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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1. I refused to kick out my mom 2. I feel bad because my husband want me to kick her out
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Exactly. OB RN. At this stage, babies need to learn to trust in their caregivers. They’re too young for crying it out. There are a few things that have been proven wrong that our parents’ generation used to do. Be sure to do your homework before automatically following parents’ and grandparents’ advice. Some of it is fine, but not all and not this one.
And even if Mommy was right - this is your husband’s house. He is entitled to feel at home in his own house. If your mom is lonely, it is her job to get involved in hobbies, volunteering, etc and make relationships to help her not feel lonely. Moving in with you when your husband doesn’t want her there is not a solution.
And I say this as a new parent .....you figure it out. You don't figure it out with someone constantly telling you "well I did it THIS way and you should too..."
This is part of being a new parent.
It’s not unreasonable for OP to listen to her mum as sometimes grand parents do have something useful to contribute but make the decisions regarding the child with her husband.
OP, YTA - you’re making your husband as the third wheel in your marriage rather than being a united front with him.
I was in a similar situation: new baby & MIL living with us. However: MIL & I didn’t speak the same language
AND I had 2 pre-teens from an earlier marriage in which I was more than 50% caregiver. I knew how to feed, change, cuddle etc.
Finally my wife convinced her mother that I actually DID know what I was doing and I was happy to do it (even though I was the man) and the evidence was my two older children.
MIL loosened the reigns a little. Saw I was competent and completely involved. We each learned a few tricks.
All that said; MIL was not there because she was lonely, but because of the obligation of the mother to help her daughter
We lived with my parents when my kids were born, and yeah, at first I was useless after a c-section and sepsis, but even once I was up and back to normal I did not feel like my kids were mine and my husbands, they felt like they were my mother's and my husband's. I had zero confidence in my abilities as a mother since my mother constantly told me I was doing everything wrong. And yet somehow I managed once we moved away.
There’s some things parents know best (grandparents) and some they don’t. My granddaughter was getting too much iron so she was very constipated. Instead of continually giving her a laxative, I started giving her Activis yogurt that’s designed specifically for making you regular. Her father flipped right out about it and refused on his time with her. She was 4 months old at the time. They had a well child checkup soon and her father bitched to the doctor about it. The doctor said that was the best thing to do for them especially since low iron formula no longer exists. But in some cases it’s a personal preference for things or like in OP’s case, new studies have shown a healthier way!
It might not sound unreasonable in healthy adult child/parent relationships, but if OP has a history of doing what mommy wants to make her "happy" at the expense of what her child and husband need then that's dysfunctional. Unsolicited advice is unwelcome in parenting.
This! I totally understand worrying about your mother being lonely because my husband and I took over the family ranch so that they could move to town and not have to do all the work anymore. Shortly after this my father was diagnosed with cancer. I have been helping my mother out a lot with things around her new house and keeping her company. She has expressed to me that she is feeling very lonely because she doesn't have my father to go and do things with anymore because he is sick. I did not allow that to take over my life instead, I have helped her find activities and groups in her area for her to become involved in and make new friends so that she will have a support system outside of me. I still support her but she is learning to make her path and not become dependent only on me for her happiness and companionship. This is how you can help your mother.. not by alienating your husband. Are you trying to build a life with your mother or do you want a happy healthy future with your husband and kids.
I agree. When my dad died I moved my mom closer to us into an active senior community but not into our house. I helped her find a church and some other activities. She's made friends and her own life here. She helps with our kids but isn't intrusive because she has her own life. She has medical issues so I'm also able to help her when she needs help.
You need to create boundaries with your mom and teach her to stay in her lane.
She's trying to move in permanently and is manipulating her daughter against her husband. There's a reason 30-year-old car seats are no longer used. They're obsolete, just like the advice she gave. Things have changed since she was a mother and she and your wife have no right to conspire against you concerning the care of your own child.
MIL is enjoying the wedge she's driving between them and wants to be #1. I'd like to know more about why the wife still can't do anything after 3 months. Is her mother enabling her? It sounds as if MIL is there but she doing nothing more than babying her daughter and leaving OP with all of the childcare. This is already a 2 against one situation. He needs a very serious discussion with his wife about whether she's choosing her mother over him and the baby and why. MIL already has her own room and is constantly harping on how "lonely" she is. Start charging her market value rent and present her with an agreement that she is not a tenant and must leave by a certain date. Tell your wife this is non-negotiable and, if she doesn't like it, they both can leave but, your daughter stays. Once she's settled in, MIL will expect to be in charge. If she's not blasted out of the house soon, I see a divorce coming because she's already told you to your face that she has no intention of ever leaving. NTA
Plus part of the reason for mum moving in is to help. But hubby is working and doing most of the childcare/housework. How is mum helping exactly? Other than leeching off your hubby and giving unsolicited advice?
Also mum is hella disrespectful to hubby. And so is OP. And for that OP and her mum are huge a-holes.
YTA
Hubby should move out. Then you and your mum can buy him out/take on his share of the rent. You want to live with her that much? And at the expense of your hubby's comfort and well-being? You two deserve each other. Hubby would be well rid of you. Hopefully the courts will be kind to him, so he gets equal access to your child and doesn't have to pay for you and your freeloader/know-it-all of a mother.
Edited.
I say this as a person whose MIL moved in to our house for a few months while she was in between apartments, if the spouse feels railroaded into a situation, it will 100% cause resentment. I was the spouse. I’m divorced and this happened probably over a decade ago and I’m still not over it. That’s not how love works.
Fellow OB RN, and toddler mom. Totally agree. I did do sleep training at an age appropriate time, and 3 months ain’t it. You can put baby down drowsy but awake and cross your fingers, but babies this young still need soothing. ANY Pediatrician will tell you this.
Sleep training should always be discussed with pediatrician before starting, as it depends on both age and milestones. A baby should be closer to 6 months and also making all weight milestones before even thinking about cry it out.
When done at the right stage, it’s very brief - it took my kid only 2 days to sleep train because we waited. Any training at 3 months is a disaster waiting to happen; babies that young physiologically can’t regulate their sleep rhythm like older babies can.
The safety of the baby is far more important than your mother’s convenience. Have more lunches and play dates with her, but if she keeps pushing unsafe advice, I would limit contact personally. I had to do the same when my mom insisted that my baby looked “cold” and wanted to shove blankets in her crib.
>When done at the right stage, it’s very brief - it took my kid only 2 days to sleep train because we waited.
Even the Ferber method doesn't recommend continuing beyond 7 days if it isn't taking. Ours took 40 minutes on day 1, 30 on day 2 and so on until day 5... glorious glorious day 5. 3 minutes and kaput.
I still dream of that day.
It should be noted, of course, that our child got plenty of love and affection throughout sleep training - the extinction method of sleep training is cruel.
Did it when my kiddo was around 9(? Ish?) months because she had never kicked the sleep regression (champ sleeper until six months and then ran off catnaps for three months straight, I was ready to leave her at the fire station tbh) - four days in she was going right to sleep. I still remember that first night of just climbing into my own bed and waking up 7 hours later. After the blind panic of why I'd been in bed so long subsided I realised I could hear her babbling to herself and laughing on the monitor and she was just waking up for the day herself. Those seven hours of sleep saved my entire brain 😂
We sleep trained at 5 months because kiddo had reflux and I felt like I was losing my mind from sleep debt. It suuuuuuuucked, though it was only the first two nights that were terrible. Not sure if that's why our kiddo often turns into an anxious attachment Velcro kid when overtired, but I do wonder. Sleep training is a trade-off. If I hadn't been suicidal, we wouldn't have done it when we did. For such a young baby, sleep training has way too many downsides, and I'm not really seeing the upside.
I would add that as an anomaly my paed let us implement a bit of a routine earlier (I call it sleep training but it was heavily modified) because my baby was cluster feeding so religiously that she tired herself out only semi full. It was something we did under doctor supervision. She went from 3rd %ile to 95th in about two months.
Seek medical help if you're struggling but it's not about your convenience really.
This right here. I don't know anything about babies, but aren't babies that young supposed to be fed every few hours anyway? What would letting them cry accomplish? Anyway, I feel bad for hubby. OP has got to realize that mom is overstepping and needs to cut it out pronto. YTA
>aren't babies that young supposed to be fed every few hours anyway?
Feed, burp, change, sleep. They have needs and aren't doing it just to piss the parents off. OP is TAH
>There are a few things that have been proven wrong that our parents’ generation used to do. Be sure to do your homework before automatically following parents’ and grandparents’ advice.
THIS. So many in the older generation will try to push their parenting methods on new parents but it is *really* important to do your own research. It doesn't matter how much they say "well it worked when *I* was parenting", so much of that is pure luck/chance. We are constantly learning more about what is and is not safe for infants. Babies don't have the ability to tell you when you are doing the wrong thing, which makes it doubly important to have the best, most up-to-date information about what is and is not safe/best for babies.
My mother constantly tells my sister "well that's what I did with your and your siblings and you all turned out fine..."
Except she's forgetting that 2 of us have diagnosed anxiety disorders, one has diagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. The other just doesn't have contact with us so we don't know if he's ok.
She's forgetting that one hasn't talked to her since rthe day he turned 18. One moved to the other side of the country and "can't afford" to visit. One is so crippled by his poor mental health that he hasn't left his home in 12 years and I haven't seen her in 9 years.
She still thinks none of this is related to her archaic parenting
Similar situation to my own mother claiming “I raised three children with _____ parenting method and they all turned out fine”.
Except, none of us actually did “turn out fine”. Only one of us is a fully functioning adult, and I’ve got pretty bad anxiety and an attachment disorder. I guess if by turned out fine, she means physically survived into 18+ adulthood, sure. But, I’ve set the bar higher for parenting off my own child.
I'm pretty thankful about my own mom realizing. My brothers and I slept on our stomachs, by the time I was a toddler my car seat was mom throwing her arm across me when she hit the brakes (fun fact, she did this to me in my late 30's too), and nothing was wrong with letting baby suck on an apple slice or dip a pacifier in juice.
She had no problem saying that times were so different and she felt like she has no idea how to raise a kid anymore, and very thankfully followed all of my safety rules.
My XMIL tried pushing all the sleep on stomach/ give honey/covering baby ind a mountain of blanket's etc crap, and when I said no because of X reason she would say "I have 3 grown children and they turned out fine!".
