NEED TO KNOW
A new mom says her mother-in-law has changed since the arrival of her baby
In a post shared to Reddit, the woman writes that her husband’s mom has been “questioning” all her parenting decisions
Among the mother-in-law’s issues are the temperature of the baby’s milk and whether she’s eating “too loudly”
A woman who had her first baby in March says her mother-in-law is questioning all of her parenting decisions — and, being that she lives just a couple of blocks away, it’s getting old.
In a post on Reddit, the 26-year-old woman writes that while her father-in-law works “long shifts,” she and her husband often take the baby to visit with her mother-in-law.
“She’s always been wonderful before our baby and we have a great relationship, but lately she keeps questioning things I do,” she writes.
During a recent trip to the mother-in-law’s house, the woman brought a bottle of breastmilk and placed it in the fridge.
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Stock image of a mom with her newborn.
“MIL asked, ‘Why do you keep her milk in the fridge?’ and I responded, ‘I make so much milk now that I’ve got to keep it cold so it doesn’t go bad. It’s only good for about 4 hours at room temp,'” she recalls.
“Later on I took the bottle out and was feeding baby when MIL asked if she was eating the milk cold, and I said ‘Yep! She’s never been too fussy about her bottle temps; she’ll eat it cold or warm.’ MIL looked a little shocked and said ‘But breastmilk is warm when it comes out of the body!’ I just defended myself and told her it’s perfectly fine.”
While she “thought it would end there,” her mother-in-law called the poster’s husband a few days later and “asked him if it was really okay for baby to be drinking cold milk.”
“Of course he said yes, it’s totally fine, we’ve double-checked with the doctor and everything,” the woman writes. “I did a ton of research on bottle-feeding before making the decision to switch.”
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The mother-in-law also questioned why the baby is “so loud” when she eats, which the poster reassured her was perfectly fine.
“I told her baby’s just a loud eater and she said, ‘Are you sure?’ and my partner had to say yes, we asked the doctor about that too,” she writes.
“Maybe I’m just being sensitive, but it irks me that she had to ask her son instead of just trusting that I know what I’m doing,” she continues. “Yes we’re young, yes this is our first baby… but I don’t make decisions for baby’s health without lots of thought behind them. Am I overreacting about this or is it weird for her not to trust my judgment as a mother?”
Most commenters supported the poster, noting that they would “stop visiting” the mother-in-law if she kept questioning their parenting decisions.
“You are not overreacting, she’s being disrespectful toward you and your role as a mother,” one person commented. “My babies didn’t care about bottle temperature either. It’s such a normal thing I don’t know why she would keep bothering you about it.”
Read the original article on People
