Couples expecting their first child is an exciting phase, where gender reveals, baby showers, and choosing baby names are all part of the game. For our Reddit couple, the 32-week pregnant mom and her husband have been productive working on the nursery.
Except there’s one small problem getting in the way of the nursery completion.
When she had a confrontation over the recent ongoing issue, she visited the “Am I the A**hole?” (AITA) subreddit.
There, Redditor Aggravating_Scar7518 asked:
“AITA for refusing to let my mother-in-law redecorate our nursery?”
The original poster (OP) explained:
“So I (26 F[female]) am currently 32 weeks pregnant with mine and my husband Felix’s (27 M[ale]) first child. Things have been going well, and one of the great things is that Felix is a builder and so everything with the nursery went pretty smoothly pretty fast!”
“We agreed at the start about what kind of vibe we wanted to go with it, and it’s pretty much already done. Figured that we’d get it sorted as soon as possible, so it wasn’t another thing to worry about later.”
“My MIL has always been a bit of a nightmare but has been better since the news that I’m pregnant (though not without issue – for example, she told me that I should ‘lose some weight’ and that it wasn’t ‘healthy’ for me or the baby.”
“She knows that I used to struggle with anorexia, and I’m not any sort of unhealthy weight). In the past, I’ve kept my mouth shut and let Felix deal with her.”
The OP continued:
“As the nursery has almost been completed, she’s suddenly decided to invite herself around more – I work from home currently, she comes in on the regular, asks me when I’m going to have lunch, and ‘oh could you just pop me something in too!’ and then will wander into the nursery and start rearranging things.”
“I know this sounds stupid but once she literally bought an IKEA bag full of stuff that she put in there. It doesn’t match. But I’ve never said anything really beyond, ‘Oh, thanks so much for the thought, ‘ etc.”
“Yesterday, when she came around uninvited, she looked me up and down and said, ‘Really? Joggers? Thank god Felix isn’t here,’ and then walked into the nursery and started asking me where the pillow she’d put in the crib had gone, why I’d taken out the fairy lights hanging on the wall right by it, etc.”
“I explained that they were potential safety hazards to the future baby and that I’d taken them out.”
“She started with, ‘Oh, well, I’ve had three children’ and ‘I really think you should take more of my advice’ and then looked me in the eyes and said, ‘You’re really not going to be a good mother at this rate.’ “
Then, things went south.
“I don’t know if it was the pregnancy hormones, but I just stared at her for a moment and then told her to get out of the house. I’d been up all night and had loads of work, but I wasn’t in the mood. She got very uptight about it and then left.”
“Felix says he’s going to talk to her and tell her that she shouldn’t be reorganizing anything without our permission, but I don’t know if it was just the hormones, and I’m being unreasonable. AITA?”
Anonymous strangers weighed in by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
- NAH – No A**holes Here
Many Redditors thought the OP was not the a**hole (NTA) here.
“NTA.”
“Felix needs to put down a LOT more boundaries:”
“no more popping by when he isn’t around. She has to ask him to come over and can only do so when he says yes and he is there.”
“-no more talk about your health or weight, EVER.”
“-no redecorating or moving ANYTHING in your house.”
“I’m sure there needs to be more. This is to get you started with him. He needs to protect you and your child.” – Trick_Delivery4609
“NTA.”
“AND A PROPER FORMAL APOLOGY for not only her behavior but her comment that you ‘wouldn’t be a good mother’ 😤”
“I would be working with your birthing team to make sure that witch is banned from delivery and recovery as well. After all this, I wouldn’t trust her any farther than I could throw a baby hippo. 🦛” – PrincessPnyButtercup
“NTA.”
“Felix needs to shut this down like yesterday. She’s being openly disrespectful to you.”
“She can no longer come over uninvited. She needs to call and schedule a visit, like everyone else. Also, if she has a key to your home, change the locks.”
“No more bringing unwanted items for the baby. While you appreciate the thought, you and Felix want to prepare the baby’s room the way you want it. This is YOUR baby. She had a chance to decorate how she wanted with her kids and now it’s your turn.”
“No more passive aggressive comments to or about you. If this isn’t shut down, she will continue this around your child. She will talk badly about you around/to your child. This is disrespectful to you and should immediately be stopped.”