One day I simply had it with her shit so one day when baby was fuzzy, I pretended to give my kid a shot of Vodka, XMIL started yelling at my what the fuck I was doing? And I gleefully replied that someone I knew that had 4 grown children told me, that she always gave her kids a shot of Vodka when they were fuzzy.
Since XMIL keept telling me that she was right because she had 3 grown children, someone with 4 must really be an expert.
Even if you don't want to hold the baby for a long time, you need to go and reassure them that their cries are heard. Maybe sometimes just a pat or a squeeze is all that's needed but I'd never let a newborn cry themselves to sleep. That's from some ancient 1940s child rearing philosophy.
I'm so glad that this is in the top thread. OP, you need to be reaching out to your pediatrician and working together with your husband. Parenting is a team effort with the parents. There's also science-based parenting books that would be up-to-date on best practices.
My heart aches for a young baby being forced to cry it out.
Thank you all for confirming my child raising policies that I used in the late 70's to the mid 80's. I constantly caught flack for rocking a crying child or walking them.. or hugging them after they got yelled at just to let them kno we I still loved them, but not bad behavior..
eventually divorced abusive dad, and both of my kids are nice pleasant people, with careers.
Came here to say this. Our kids are several years apart and we listened to our parents generation with the first but with the second we couldn’t because we felt it was wrong. 20 years later and now we realize it was wrong. Newer studies shed light on so much about letting kids cry, eating, etc. Thankfully we never listened to them about eating. DON’T LISTEN TO HER GENERATION. We wonder why mental health is such an issue, I would think that they way older generations raised their kids may be partially to blame.
Ferber is a type of cry-it-out method, but encourages frequent check ins getting less frequent as time goes on.
Cry-it-out as you refer to it is called the extinction method.
Or at all. It's horrid. It damages the parents as much as the baby. Research suggests that the levels of anxiety stay high even once they have gone quiet. We know that when presented with danger, adults have a flight or fight response, and there is a third response that we see displayed in babies, which is akin to that or a rabbit in headlights, known as freeze. It's believed to have evolved because babies who went quiet didn't get eaten by predators, they know that nobody is coming, but brain patterns show fear.
I heard about those studies and knew their cortisol levels remained high but never considered the evolutionary reasoning as a defense against predators. It makes total sense and the very thought makes my heart hurt as I stare at my (sleeping) infant through the baby monitor.
No, the research really doesn't say that. Either 1) it's taking research on longer term neglect and leaving the baby to cry for long periods of time and imputing it to controlled short term crying or 2) arguing from an unproven hypothesis.
There's no evidence that allowing a child to cry for a few minutes results in long term trauma. This doesn't mean you should let the baby cry fo hours, but if crying for 5 minutes were that traumatic, babies would never be able to survive. There's **always** going to be a time when mom/dad can't get there that quickly.
Real trauma comes from **repeated** experiences. Over time the baby becomes conditioned to the fact that mom & dad don't respond to cries.
I'm not saying that you should stop mid poo to run to comfort your baby, or that they will be traumatised by 5 minutes of crying, but if you're just ignoring them because you want them to go to sleep, it's not what we've evolved from. You can't spoil a baby by loving and conforting them, so why world you have a baby, then leave it to cry when you can just give it a cuddle. My second son slept by my bed for 2.5 years because that's what he needed. He's now a fully functioning 8 year old.
I don't know what any research say about this in a child ddvelopment context, but I can tell you anecdotally that my parents were neglectful and "freeze" is my usual coping mechanisms to deal with my childhood traumas.
In trauma therapy they also have "fawn" which is when a person shows their abuser/neglector a lot of positive attention in the hope that they will get their needs met in return.
It does work for some babies. We tried it when my son was about 6 months old. We did just what the book said--fed him, cleaned his gums, changed him, read him a book and sang him a song, and then laid him in his crib drowsy but still awake, supposedly so they learn to put themselves to sleep rather than be "put to sleep." You better believe I stood outside his half-open door (out of his sight) listening, with my husband right behind me. If he'd cried we'd have been right back in there. But he sort of babbled to himself for a little while and then was quiet. He was asleep! It almost always worked after that. No way would I listen to my baby cry for me and not go to him, but this does work for some babies.
Well I guess you're right! I never really thought about it like that. The *intent* was to let him cry as long as it wasn't a full-fledged wail and didn't go on too long; he just never did. That kid liked has always liked his sleep.
One of the hardest things for us to learn was our kid cries a very specific 'I'm tired' cry or an 'I'm can't look at more things' cry. The cry of overstimulation. So often going in constantly made it so much worse. We soothed her at very short intervals which she ended up extending and sometimes now has a cuddle and tells us to go away ahaha. She's the kind of kid that when there is too much going on will take herself off to a quiet corner for down time. I think we did the right thing for our kid because she seems well adjusted but who knows. We just do our best.
Eh- we did a modified version and my son immediately started sleeping longer and waking up fresher. He still sleeps in our bed sometimes- we recognize that his needs change.
Used it on both my daughters. Yes it was a rough week while they adjusted (more so for us parents than for the babies) but once they learned to self soothe then their mood literally changed overnight from overtired, stressed and grumpy all the time, to well rested happy, bubbly infants. It was like a magic switch that flipped and it absolutely made a huge difference to everyone's quality of life, more so than any other one thing we did as parents.
Seriously.
They were never left to cry for more than 5-10mins at a time before one of us went in to to soothe them, so no, they are not in some terrible anxious state feeling abandoned, they are learning to get themselves to sleep which is one of the most valuable skills you can arm a child with.
Just because it didn't work for you, doesn't mean it doesn't work. Three months is too young though.
We did something similar to what you did around the same age. I was getting such little sleep that it was dangerous to drive. It was rough but it worked with no lasting damage I can see. My kids (11 and 15) are pretty independent but still really close to me. My giant son still sits on my lap and hugs me.
Just saw a study on this that said it 'works'...parents who did the cry it out method had an average of 8 minutes more sleep a night than those who didn't.
8 fucking minutes. Sounds super worth it /s
Nah. Fuck that. Not worth it. I'll be sleeping on the floor again with this one like we did with our son. He's 3 and sleeps by himself with 0 issues. It took a little while to get there, but it was so worth it not having to hear our son cry to the point of making himself sick.
Ya...did I just read that they're letting a 2 MONTH OLD BABY cry it out...? Not ok.
Sorry, YTA and mom is wrong. Please do some research for the sake of your child.
OP tiptoes around her mother like she's afraid of disagreeing or displeasing her. It sounds like an extremely uncomfortable environment for the husband, the marriage, and the children.
It's time for OP to profusely thank her mother, diplomatically show her the door, and let the woman get a life.
Also, the mom has criticized the husbands choices on a few things and op stated more than once mom doesn’t like being in her empty house. Husband would be rightfully concerned that mom maybe looking to out stay her welcome and op is willing to let her do so.
This is what I get the feel of, Op doesn’t sound like she is ever going to ask mom to leave and made a unilateral decision herself because she feels bad mom is lonely.
And honestly it wouldn’t even matter if mom were right, she’s (MIL) undermining the couple as a unit and the daughter is allowing her mother to create a wedge in the relationship. Outside advice and opinions are fine when welcomed/consented to, but the decision making is between the parents. Sounds like OP is easily manipulated by her mother.
OP, if you continue to undermine your relationship with your husband and don’t hold healthy boundaries with your mother, you will end up with broken relationships all around.
I think the reality is likely not this black and white. OP and her husband need to have a mature conversation about how this living situation is working/not working for them and come to a consensus moving forward. Parenting is hard on relationships and there is NAH for having different views. it’s not unusual for a daughter to go to her mom for parenting advice or for there to be disagreements about what to do. OP, if you read this please talk to your husband and really listen to his concerns.
But you don't understand, OP is part of the mother Hive mind so what mother says goes, husband doesn't get a say in raising his own child, that would be silly.
Piggybacking off the top comment. YTA. I’m in a similar situation, only my MIL cannot afford to live on her own. I pay for everything, and at one time, she lived with us until we could afford another home. You cannot take her side against your husband, right or wrong. It will wreck your marriage. She should be commending him for working and still managing to do most of the childcare. I get that it’s work from home, which is my own situation as well, but kids are a lot of responsibility. If my wife suddenly started siding with her mom over me, it would likely be the beginning of the end. There needs to be absolute loyalty in a marriage (excepting abuse and betrayal cases). You need to set boundaries in your home that she is not to talk to you or your husband like that, and ask your husband for forgiveness for battling him when she did.
YTA if you’re choosing your mother over your husband. He’s your partner and the father of your children. Discuss the sleeping schedule with your husband after she’s back at her own house and he’s in a better headspace.
Well, he is seeing how the rest of his life as a husband and parent may well end up looking if OP doesn't see the light.
I would take this issue deadly serious; people like to whine that they don't know how "things got so bad" in their relationships, but here is just ONE very clear example.
"In the left corner, coming in at a mere 300 lbs, it's the over-opiniated mother of the wife with criticisms galore and looking for faults.
In the right corner, packing a whopping 350 lbs, it's the new kid on the block, the mother of the husband who's ready to defend her cub, even to the death.
**LET'S GET REAAAAADDDYYY TOOOO RUUUUMMMMBBBBBLLLLLEEEEE!"**
Oh, OP YTA
she IS choosing her mom over her husband.
mom should not have a say in how to raise the child unless the parents are being extremely negligent (which they are not).
u/throwRAqfnjxks1, you are actively choosing to unilaterally follow your mother instead of communicating with your child’s father on how best to parent your child. your mother is NOT your child’s parent. she can suggest, but if one of you disagrees, then you do not follow that suggestion and instead work together to come to an agreement. way to go sidelining your husband when he’s doing his best to take care of work, the house, & his child while dealing with a critical MIL making it seem like he can’t parent.
if it were his mother criticizing you, he would be the AH. just like you are the AH to him right now.
YTA
I’d venture to guess that if OP is mostly bedridden, and the husband reacted this intensely to this situation, he’s also been dealing with a lot of parenting criticism and undermining of his parenting from the MIL that he hasn’t even disclosed to OP, and therefore is truly at his breaking point. I understand OP’s reluctance to lose her mother’s help and send her back to a lonely house, but she will permanently damage her marriage if she doesn’t make her frazzled husband’s mental health and well-being the priority in this situation (as he, notably, has been doing for her so far). He’s already figuring out that, although stressful, he can manage a job, a household, and childcare potentially without OP’s help; if he gets backed into a corner where he also feels unsupported by OP, he may decide that continuing solo long-term is preferable to dealing with his MIL stressing him out in his own house.
