving them exactly what they ask for. I ask people when they ask about gifting for my daughter I ask for diapers and to contribute to her 529. People who really know her don’t need to ask what she likes or needs (s/o to my gma, roommate/bff, and dad/step mom. Y’all the real ones)
I gave her the items and did not sell them myself out of the thought process of sentiment over money. I wanted to share a piece of my motherhood journey and child’s babyhood to be loved by someone I also love.
I am thankful though I have been setting aside very sentimental stuff aside to never give away and I’m glad I did that because I at least have those things and the many years of new memories of things (and some crap) to hold on to. And I will never be buying/gifting her anything again.