“Actions have consequences. If she breaks any boundary you and Felix have set, she won’t see the baby for X amount of time. That could be days, weeks, months, or even a year, depending on how severe the boundary she broke was.”
“You could even do it, 1st offense X days, 2nd X months,3rd permanent. This is something you and Felix need to sit down now and talk about.”
“This blatant disrespect needs to stop, and it needs to stop immediately. This can’t continue, if for no other reason than your mental health.”
“She knows you have an ED and is deliberately using it against you. What is her end goal? For you to spiral so she can tell everyone you’re an unfit mother? That sounds psychotic.” – EnfysMae
“NTA. Your MIL is a huge one, though. You deserve better treatment, and you advocating for yourself doesn’t make you an AH. Also, remember – if she’s treating you this way, she could treat your children this way too, especially little girls, since the comments she made were rooted in misogyny. Take care.” – Mobile_Following_198
“NTA – someone insults you to your face and oversteps. You are just reacting the way anyone other than a doormat would react.”
“We do make allowances for MILs and other relatives when they accidentally push our buttons, but this isn’t one of those cases. I wouldn’t have seen anything wrong in saying you removed the items because they didn’t match your plan for the nursery.” – MercuryRising92
“NTA”
“As a soon-to-be grandparent with four grown children that I have raised. I am well aware that things have changed in terms of parenting and safe environments for babies. So, I am reading up on current parenting research, asking questions, and making notes of the parent’s preferences.”
“I will admit, it takes a lot of self-discipline to not go ham and buy every baby item I come across. But I remember being the new mom and wanting things done a certain way. I intend to respect the new parent’s preferences as well.” – Choice-Emphasis9048
In an update, the OP wrote:
“Felix and I sat down and had a conversation about how to manage his mother going forward. I told him everything that she had said to me and he was adequately furious with her. He asked me exactly what I wanted done in the future so that she’d understand where our boundaries are.”
“And follow them. I told him that I’d rather him speak to her alone at first so that I wasn’t immediately made out to be the bad guy.”
“I acted on advice and locksmith has been called to change the locks on the house, and Felix has ordered us a Ring doorbell off Amazon with the assurance ‘I’ll be able to put it in’ (he hates doing the electrics but you know how it is I’ll leave him to it lol).”
“And then he called up MIL and organized a lunch date for today so they could have a talk between themselves. He got back in the afternoon and as he walked into the door, smiled at me and went ‘Sorted!’ and, characteristically, went to go and make himself a cup of tea.”
The OP continued:
“I got a message a few minutes later from her saying she was very sorry for what she had said to me, that she was in the wrong. Only going to visit when invited, not going to go into the nursery anymore, and was going to respect the rules and boundaries that he and I set for our home life and for our child.”
“And after added that she was sorry for the comments she’d made on my appearance. I’ll believe it when I see it but at least it’s a good start, and we’ve all agreed to go for dinner at some point to talk about future expectations when the the baby comes.”
“I talked to Felix, and he said that she’d been offended at first, didn’t believe she’d done anything wrong, and he also specifically said she hit with the spiel of ‘Oh, I must be such an awful mother then’, and he told me he’d told her ‘It’s not about that, it’s about you disrespecting my wife, our child and our home. If you continue, you’re not going to dream of being able to see your grandchild.’ ”
“She was apparently and unsurprisingly sulky, and he told her to apologize, and she said she would and to her credit did.”
“Thank you all for your advice about how to handle thing going forwards with the locks and everything. The amount of support was crazy but I can’t thank you all enough, I feel so much calmer about the situation. I don’t know if she’s going to stick to what she said going forwards, but at least boundaries have been set and I know that Felix has my back.”
“On a lighter note to end, I asked if he had anything he wanted to say to the people who had commented, and he said, ‘Can you add that photo of me in Florida?’ (Felix…That’s not even slightly relevant.) ‘Shame. What do you want for tea?’ “
“Thank you!”
It’s great to hear Felix took the reins on the situation by having a serious conversation with his mother to defend his wife and family. Hopefully, the “nightmare” MIL will be more of a wanted presence in her son and daughter-in-law’s lives.