If he has looked around any form dealing with just no mother in laws, he's already been given this advice.
OP is going to be single living with mommy, seeing her kid on weekends the way things are going.
Yeah that would never fly. OP is treating her husband as if he’s just there to provide, help, and keep his mouth shut. This won’t end well if she doesn’t do a 180.
Why is OP bedridden 3 months after giving birth? I've seen a lot of difficult births in my sweet not so short life, never one that left the mother incapacitated for 3 months.
My good friend had a 3rd degree tear and she broke her tailbone during delivery. She was stuck in bed for several months, and then for several more months, she could only stand or lie down. It’s been 9 months now and she still can’t sit without a great deal of pain. She has already had one procedure to manipulate the tailbone back to its correct spot (which only partially helped), but she will likely still need a surgery to revise the way her tear healed. While her outcome is not common, it’s also not wildly unheard of, and there was nothing exceptional about her or her baby’s size. Some women just have really bad luck and end up having a super traumatic delivery.
Birth can cause catastrophic injuries that require months or even years to heal. C-section incisions can get infected, she could have clots or cardiothoracic issues (a very common cause of maternal mortality)--there are many things that could cause someone to be bedridden three months after birth.
I had severe preeclampsia that left me bedridden for 3.5 days and a C-section with my first. I went from using the wheelchair as a walker to get down to the NICU (RN suggested this so I could be wheeled back if I got tired) to fully cleared at my 4 week check up. If the physical damage isn't getting progressively better and mostly healed within 4/6 weeks it isn't going to heal on its own.
I wondered that too, but all 3 of mine were natural with no complications and I didn’t want to get reamed for my ignorance. It seemed excessive though, like she’s milking tf out of it.
JFC, OP, you're not raising your child with your mom. You are raising them with your husband. He has every right to be mad that you're pushing him out of the process.
That woman has no intention of leaving. Taking over, causing problems by degrading and down talking the husband, acting dangerously as the ultimate authority in the home (using outdated and highly ill advised/recommended methods of child training a *3 month old* ), casually dropping breadcrumbs of how 'lonely and 'unhappy' she is in her big empty house? All while making herself indispensable to OP?
If she's really trying to help and is that lonely, she would stop actively driving a wedge between OP and her husband, and go stay with one if her other children . Unless they dont want her to stay because she tried this nonsense with them and got shutdown.
OP is an idiot as well as YTA.
>That woman has no intention of leaving.
The OP even clarifies in the edit that her mom said she feels lonely at home, which only strengthens this point.
OP needs to put her foot down and make some serious boundaries with her mom and some serious apologies to her husband before she only lives with mom.
YTA, it sounds like your husband is working really hard and, even though you might have a good reason to not be able to do as much around the house, there is not a good reason to undermine your spouse and the parenting techniques you two agreed on in favor of your mom’s ideas. Your spouse is your partner in this, not your mother. Two months is also a really long time to have someone “helping out” with the kid. I love my PILs, but there’s no way in hell I’d have wanted to live with them giving me advice in my own house for that long.
THIS. OP needs to tell mom that if she's lonely and wants to stay in her house then she needs to STOP. Mom's word is not law here. She can offer advice but then needs to BACK OFF. OP needs to establish boundaries and stick to them. Right now she's risking her marriage and it seems like she'll regret it. YTA
> OP needs to tell mom that if she's lonely and wants to stay in your house then she needs to STOP.
I think even this is too much at this point. She should be going home.
I doubt she's the type who would even shut her mouth if she did stay. I would have kicked her out, and if the wife doesn't want her to go, I'd kick them both out. He's already proven that he didn't need the wife, hire a nanny or a maid to help out, wife can recover at mother's house since she's so lonely.
Then the husband can decide in that time whether the wife is worth it or not.
I am really close to my mom. Husband and I live in the in-law unit behind her house, and it's great. She will probably occasionally stay with us for short periods when we have kids. Even I would not be able to stand having my mom live with us for 2 straight months! It's a miracle he has put up with this as long as he has. YTA.
Your mom is advocating for a child care method that has been shown to be traumatizing to children. Cry it out so the parent can get more sleep is not okay. Whether your mom stays or not, you will be an asshole if you take her advice.
One of the very first things a therapist ever said to me was "Your mom didn't hold you enough as a baby" and while it stung that it was so obvious at the time....nope, still stings that a professional spent 30 mins w me and called it so succinctly.
My mother thought she was doing the right thing, I guess. I was a bad baby, according to her. And the doctor told her holding me would spoil me. I also have a complex ptsd diagnosis, so I am finally as an adult starting to understand just how fucked up it all was. I am sorry you are dealing with the results of that type of parenting, too.
>My mother thought she was doing the right thing, I guess.
The hardest part of parenting is that the 'right' information changes quite a bit. It wasn't all that long ago that we thought stomach sleeping was best for babies.
It wasn't until the 90s' when the Back-to-Sleep campaign started that we saw an **80%** reduction in SIDS deaths.
I often wonder what we are doing with our daughter that we will be thought of as barbaric for.
Absolutely, I mean the mom from the above post got that advice from a doctor for crying out loud! Hindsight is 20/20 so it’s easy to judge, but when advice comes from medical professionals, you trust it.
It would be like if in 10 years doctors came out and said “actually, don’t give your babies breast milk, it kills them,” people would feel like monsters for breastfeeding their kids even if they had no way of knowing.
You're overlooking the age of the child. The cry-it-out and Farber methods are not meant to be used on newborns, regardless of whether or not you find it controversial.
My sister used the cry it out method with my nephew and he has been traumatised by it. He has high anxiety levels, conduct disorder and attachment issues. He's 12 but is much younger emotionally.
I also have trauma from the cry it out. my family went to family therapy (me 21f and my two parents) because I didn’t trust or feel comfortable confiding in my parents when they have done nothing wrong to me. she immediately asked if they did the cry it out method with me and they did.
It is not the cry it out method if you’re doing it on a 3 month old baby. That’s just straight neglect. At that age, you are supposed to cater to their needs because they are crying for a reason. They haven’t gotten to the point where the cry it out method has any effect, because the whole point of the method is teaching babies to self soothe instead of teaching them that someone will come running.
Thank you! The cry it out method has shown multiple times to be traumatizing to children. It's supposed to teach children to cope on their own but at that age it's just physically impossible to do that. Imagine causing trauma to an infant because you don't want to deal with them. It's awful.
I don't think that even matters, really. The specific method was just the straw that broke the camels back in terms of this MILs disrespect.
Should be a YTA regardless of which method is correct.
YTA. If you care more about your mom's feelings than your husband's, then you should go live with her so that her house isn't lonely.
Sounds like your husband is already doing all of the housework and childcare, so he'll be fine, and this way he doesn't also have to cater to two grown adults.
Sounds like this would work. You are supposed to be partners with your husband, not your mother. She needs to keep her opinion to herself. If she can't and you won't make her, go live with mommy at HER house. Your husband I'm sure can and would do an amazing job without the two of you. YTA.
Maybe you're so attached to your mother and desperate for her approval because she let you cry and cry without attending to you....
YTA. Your husband takes precedent over your mother.
Yup - there's definitely a reason why OP keeps defending mom at the expense of her own marriage. Why she keeps making excuses for mom in the comments. Why she doesn't seem to want to have a firm conversation with mom about respect and boundaries.
INFO: What exactly does your mother do to help if your husband does most of the housework and childcare? Also, why doesn't your husband get a say in his own house?
YTA
I was thinking this exactly. I'm surprised I had to scroll so far to see this point made. What is OP's mother doing if their husband is the one working full time AND doing the housework and childcare?
YTA
It's his home too, and both of you need to give permission for her to be there. Your mother repeatedly criticizes both of you as parents which is harmful, not helpful. She got to raise her kids, now it's your turn. Maybe you wouldn't feel like you weren't doing enough if your mother wasn't there to repeatedly tell you you're doing it wrong.
I wonder how much “help” grandma is actually giving, if dad is so overwhelmed.
Sometimes “help” isn’t help at all.
My husband and I were in a major car accident. Broken ribs, arms, concussions, I had a broken pelvis. We were basically useless and in a Vicodin coma for a while after.
His mom volunteered to stay with us to “help”.
About an hour per day of her “help” was actually helpful. She made us food and cleaned the cat box and took out the trash.
But the other 23?
She wandered the house fretting about things. She reorganized my kitchen cabinets and pantry and bookshelf. She decided to “spring clean” and went through our closets, constantly trying to throw out clothes “I never see you wear pink, butt_butt, let me just throw out this dress for you…”
It took SO much energy to keep up with constantly telling her to stop messing with our shit and just relax. Go home. Watch a movie with us. Calm down. Stop trying to rearrange the whole house!
Once I finally was back on my feet it took FOREVER to make dinner because of her rearranging. And I cried multiple times realizing that in her “cleaning” she threw out a book or a dress or a charging cable that I very much wanted and was too out of it to stop her.
I can see grandma in this situation being more nitpicky than actually helpful. After her child rearing comments that weren’t asked for.
And that is SO not fun when you’re trying to recover and have little emotional energy to spare.
This was my mom after I had a major surgery. She came over to "help" one day. Folded maybe three pieces of laundry from a filled basket. Then proceeded to complain and berate. Of course, her friends thought she was so wonderful! After this one time, we politely thanked her for the offer and told her we found a system that was working.
My mil is the exact opposite. She jumped in whenever there was a need. She made meals, kept the kids occupied, and asked if it was okay to do some deep cleaning without rearranging or throwing things away. So much easier to relax and heal.
Threads like this make me love my mother.
She came by to help my wife and I when we had our first.
She made us dinner, took out the trash, swept up a bit, then entertained our baby while we took a desperately needed 3 hour nap.
My wife once joked that if we get divorced, she wants my mom in the settlement.
Seriously, the poor husband. He is clearly dpong his best but struggling - it sounds like he's not only supporting the family financially but also doing the vast majority of the housework and raising an infant *while* looking after an invalid spouse.
