2 days Ago By People
A woman is reeling after her mother-in-law recently overstepped, posting the woman's baby news on social media before she even had a chance to tell her own friends. In a post shared to Reddit , the anonymous woman writes her first child was born at 34 weeks, when she was induced for medical reasons. Her mother-in-law, who was at the hospital, immediately went on social media to share the news.
"As I’m processing that I’m about to have a baby, my phone starts going off — my mother in law had been telling multiple people I was in labor. I didn’t get to tell my friends (because she posted it) and my husband hadn’t even arrived at the hospital yet," she writes. Related: Woman's Mother-In-Law Uninvites Her From Thanksgiving — but When She Backtracks, the Drama Begins After her daughter was born, the child was taken swiftly to the NICU, though the nurse did take one photo of the new mom and her husband with the baby.
"We sent the message to family that she was born, in the NICU, and asked they please not make any announcements or share photos. We explained this time was for us, we didn’t want photos of her shared from her time in the NICU, and we weren’t ready to announce her arrival. I gave birth at 11:02 p.
m., and it was well after midnight by the time I got to my postpartum room. I woke at 6 a.
m. to texts congratulating us," she writes. Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Once she was finally able to be reunited with the child (who remained in the NICU for three days), she went to the restroom and came back to the hospital room to find the baby in her mother-in-law's arms. "I’m not gonna lie, I cried. My husband and I were adamant I be the one to hold her first, but of course she had to swoop in," she writes.
The mother-in-law has since continued to meddle, designing a "full nursery" in her own home, pushing the woman to take the child outside in the cold weather and "insisting I let her around sick relatives," she writes. Now, the mother-in-law is chiding the woman for getting the baby vaccinated early against measles, due to her having medical issues at birth that make her more susceptible to illness. "We don’t ask for her opinion on it but she sends me the scariest articles about children ending up in the hospital - even knowing that my daughter being hospitalized again is my biggest fear and sends me into a panic," she writes.
The final straw, she shares, came when her husband's grandmother died without meeting the baby. "We had kept our daughter from meeting his grandma for several reasons," the woman writes, including "the risk it posed taking our vulnerable girl to a nursing home with active RSV and flu cases." "At the funeral my mother-in-law felt the need to tell everyone how awful I am for keeping her from his grandma and how much she would have loved her," she continues.
"I asked her to stop because I already felt a ton of guilt and was really struggling and she kept insisting I was terrible and harming my child by 'locking her inside all day.' " After the woman told her mother-in-law she needed space, she said "she will take me to court because it’s her first grandchild and she had a right to see her," the new mom recalls. Related: Woman Tells Her Mother-in-Law to Get a Hotel After Repeatedly Rearranging Her Kitchen: 'Heartless' "I feel overwhelmed and sad it even got this far, but I feel like she thinks my daughter is hers and needs a reality check.
She’s stolen a few firsts from me, and continues to try and push too far," she writes. Commenters have urged the woman to set a firm boundary with her mother-in-law, with one writing, "This has to stop NOW. Quite honestly? I would FedEx back every piece of clothing MIL has sent.
I would give MIL a warning: back off, give us space, or there will be no contact until baby recovers and is at a safe weight. Further, if she continues after this period, she will be again banned for another time period." Read the original article on People.