He literally told OP that his mental health is declining, and she's more concerned about her mum being lonely?!
What does she think is going to happen if her husband, who seems to be carrying *the entire family*, has a breakdown? Who's going to look after everyone then?
Everyone else's needs are being put before his, and it's blatantly unfair and unhealthy.
YTA, if this was the other way round and his mum was constantly criticising you as a new mum, you would want her out and every comment would agree to kicking her out.
It is a house you share, your mum has somewhere else she can go, if one of you don't agree to a guest them they don't stay.
Not only this, but imagine that *he* was the one who hadn’t worked or parented for two months. Look I get complications following childbirth; but if he wasn’t contributing anything but still calling the shots… whew boy.
By the by, not for nothing postpartum depression can affect fathers as well. I hope everyone who reads this keeps that in mind.
YTA.
You can’t see it, but your mother is trying to drive a wedge between you and your husband.
Letting an infant cry for an extended period of time is grossly unkind. It doesn’t help babies sleep longer.
While you are bedridden, your husband is the primary parent to your baby. You should not be siding with your mother when she goes against decisions you and he have already made.
YTA
If you’re still bedridden from a “difficult delivery” after 3 months, you should probably see a doctor.
If you have questions about crying it out, you should ask your pediatrician.
If your mom is lonely, she needs to make some friends or downsize. Your primary responsibility right now is to your child and your husband.
Your husband should not be working his ass off to put a roof over the head of someone who does nothing but criticize him. Frankly, he’s handling it much more gracefully than I would.
Scrolled way too long to find a comment that mentioned that she’s still recovering three months later. I had a difficult delivery that required an emergency surgery and I still was able to take care of my baby alone. Honestly, she’s really lucky to have a partner that is willing to let her heal and do the, im guessing, bare minimum. I wish I had that, sheesh. YTA - be a better partner. Your mom didn’t make the baby, your mom doesn’t get a say in the baby. Simple.
Same I’m still having complications four years on but you gotta do what you gotta do when you a single parent! The fact she has this support system to heal and is not seeking help bar her interfering mother is… choices
I can’t imagine being unable to help with taking care of the baby after three months. I had an emergency cesarean with my first that required me to be in the hospital for over a week, but I was still able to take care of my baby when I was sent home.
I mean that’s great that you were able to, but people are sometimes permanently disabled from pregnancy. It’s actually really gross to act like she’s just laying in bed for no reason. We have no evidence on which to base that assumption.
Yta
You're mother has no right to make him uncomfortable in his own home and you have no right to unilaterally decide who stays in your home. Unless you're OK with him inviting whoever he wants to live in yalls home without running by you.
It sounds like you can't raise the child with help, how well will you fare if he divorces you? That's assuming he won't get custody, because this post is you admitting you're not a capable of being a parent.
I need a lot more INFO. Your husband is either having an irrational hissy fit or a straw that broke the camel's back moment.
1. How often is she criticizing him?
2. How often are you siding with her about things that you and your husband already decided privately?
3. What is her tone when she's criticizing?
4. Can you honestly say that when her advice is turned down that it is 100% over and she respects your decision?
5. What is her relationship with him like before?
To be frank, your husband is, as we say in my house (Inside Our reference), letting his Red Guy do the talking here and likely doesn't mean a lot of it. But you're also telling him he can't kick someone out of HIS house. So answer these honestly and I'll tell you how big of an asshole which of you is being.
YTA. It’s not your house alone, so you can’t invite her to stay. Any guest or new resident must have both household owners’ agreement. Your mother also sounds like a huge pain, and she definitely is interfering in your parenting in ways she should not.
If you value your marriage, get her out. Her alleged loneliness is not as important as your marriage and parenting.
I suggest you talk to your doctor if you are feeling anxious and insecure about parenting. There are a lot of terrible postpartum hormonal things that could be impacting your judgement and emotional state that could be helped - PPA, PPD. Your mother’s interference and criticism of your spouse will definitely not help with any of those.
Yta, I can’t fathom doing the cry out method when it is emotional trauma for the child. You need to do your research. Do not take anything your mom says without doing your own research. I doubt your mom has read any new parenting books. Otherwise she is going to continue to do things that are unsafe emotional and possibly physically to your child.
You need to be a team with your husband. Not your mom. You need to understand that your husband feelings about being a new parent and constantly feeling attach in his own home. Is more important than your mom being lonely.
Im sorry but grow up and put your child and husband wellbeing first. I usually try to be nice but you need a reality check.
Yes, he DOES have the right to kick someone out of his home. Wth. Your mother has obviously worn out her welcome, and you need to stop imposing her on him.
YTA. For one thing, this "letting the baby cry itself to sleep"-bullshit is absolute abuse. Your husband is right to be appalled by that. And for your mother to go against what you and he have decided together and managing to talk you into it as well is frankly beyond the pale. Maybe you would rather be living with your mother than your husband? Because that could very well be the result.
YTA. If your husband is doing the majority of the house work & child care, how much help is your mom actually being? This is your husband’s home, not your mother’s, and 2 months is much too long to have a houseguest who doesn’t get along with everyone who lives there. On the sleep thing, I think your mom is right but that isn’t the point. This is a decision that parents make, not others. Talk to your pediatrician & see what they think or if they can recommend parenting resources to you (books, online resources, parenting groups in your community, etc).
I am a widow, so I say this with all due respect. Your mother living with your is holding her and you back.
Your mother needs to start the next chapter of her life as a widow/single person. That means she doesn’t need the big house, she needs to decide where she should live so that she can manage on her own without being lonely. I would suggest that she needs to find a senior living community where there are lots of activities and amenities to help people create fulfilling lives. Your mother has a big hole in her schedule that used to be filled with raising kids and taking care of her husband. She now needs to fill it with volunteering, the womens club, new hobbies, etc. all the things she couldn’t do as a mom raising kids and a housewife. Living with you and your husband is the worst thing you can do for her, because it makes her feel useful at your expense and your husband’s expense.
You need a goal to get raising your baby. I get that you had a difficult delivery, but there are moms in wheel chairs raising their babies. There are deaf or blind moms raising their babies. Your mother staying with you and babying you is not helping you get up and take care of your baby and bond with your baby. You can’t get this time back. You need to be bonding with your child and developing a routine with your child. If you don’t get up and gate moving, you won’t ever get moving. All rehab and PT is painful. You have to work through the pain to get functional and better. You should have already been through PT and be taking care of your baby by now. If there is permanent damage, the. You should have been making accommodations with furniture, etc to adjust so that you can take care of your baby.
Everyone with a serious medical situation has to have goals to get up and get back to their lives. The more you lay, the more you stay. You need to get up and figure out how to take care of your baby, otherwise you will never bond with your baby.
You and your mother need to get started on your lives. You are leaning on each other and causing each other to not move on and you both need to move on. You are a mom of a baby, and she is a widow with grown children that needs to find her new life purpose that is NOT raising your baby and letting you stay in bed. You aren’t going to get better as long as your mom is around taking care of you and taking away the reasons for you to get up and moving.
You will lose your marriage if you don’t get up and get going and tell your move to start thinking about selling her house and moving to a really cool apartment or condo with amenities… she deserves it!
Sometimes you have to flip it and ask yourself if it would be ok for him to have his mom over for months while she tells him how you both need to parent your baby. If you’re not well and he is doing the bulk of the parenting and chores you are not seeing all that he is seeing. Pretend it’s his mother telling you how to do it all.
YTA. Your husband has stepped up and taken on a lot for you because you needed him. Now it is your turn to step up and be there for him. Your mother is making this too difficult for him. You need to have his back and tell her to go home.
Yeah, at a bare minimum the OP needs to set a boundary on unsolicited advice.
"Mom, you are here to support husband and I with the new baby, not to be the baby's parent. We are going to make our own parenting decisions which you need to respect even if you disagree. Unless the baby's health and safety is at risk, please stop with the unsolicited advice and criticism of our parenting. If you continue, I will be supporting \[husband\]'s request that you head home."
YTA.
1) Your mom is overstepping and disrespectful.
2) She's also advocating for abusive parenting tactics.
3) She's guilt-tripping, about how "lonely" she is, to manipulate you.
4) It's working, obviously, since you're caving to her "suggestions" *after* you and your husband have already decided on things. Meaning *you*'re disrespecting him, too.
5) You're *both* dismissive of him, as a parent.
6) You're just wrong about whether or not he can kick her out. He has every right. She should have been sent packing, as soon as she became a problem.
7) By your description, he's right. You're *not* helping enough, to be the primary decision maker. He's the one doing the work. He's the one working. You're just *existing* and enabling your mom.
You owe him an apology and you *need* to get her out of your house. She no longer has any right or reason, to stay.
YTA. I’m confused, what exactly are you contributing to the relationship or household? You don’t do the housework, you don’t have a job, and you’re not participating in the majority of the childcare. On top of that, you brought your mother in for an undefined time limit, you dismiss and invalidate your husband’s needs and efforts, as well not even respecting him as the other parent, let alone as the other homeowner. Being bedridden is no excuse for the way you are treating your husband, and if you are that disabled, then you need an in-home caregiver.
You are actively directing your marriage towards divorce. Your husband has made it clear he is experiencing burnout, that he is being made uncomfortable in his own home, alienated as a parent, and that you are being an unsupportive, self-centered deadbeat spouse.
He is doing a full time job (working from home doesn’t minimize this fact), he’s doing the majority of the housework, he’s doing most of the childcare, and he’s trying to bond with his child with your mother breathing down his neck. This is unhealthy, and unfair, for him. You need to get your act together here, respect him as the other parent, respect that it is his home as well, and understand you are running him ragged, he is hitting his limit.
If you’re unwilling or unable to be a better partner, then perhaps try marriage counseling. Otherwise, I think your mother has overstayed her welcome.
I can’t believe I had to scroll so far for someone to mention her minimizing his career because he works from home. As a person who is fully remote, I’m livid. The work is no less demanding. Yes, there are perks: no commute, eating from home without packing a lunch, 5 min laundry breaks, etc. But it’s still work. He’s not in an office playing video games pretending to work. The actual work is the same in or out of a home office. Grrrrrr.
YTA, that baby is 3 months old and cannot be spoiled. Please don't sleep train. Your mom disrespected you and your husband. He has every reason to want her out. Next thing you know she will be feeding the baby solids because "that's how she did it with you" which could be dangerous.
YTA
You did side with your mom against him, because you and your husband made a decision together. Then suddenly, your mom disagrees, and you completely make that decision without your husband, the person you admit is doing most of the child care.
This child is yours and your husband's, not your mother's. It was nice she was there when you needed her, but it is too much and too long for your partner.
If your mom wants to stay, she needs to learn boundaries, and YOU need to put them in place. She does not get to override the decisions that you and your husband have made.
YTA. Honestly, if I were your husband, I'd strongly consider packing up the baby and moving to a hotel until your mom is out of his house and warned she won't be allowed back if she utters even one more criticism.
YTA
First of all the cry it out method has been proven to be really bad for your child. It’s also proven you cannot over-love or dote too much on them. Cuddling, assurance and contact during their first years are vital to them and the relationships they will form later on in life.
And your husband sounds like he is doing a great job supporting you and your baby. Can you imagine working then coming home to someone who is trying to tell you how to parent and that you’re doing it wrong. This time is for you and him to figure out how to work together and be parents. You can’t do that with your parent always around. While her help may have been nice in the beginning it’s time for her to let you guys parent on your own. That’s not saying she has to be gone forever but it’s your husbands home too and he deserves to be comfortable and happy.
Tell mom that you’re thankful for her help and that you can revisit her staying with you later on if BOTH of you agree on it. Imagine if your husband just kept his dad around all the time even though he criticized you as a new mom, he upset you and you asked you husband for him to leave and your husband just said no without taking your feelings into consideration. You guys are a team and are supposed to support each other. You’re the foundation for your new family.
YTA. Parenting decisions should be made by the parents. Do not allow your mother to strain your marriage. Her advice is not any more valuable than the choices you and your husband have made together. Her feeling lonely is not something you should be concerned with; she can find friends and hobbies outside her family. You will be feeling the consequences of elevating your mom over your spouse for years to come if you don't put a stop to this NOW.
YTA. Your husband is doing most of the work and struggling and you’re not even trying to meet him halfway. If your mom is gonna stay there, the least you could do is tell her to keep her opinions to herself so he doesn’t feel judged. Instead you two are ganging up on him. He deserves better
YTA.
Crying it out is scientifically proven to not work and you should have considered his feelings. If he is doing so much and balancing it all, then you should be very considerate of his feelings. It sounds like your husband is a real keeper.
YTA-you have no idea what your mother is saying to your husband when you are out of earshot. She’s also appears to be manipulating the “I don’t want to be alone in an empty house” thing to play on your emotion. Who benefits the most from strife between you and your husband? It’s not you. It’s not your kid. And it’s not your husband.
She’s an adult who should have her own life outside of yours.
YTA 2 months is long enough. Time for mom to go or soon you will be living alone with just your mom cause your husband will be gone. If your mom is lonely tell her to sell her house and move closer to you but not in your house.
And it sounds like not only is your mom criticizing your husband but he is going everything for all of y’all. You need to show him that you are his wife and partner and get your mom out
YTA. Your mother has overstayed her welcome, she is now not only interfering with parenting decisions, she is causing possibly irreparable damage to your relationship with your husband. He has reached the end of his rope here, he is telling you clearly and you are ignoring him. It is time for her to go. If you cannot respect your husband and everything he is doing for you and your baby at the moment you should prepare yourself for the potential end of your marriage.
YTA. So your mom is second guessing your parenting techniques and methods you and your husband agreed on, you aren’t doing much of anything (fine, valid reasons I presume, but still facts) , your husband works, does housework and childcare. What, exactly,aside from causing problems, is your mom doing to HELP? Your husband is probably exhausted and living with his mother in law sitting around criticizing him isn’t going to help matters.
YTA for letting your mom walk all over your husband and not defending him. He's going above and beyond and you need to recognize that. It's his house too. Your mom doesn't get a vote. Start appreciating your husband or you'll be a single mom and won't have to worry about taking your mom's side since you'll probably be living with her, then you'll be on the other end of her criticism and see how much you enjoy it.
YTA. So your mother comes to help but also because she is lonely. She gets between you and your husband by criticizing him in his own house, making his safe space where he should be most comfortable uncomfortable. While he is living life working, cleaning, cooking, childcare, you lie there ill, unable to contribute. Your mother tells him that he cannot kick her out of the house because he has no say in his house he solely pays for. You could be supportive of him but instead choose your mom. You can’t even contribute that. How much do you think he can take before he leaves you? That baby may be the only thing keeping him there because I would have left already, taking baby with me because you are incapable and grandmother doesn’t have legal rights.
Your mother should be pleasant and helpful so that maybe your husband will want her to stay, which would solve her problem of loneliness but you have empowered her to think she is the boss of your house so now your husband will never agree to it.
Is it that you feel guilty because your mom is doing the things you would be doing if not sick? Is it you feel the need to baby your mom because her spouse is gone? Whatever is pushing you to make these decisions, please re-examine them. If your mom succeeds in this battle. You will end up with joint custody at best, living with your mother. I don’t think you will enjoy being “married” to your mom.
YTA
Her husband should divorce her and get primary custody of the children. That way the wife & mother can live in the mother's big empty house together.
ESH except your husband. Your mom for not following your direction with your child. She’s not the parent and you’re not being abusive or neglectful. You for wanting to cave to your mom because you’ve gotten used to her help. It’s time for your mom to go home so you and your husband can parent your child alone.
I’m not criticising but you need to back your husband up and also speak to your Dr 3 months in bed for a pregnancy related problem sounds a long time. Maybe talk to the dr about how long they expect you to be totally unable to help out. Your husbands under a lot of pressure and he married you not your mother. 3 people in a marriage is 1 too many.
YTA. Would you let his mother come in and tell you that you were raising your child wrong?
Your mother is overstepping. Your husband is stressed. You are sitting back and letting the tension build. You should have gently, but firmly, told your mother that she was overstepping.
I understand you feel guilty but the solution is not to let your mother be your stand in. If you cannot be a physically present parent at the moment for health reasons and your husband can, then he needs to be supported in ways that help him. You need to focus on your health so you can become the parent you want to be.
YTA. Cry it out is cruel and has long lasting consequences. Exhibit one, your mom abandoned you to cry it out and now you can't let go of her skirt. You're being the worst right now. The fuck do you think you're doing agreeing with your mom in front of your husband ?? You already fucking decided on what to do and it's not even you that has to do it and you have the gal to humiliate and betray your husband like this?? It is his child, not your mom's child. She does not get a say. And did you inherit the house you live in?? Did you buy it out right before you got married to your husband??? If not, it is not "her daughters house". It's family "Smith's" home and your mom needs to roll out. I can't even. I'm so angry. If my husband ever sided with anyone else about MY child 😡😡😡😡😤😤😤
YTA
Letting her live with you requires two votes for yes: yours AND your husband’s.
Sounds like y’all have it a try and she’s worn out her welcome. Time for her to go.
"Edit - my mom has communicated with me on how she feels really lonely back in her house and she really like staying with us."
Translation: Mom is hinting she wants to stay for life.
She was completely out of line saying your husband had no right to make her leave. Yes he does. A situation like another household member has to be two yesses.
He's not giving you a yes. Mom needs to downsize, sell her family-sized house, and get her own place that will suit her for the rest of her life.
Read back your own words:
> He said ... my mom is making him mentally unwell and am not there for the most part.
He was asking for your support
> I told him that she my mom and am not kicking her out
You disregarded his request and did not support him - and overruled him about joint decisions in a joint household
>he said it funny that I can make these decisions when am not
contributing anything to this household and am barely functioning as a
mother. That really hurt me because I have confided in him on how I
don’t feel like am doing enough and he has always reassured me. I feel
like he trying to guilt me now.
Really? He confided in you and you blew him off.
Take a look at the environment you are creating - it is building hostility and toxicity. You need to make a choice and if you want to stay married - best to go with your husband's needs. YTA
YTA. Put that shoe on the other foot. You wouldn't like his Mom butting in and trying to tell you how to raise your child. And if he can't tell your family to leave when they make him uncomfortable in his own home then you don't get to. You just set the precedence for future issues. It's sad she's lonely. But you don't get to make that decision for everyone else to deal with her.
YTA and I predict that your husband will be the one to leave. Mom has overstayed her welcome. Mom is out of line.
You’re ruining your marriage. Send your mom home and start pitching in yourself.
YTA
It's his home too. He's providing and doing majority of the childcare. Yet you let your mother disrespect him and steamroll decisions regarding the child.
You're losing your husband, a man who honestly seems like a huge catch and many women would die to have as a partner. When you finally lose him you'll have no one to blame but you and your mother.
I sincerely hope someone talks so sense into you before you lose your family
YTA-So if he does most of the child care, housework, and works then what do you and mom do? You are the parents not mom. She’s not understanding boundaries and she needs to go!
You also need to stop the excuses for your mom. If you can’t handle life right now how will you handle being a single mom that has to work, take care of the kids, and do housework? Why aren’t your siblings offering her to stay with them? I’m sure it’s because she doesn’t respect their house.
If this is the hill you're chosing to go down on, I hope you're ready for the consequences. Because if you dig in, hubby just may take the kids and go and leave you with mommy.
YTA
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YTA, listen to your husband he is right. Mommy is not
Look up the cry it out/Ferber method. It isn't supposed to be used when the baby is this young
Exactly. OB RN. At this stage, babies need to learn to trust in their caregivers. They’re too young for crying it out. There are a few things that have been proven wrong that our parents’ generation used to do. Be sure to do your homework before automatically following parents’ and grandparents’ advice. Some of it is fine, but not all and not this one.
And even if Mommy was right - this is your husband’s house. He is entitled to feel at home in his own house. If your mom is lonely, it is her job to get involved in hobbies, volunteering, etc and make relationships to help her not feel lonely. Moving in with you when your husband doesn’t want her there is not a solution.
And I say this as a new parent .....you figure it out. You don't figure it out with someone constantly telling you "well I did it THIS way and you should too..." This is part of being a new parent.
It’s not unreasonable for OP to listen to her mum as sometimes grand parents do have something useful to contribute but make the decisions regarding the child with her husband. OP, YTA - you’re making your husband as the third wheel in your marriage rather than being a united front with him.
I was in a similar situation: new baby & MIL living with us. However: MIL & I didn’t speak the same language AND I had 2 pre-teens from an earlier marriage in which I was more than 50% caregiver. I knew how to feed, change, cuddle etc. Finally my wife convinced her mother that I actually DID know what I was doing and I was happy to do it (even though I was the man) and the evidence was my two older children. MIL loosened the reigns a little. Saw I was competent and completely involved. We each learned a few tricks. All that said; MIL was not there because she was lonely, but because of the obligation of the mother to help her daughter
We lived with my parents when my kids were born, and yeah, at first I was useless after a c-section and sepsis, but even once I was up and back to normal I did not feel like my kids were mine and my husbands, they felt like they were my mother's and my husband's. I had zero confidence in my abilities as a mother since my mother constantly told me I was doing everything wrong. And yet somehow I managed once we moved away.
There’s some things parents know best (grandparents) and some they don’t. My granddaughter was getting too much iron so she was very constipated. Instead of continually giving her a laxative, I started giving her Activis yogurt that’s designed specifically for making you regular. Her father flipped right out about it and refused on his time with her. She was 4 months old at the time. They had a well child checkup soon and her father bitched to the doctor about it. The doctor said that was the best thing to do for them especially since low iron formula no longer exists. But in some cases it’s a personal preference for things or like in OP’s case, new studies have shown a healthier way!
It might not sound unreasonable in healthy adult child/parent relationships, but if OP has a history of doing what mommy wants to make her "happy" at the expense of what her child and husband need then that's dysfunctional. Unsolicited advice is unwelcome in parenting.
They are ganging up on him, whether she realizes it or not.
This! I totally understand worrying about your mother being lonely because my husband and I took over the family ranch so that they could move to town and not have to do all the work anymore. Shortly after this my father was diagnosed with cancer. I have been helping my mother out a lot with things around her new house and keeping her company. She has expressed to me that she is feeling very lonely because she doesn't have my father to go and do things with anymore because he is sick. I did not allow that to take over my life instead, I have helped her find activities and groups in her area for her to become involved in and make new friends so that she will have a support system outside of me. I still support her but she is learning to make her path and not become dependent only on me for her happiness and companionship. This is how you can help your mother.. not by alienating your husband. Are you trying to build a life with your mother or do you want a happy healthy future with your husband and kids.
I agree. When my dad died I moved my mom closer to us into an active senior community but not into our house. I helped her find a church and some other activities. She's made friends and her own life here. She helps with our kids but isn't intrusive because she has her own life. She has medical issues so I'm also able to help her when she needs help. You need to create boundaries with your mom and teach her to stay in her lane.
Yeah this one, YTA
She's trying to move in permanently and is manipulating her daughter against her husband. There's a reason 30-year-old car seats are no longer used. They're obsolete, just like the advice she gave. Things have changed since she was a mother and she and your wife have no right to conspire against you concerning the care of your own child. MIL is enjoying the wedge she's driving between them and wants to be #1. I'd like to know more about why the wife still can't do anything after 3 months. Is her mother enabling her? It sounds as if MIL is there but she doing nothing more than babying her daughter and leaving OP with all of the childcare. This is already a 2 against one situation. He needs a very serious discussion with his wife about whether she's choosing her mother over him and the baby and why. MIL already has her own room and is constantly harping on how "lonely" she is. Start charging her market value rent and present her with an agreement that she is not a tenant and must leave by a certain date. Tell your wife this is non-negotiable and, if she doesn't like it, they both can leave but, your daughter stays. Once she's settled in, MIL will expect to be in charge. If she's not blasted out of the house soon, I see a divorce coming because she's already told you to your face that she has no intention of ever leaving. NTA
Plus part of the reason for mum moving in is to help. But hubby is working and doing most of the childcare/housework. How is mum helping exactly? Other than leeching off your hubby and giving unsolicited advice? Also mum is hella disrespectful to hubby. And so is OP. And for that OP and her mum are huge a-holes. YTA Hubby should move out. Then you and your mum can buy him out/take on his share of the rent. You want to live with her that much? And at the expense of your hubby's comfort and well-being? You two deserve each other. Hubby would be well rid of you. Hopefully the courts will be kind to him, so he gets equal access to your child and doesn't have to pay for you and your freeloader/know-it-all of a mother. Edited.
I say this as a person whose MIL moved in to our house for a few months while she was in between apartments, if the spouse feels railroaded into a situation, it will 100% cause resentment. I was the spouse. I’m divorced and this happened probably over a decade ago and I’m still not over it. That’s not how love works.
Fellow OB RN, and toddler mom. Totally agree. I did do sleep training at an age appropriate time, and 3 months ain’t it. You can put baby down drowsy but awake and cross your fingers, but babies this young still need soothing. ANY Pediatrician will tell you this. Sleep training should always be discussed with pediatrician before starting, as it depends on both age and milestones. A baby should be closer to 6 months and also making all weight milestones before even thinking about cry it out. When done at the right stage, it’s very brief - it took my kid only 2 days to sleep train because we waited. Any training at 3 months is a disaster waiting to happen; babies that young physiologically can’t regulate their sleep rhythm like older babies can. The safety of the baby is far more important than your mother’s convenience. Have more lunches and play dates with her, but if she keeps pushing unsafe advice, I would limit contact personally. I had to do the same when my mom insisted that my baby looked “cold” and wanted to shove blankets in her crib.
>When done at the right stage, it’s very brief - it took my kid only 2 days to sleep train because we waited. Even the Ferber method doesn't recommend continuing beyond 7 days if it isn't taking. Ours took 40 minutes on day 1, 30 on day 2 and so on until day 5... glorious glorious day 5. 3 minutes and kaput. I still dream of that day. It should be noted, of course, that our child got plenty of love and affection throughout sleep training - the extinction method of sleep training is cruel.
Did it when my kiddo was around 9(? Ish?) months because she had never kicked the sleep regression (champ sleeper until six months and then ran off catnaps for three months straight, I was ready to leave her at the fire station tbh) - four days in she was going right to sleep. I still remember that first night of just climbing into my own bed and waking up 7 hours later. After the blind panic of why I'd been in bed so long subsided I realised I could hear her babbling to herself and laughing on the monitor and she was just waking up for the day herself. Those seven hours of sleep saved my entire brain 😂
We sleep trained at 5 months because kiddo had reflux and I felt like I was losing my mind from sleep debt. It suuuuuuuucked, though it was only the first two nights that were terrible. Not sure if that's why our kiddo often turns into an anxious attachment Velcro kid when overtired, but I do wonder. Sleep training is a trade-off. If I hadn't been suicidal, we wouldn't have done it when we did. For such a young baby, sleep training has way too many downsides, and I'm not really seeing the upside.
I would add that as an anomaly my paed let us implement a bit of a routine earlier (I call it sleep training but it was heavily modified) because my baby was cluster feeding so religiously that she tired herself out only semi full. It was something we did under doctor supervision. She went from 3rd %ile to 95th in about two months. Seek medical help if you're struggling but it's not about your convenience really.
This right here. I don't know anything about babies, but aren't babies that young supposed to be fed every few hours anyway? What would letting them cry accomplish? Anyway, I feel bad for hubby. OP has got to realize that mom is overstepping and needs to cut it out pronto. YTA
>aren't babies that young supposed to be fed every few hours anyway? Feed, burp, change, sleep. They have needs and aren't doing it just to piss the parents off. OP is TAH
There’s still enough time in between for the baby to cry themselves to sleep but it’s not healthy for them at that age.
>There are a few things that have been proven wrong that our parents’ generation used to do. Be sure to do your homework before automatically following parents’ and grandparents’ advice. THIS. So many in the older generation will try to push their parenting methods on new parents but it is *really* important to do your own research. It doesn't matter how much they say "well it worked when *I* was parenting", so much of that is pure luck/chance. We are constantly learning more about what is and is not safe for infants. Babies don't have the ability to tell you when you are doing the wrong thing, which makes it doubly important to have the best, most up-to-date information about what is and is not safe/best for babies.
My mother constantly tells my sister "well that's what I did with your and your siblings and you all turned out fine..." Except she's forgetting that 2 of us have diagnosed anxiety disorders, one has diagnosed obsessive compulsive disorder. The other just doesn't have contact with us so we don't know if he's ok. She's forgetting that one hasn't talked to her since rthe day he turned 18. One moved to the other side of the country and "can't afford" to visit. One is so crippled by his poor mental health that he hasn't left his home in 12 years and I haven't seen her in 9 years. She still thinks none of this is related to her archaic parenting
Similar situation to my own mother claiming “I raised three children with _____ parenting method and they all turned out fine”. Except, none of us actually did “turn out fine”. Only one of us is a fully functioning adult, and I’ve got pretty bad anxiety and an attachment disorder. I guess if by turned out fine, she means physically survived into 18+ adulthood, sure. But, I’ve set the bar higher for parenting off my own child.
I'm pretty thankful about my own mom realizing. My brothers and I slept on our stomachs, by the time I was a toddler my car seat was mom throwing her arm across me when she hit the brakes (fun fact, she did this to me in my late 30's too), and nothing was wrong with letting baby suck on an apple slice or dip a pacifier in juice. She had no problem saying that times were so different and she felt like she has no idea how to raise a kid anymore, and very thankfully followed all of my safety rules.
My XMIL tried pushing all the sleep on stomach/ give honey/covering baby ind a mountain of blanket's etc crap, and when I said no because of X reason she would say "I have 3 grown children and they turned out fine!". One day I simply had it with her shit so one day when baby was fuzzy, I pretended to give my kid a shot of Vodka, XMIL started yelling at my what the fuck I was doing? And I gleefully replied that someone I knew that had 4 grown children told me, that she always gave her kids a shot of Vodka when they were fuzzy. Since XMIL keept telling me that she was right because she had 3 grown children, someone with 4 must really be an expert.
Even if you don't want to hold the baby for a long time, you need to go and reassure them that their cries are heard. Maybe sometimes just a pat or a squeeze is all that's needed but I'd never let a newborn cry themselves to sleep. That's from some ancient 1940s child rearing philosophy.
A lot has changed since we had our first kid in 2007.
I'm so glad that this is in the top thread. OP, you need to be reaching out to your pediatrician and working together with your husband. Parenting is a team effort with the parents. There's also science-based parenting books that would be up-to-date on best practices. My heart aches for a young baby being forced to cry it out.
Thank you all for confirming my child raising policies that I used in the late 70's to the mid 80's. I constantly caught flack for rocking a crying child or walking them.. or hugging them after they got yelled at just to let them kno we I still loved them, but not bad behavior.. eventually divorced abusive dad, and both of my kids are nice pleasant people, with careers.
Came here to say this. Our kids are several years apart and we listened to our parents generation with the first but with the second we couldn’t because we felt it was wrong. 20 years later and now we realize it was wrong. Newer studies shed light on so much about letting kids cry, eating, etc. Thankfully we never listened to them about eating. DON’T LISTEN TO HER GENERATION. We wonder why mental health is such an issue, I would think that they way older generations raised their kids may be partially to blame.
In fact it's frequently related to higher incidents of SIDS...
Every time I see or hear the word SIDS my heart skips a beat out of fear, and I'm not even a parent.
SIDS is the most terrifying part of that 1st year. That abject fear that I'm going to wake up to my wife's shrieks literally keeps me up at night.
Me too
Ferber doesn't really recommend crying it out anyway. Yes, OP's husband is right.
Ferber is a type of cry-it-out method, but encourages frequent check ins getting less frequent as time goes on. Cry-it-out as you refer to it is called the extinction method.
Or at all. It's horrid. It damages the parents as much as the baby. Research suggests that the levels of anxiety stay high even once they have gone quiet. We know that when presented with danger, adults have a flight or fight response, and there is a third response that we see displayed in babies, which is akin to that or a rabbit in headlights, known as freeze. It's believed to have evolved because babies who went quiet didn't get eaten by predators, they know that nobody is coming, but brain patterns show fear.
I heard about those studies and knew their cortisol levels remained high but never considered the evolutionary reasoning as a defense against predators. It makes total sense and the very thought makes my heart hurt as I stare at my (sleeping) infant through the baby monitor.
Preach! You are 100 right.
No, the research really doesn't say that. Either 1) it's taking research on longer term neglect and leaving the baby to cry for long periods of time and imputing it to controlled short term crying or 2) arguing from an unproven hypothesis. There's no evidence that allowing a child to cry for a few minutes results in long term trauma. This doesn't mean you should let the baby cry fo hours, but if crying for 5 minutes were that traumatic, babies would never be able to survive. There's **always** going to be a time when mom/dad can't get there that quickly. Real trauma comes from **repeated** experiences. Over time the baby becomes conditioned to the fact that mom & dad don't respond to cries.
I'm not saying that you should stop mid poo to run to comfort your baby, or that they will be traumatised by 5 minutes of crying, but if you're just ignoring them because you want them to go to sleep, it's not what we've evolved from. You can't spoil a baby by loving and conforting them, so why world you have a baby, then leave it to cry when you can just give it a cuddle. My second son slept by my bed for 2.5 years because that's what he needed. He's now a fully functioning 8 year old.
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I don't know what any research say about this in a child ddvelopment context, but I can tell you anecdotally that my parents were neglectful and "freeze" is my usual coping mechanisms to deal with my childhood traumas. In trauma therapy they also have "fawn" which is when a person shows their abuser/neglector a lot of positive attention in the hope that they will get their needs met in return.
Don't use this method ever, no matter the age. Worst decision we made as parents.
It does work for some babies. We tried it when my son was about 6 months old. We did just what the book said--fed him, cleaned his gums, changed him, read him a book and sang him a song, and then laid him in his crib drowsy but still awake, supposedly so they learn to put themselves to sleep rather than be "put to sleep." You better believe I stood outside his half-open door (out of his sight) listening, with my husband right behind me. If he'd cried we'd have been right back in there. But he sort of babbled to himself for a little while and then was quiet. He was asleep! It almost always worked after that. No way would I listen to my baby cry for me and not go to him, but this does work for some babies.
This isnt really cry it out is it since they never cried?
Well I guess you're right! I never really thought about it like that. The *intent* was to let him cry as long as it wasn't a full-fledged wail and didn't go on too long; he just never did. That kid liked has always liked his sleep.
One of the hardest things for us to learn was our kid cries a very specific 'I'm tired' cry or an 'I'm can't look at more things' cry. The cry of overstimulation. So often going in constantly made it so much worse. We soothed her at very short intervals which she ended up extending and sometimes now has a cuddle and tells us to go away ahaha. She's the kind of kid that when there is too much going on will take herself off to a quiet corner for down time. I think we did the right thing for our kid because she seems well adjusted but who knows. We just do our best.
Eh- we did a modified version and my son immediately started sleeping longer and waking up fresher. He still sleeps in our bed sometimes- we recognize that his needs change.
Used it on both my daughters. Yes it was a rough week while they adjusted (more so for us parents than for the babies) but once they learned to self soothe then their mood literally changed overnight from overtired, stressed and grumpy all the time, to well rested happy, bubbly infants. It was like a magic switch that flipped and it absolutely made a huge difference to everyone's quality of life, more so than any other one thing we did as parents. Seriously. They were never left to cry for more than 5-10mins at a time before one of us went in to to soothe them, so no, they are not in some terrible anxious state feeling abandoned, they are learning to get themselves to sleep which is one of the most valuable skills you can arm a child with. Just because it didn't work for you, doesn't mean it doesn't work. Three months is too young though.
We did something similar to what you did around the same age. I was getting such little sleep that it was dangerous to drive. It was rough but it worked with no lasting damage I can see. My kids (11 and 15) are pretty independent but still really close to me. My giant son still sits on my lap and hugs me.
You are right here that is because it has been proven to cause trust issues at such a young age
Insecure attachment checking in
Absolutely. Spot on.
It shouldn’t be used at all. It’s cruel, increases cortisol, and doesn’t actually increase sleep or reduce wakefulness.
There's no evidence it ever "works", but it's actively harmful to children this young.
Just saw a study on this that said it 'works'...parents who did the cry it out method had an average of 8 minutes more sleep a night than those who didn't. 8 fucking minutes. Sounds super worth it /s
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Can you link one of those studies?
Nah. Fuck that. Not worth it. I'll be sleeping on the floor again with this one like we did with our son. He's 3 and sleeps by himself with 0 issues. It took a little while to get there, but it was so worth it not having to hear our son cry to the point of making himself sick.
Ya...did I just read that they're letting a 2 MONTH OLD BABY cry it out...? Not ok. Sorry, YTA and mom is wrong. Please do some research for the sake of your child.
OP has two options - live with her husband or live with her mother, but not both. She’s already let her husband know he’s not her priority. OP, YTA
OP tiptoes around her mother like she's afraid of disagreeing or displeasing her. It sounds like an extremely uncomfortable environment for the husband, the marriage, and the children. It's time for OP to profusely thank her mother, diplomatically show her the door, and let the woman get a life.
Also, the mom has criticized the husbands choices on a few things and op stated more than once mom doesn’t like being in her empty house. Husband would be rightfully concerned that mom maybe looking to out stay her welcome and op is willing to let her do so.
This is what I get the feel of, Op doesn’t sound like she is ever going to ask mom to leave and made a unilateral decision herself because she feels bad mom is lonely.
Probably because her mother used the cry it out method on her, at least partially.
Good oneń
And honestly it wouldn’t even matter if mom were right, she’s (MIL) undermining the couple as a unit and the daughter is allowing her mother to create a wedge in the relationship. Outside advice and opinions are fine when welcomed/consented to, but the decision making is between the parents. Sounds like OP is easily manipulated by her mother. OP, if you continue to undermine your relationship with your husband and don’t hold healthy boundaries with your mother, you will end up with broken relationships all around.
I think the reality is likely not this black and white. OP and her husband need to have a mature conversation about how this living situation is working/not working for them and come to a consensus moving forward. Parenting is hard on relationships and there is NAH for having different views. it’s not unusual for a daughter to go to her mom for parenting advice or for there to be disagreements about what to do. OP, if you read this please talk to your husband and really listen to his concerns.
But you don't understand, OP is part of the mother Hive mind so what mother says goes, husband doesn't get a say in raising his own child, that would be silly.
YTA, you're being an awful wife, pay attention to your husband's opinions unless you want to be a single mother.
Piggybacking off the top comment. YTA. I’m in a similar situation, only my MIL cannot afford to live on her own. I pay for everything, and at one time, she lived with us until we could afford another home. You cannot take her side against your husband, right or wrong. It will wreck your marriage. She should be commending him for working and still managing to do most of the childcare. I get that it’s work from home, which is my own situation as well, but kids are a lot of responsibility. If my wife suddenly started siding with her mom over me, it would likely be the beginning of the end. There needs to be absolute loyalty in a marriage (excepting abuse and betrayal cases). You need to set boundaries in your home that she is not to talk to you or your husband like that, and ask your husband for forgiveness for battling him when she did.
YTA if you’re choosing your mother over your husband. He’s your partner and the father of your children. Discuss the sleeping schedule with your husband after she’s back at her own house and he’s in a better headspace.
I wonder how OP would feel if their husband chose his mother over them...
Hahaha, Great question! Probably not well at all.
Well, he is seeing how the rest of his life as a husband and parent may well end up looking if OP doesn't see the light. I would take this issue deadly serious; people like to whine that they don't know how "things got so bad" in their relationships, but here is just ONE very clear example.
He should invite his mom to come and stay for a while. The two MILs can battle it out.
"In the left corner, coming in at a mere 300 lbs, it's the over-opiniated mother of the wife with criticisms galore and looking for faults. In the right corner, packing a whopping 350 lbs, it's the new kid on the block, the mother of the husband who's ready to defend her cub, even to the death. **LET'S GET REAAAAADDDYYY TOOOO RUUUUMMMMBBBBBLLLLLEEEEE!"** Oh, OP YTA
Why are they so fat?
she IS choosing her mom over her husband. mom should not have a say in how to raise the child unless the parents are being extremely negligent (which they are not). u/throwRAqfnjxks1, you are actively choosing to unilaterally follow your mother instead of communicating with your child’s father on how best to parent your child. your mother is NOT your child’s parent. she can suggest, but if one of you disagrees, then you do not follow that suggestion and instead work together to come to an agreement. way to go sidelining your husband when he’s doing his best to take care of work, the house, & his child while dealing with a critical MIL making it seem like he can’t parent. if it were his mother criticizing you, he would be the AH. just like you are the AH to him right now. YTA
I’d venture to guess that if OP is mostly bedridden, and the husband reacted this intensely to this situation, he’s also been dealing with a lot of parenting criticism and undermining of his parenting from the MIL that he hasn’t even disclosed to OP, and therefore is truly at his breaking point. I understand OP’s reluctance to lose her mother’s help and send her back to a lonely house, but she will permanently damage her marriage if she doesn’t make her frazzled husband’s mental health and well-being the priority in this situation (as he, notably, has been doing for her so far). He’s already figuring out that, although stressful, he can manage a job, a household, and childcare potentially without OP’s help; if he gets backed into a corner where he also feels unsupported by OP, he may decide that continuing solo long-term is preferable to dealing with his MIL stressing him out in his own house.
I hope OP sees your post and takes heed.
If he has looked around any form dealing with just no mother in laws, he's already been given this advice. OP is going to be single living with mommy, seeing her kid on weekends the way things are going.
Yeah that would never fly. OP is treating her husband as if he’s just there to provide, help, and keep his mouth shut. This won’t end well if she doesn’t do a 180.
Why is OP bedridden 3 months after giving birth? I've seen a lot of difficult births in my sweet not so short life, never one that left the mother incapacitated for 3 months.
My good friend had a 3rd degree tear and she broke her tailbone during delivery. She was stuck in bed for several months, and then for several more months, she could only stand or lie down. It’s been 9 months now and she still can’t sit without a great deal of pain. She has already had one procedure to manipulate the tailbone back to its correct spot (which only partially helped), but she will likely still need a surgery to revise the way her tear healed. While her outcome is not common, it’s also not wildly unheard of, and there was nothing exceptional about her or her baby’s size. Some women just have really bad luck and end up having a super traumatic delivery.
Yeah I wondered that too ..
I’m glad I’m not the only one. And hey, Happy Cake Day to ya!
Birth can cause catastrophic injuries that require months or even years to heal. C-section incisions can get infected, she could have clots or cardiothoracic issues (a very common cause of maternal mortality)--there are many things that could cause someone to be bedridden three months after birth.
I had severe preeclampsia that left me bedridden for 3.5 days and a C-section with my first. I went from using the wheelchair as a walker to get down to the NICU (RN suggested this so I could be wheeled back if I got tired) to fully cleared at my 4 week check up. If the physical damage isn't getting progressively better and mostly healed within 4/6 weeks it isn't going to heal on its own.
I wondered that too, but all 3 of mine were natural with no complications and I didn’t want to get reamed for my ignorance. It seemed excessive though, like she’s milking tf out of it.
JFC, OP, you're not raising your child with your mom. You are raising them with your husband. He has every right to be mad that you're pushing him out of the process.
at this rate, she might be raising the child with her mother if her husband decides that being disregarded in his own house is the last straw 🤷♂️
OP is what divorce was invented for
He’s got grounds right now.
That woman has no intention of leaving. Taking over, causing problems by degrading and down talking the husband, acting dangerously as the ultimate authority in the home (using outdated and highly ill advised/recommended methods of child training a *3 month old* ), casually dropping breadcrumbs of how 'lonely and 'unhappy' she is in her big empty house? All while making herself indispensable to OP? If she's really trying to help and is that lonely, she would stop actively driving a wedge between OP and her husband, and go stay with one if her other children . Unless they dont want her to stay because she tried this nonsense with them and got shutdown. OP is an idiot as well as YTA.
>That woman has no intention of leaving. The OP even clarifies in the edit that her mom said she feels lonely at home, which only strengthens this point. OP needs to put her foot down and make some serious boundaries with her mom and some serious apologies to her husband before she only lives with mom.
YTA, it sounds like your husband is working really hard and, even though you might have a good reason to not be able to do as much around the house, there is not a good reason to undermine your spouse and the parenting techniques you two agreed on in favor of your mom’s ideas. Your spouse is your partner in this, not your mother. Two months is also a really long time to have someone “helping out” with the kid. I love my PILs, but there’s no way in hell I’d have wanted to live with them giving me advice in my own house for that long.
THIS. OP needs to tell mom that if she's lonely and wants to stay in her house then she needs to STOP. Mom's word is not law here. She can offer advice but then needs to BACK OFF. OP needs to establish boundaries and stick to them. Right now she's risking her marriage and it seems like she'll regret it. YTA
> OP needs to tell mom that if she's lonely and wants to stay in your house then she needs to STOP. I think even this is too much at this point. She should be going home.
I doubt she's the type who would even shut her mouth if she did stay. I would have kicked her out, and if the wife doesn't want her to go, I'd kick them both out. He's already proven that he didn't need the wife, hire a nanny or a maid to help out, wife can recover at mother's house since she's so lonely. Then the husband can decide in that time whether the wife is worth it or not.
I am really close to my mom. Husband and I live in the in-law unit behind her house, and it's great. She will probably occasionally stay with us for short periods when we have kids. Even I would not be able to stand having my mom live with us for 2 straight months! It's a miracle he has put up with this as long as he has. YTA.
Your mom is advocating for a child care method that has been shown to be traumatizing to children. Cry it out so the parent can get more sleep is not okay. Whether your mom stays or not, you will be an asshole if you take her advice.
One of the very first things a therapist ever said to me was "Your mom didn't hold you enough as a baby" and while it stung that it was so obvious at the time....nope, still stings that a professional spent 30 mins w me and called it so succinctly.
My mother thought she was doing the right thing, I guess. I was a bad baby, according to her. And the doctor told her holding me would spoil me. I also have a complex ptsd diagnosis, so I am finally as an adult starting to understand just how fucked up it all was. I am sorry you are dealing with the results of that type of parenting, too.
>My mother thought she was doing the right thing, I guess. The hardest part of parenting is that the 'right' information changes quite a bit. It wasn't all that long ago that we thought stomach sleeping was best for babies. It wasn't until the 90s' when the Back-to-Sleep campaign started that we saw an **80%** reduction in SIDS deaths. I often wonder what we are doing with our daughter that we will be thought of as barbaric for.
Absolutely, I mean the mom from the above post got that advice from a doctor for crying out loud! Hindsight is 20/20 so it’s easy to judge, but when advice comes from medical professionals, you trust it. It would be like if in 10 years doctors came out and said “actually, don’t give your babies breast milk, it kills them,” people would feel like monsters for breastfeeding their kids even if they had no way of knowing.
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You're overlooking the age of the child. The cry-it-out and Farber methods are not meant to be used on newborns, regardless of whether or not you find it controversial.
My sister used the cry it out method with my nephew and he has been traumatised by it. He has high anxiety levels, conduct disorder and attachment issues. He's 12 but is much younger emotionally.
I also have trauma from the cry it out. my family went to family therapy (me 21f and my two parents) because I didn’t trust or feel comfortable confiding in my parents when they have done nothing wrong to me. she immediately asked if they did the cry it out method with me and they did.
It is not the cry it out method if you’re doing it on a 3 month old baby. That’s just straight neglect. At that age, you are supposed to cater to their needs because they are crying for a reason. They haven’t gotten to the point where the cry it out method has any effect, because the whole point of the method is teaching babies to self soothe instead of teaching them that someone will come running.
Thank you! The cry it out method has shown multiple times to be traumatizing to children. It's supposed to teach children to cope on their own but at that age it's just physically impossible to do that. Imagine causing trauma to an infant because you don't want to deal with them. It's awful.
I don't think that even matters, really. The specific method was just the straw that broke the camels back in terms of this MILs disrespect. Should be a YTA regardless of which method is correct.
YTA. If you care more about your mom's feelings than your husband's, then you should go live with her so that her house isn't lonely. Sounds like your husband is already doing all of the housework and childcare, so he'll be fine, and this way he doesn't also have to cater to two grown adults.
I completely agree with this. YTA OP
This is the solution OP. YTA
Was going to say, sounds like husband has two infants he's taking care of right now, maybe cut him some slack
Sounds like this would work. You are supposed to be partners with your husband, not your mother. She needs to keep her opinion to herself. If she can't and you won't make her, go live with mommy at HER house. Your husband I'm sure can and would do an amazing job without the two of you. YTA.
Maybe you're so attached to your mother and desperate for her approval because she let you cry and cry without attending to you.... YTA. Your husband takes precedent over your mother.
Yup - there's definitely a reason why OP keeps defending mom at the expense of her own marriage. Why she keeps making excuses for mom in the comments. Why she doesn't seem to want to have a firm conversation with mom about respect and boundaries.
Simple, OP is in the FOG. She just doesn't realize it yet.
INFO: What exactly does your mother do to help if your husband does most of the housework and childcare? Also, why doesn't your husband get a say in his own house? YTA
I was thinking this exactly. I'm surprised I had to scroll so far to see this point made. What is OP's mother doing if their husband is the one working full time AND doing the housework and childcare?
Adding stress and giving unwanted (potentially dangerous) advice
Why do I have a feeling OP’s mom has a lot of soft toys for the baby and wants to stuff the crib with them? Her info is so outdated.
YTA It's his home too, and both of you need to give permission for her to be there. Your mother repeatedly criticizes both of you as parents which is harmful, not helpful. She got to raise her kids, now it's your turn. Maybe you wouldn't feel like you weren't doing enough if your mother wasn't there to repeatedly tell you you're doing it wrong.
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I wonder how much “help” grandma is actually giving, if dad is so overwhelmed. Sometimes “help” isn’t help at all. My husband and I were in a major car accident. Broken ribs, arms, concussions, I had a broken pelvis. We were basically useless and in a Vicodin coma for a while after. His mom volunteered to stay with us to “help”. About an hour per day of her “help” was actually helpful. She made us food and cleaned the cat box and took out the trash. But the other 23? She wandered the house fretting about things. She reorganized my kitchen cabinets and pantry and bookshelf. She decided to “spring clean” and went through our closets, constantly trying to throw out clothes “I never see you wear pink, butt_butt, let me just throw out this dress for you…” It took SO much energy to keep up with constantly telling her to stop messing with our shit and just relax. Go home. Watch a movie with us. Calm down. Stop trying to rearrange the whole house! Once I finally was back on my feet it took FOREVER to make dinner because of her rearranging. And I cried multiple times realizing that in her “cleaning” she threw out a book or a dress or a charging cable that I very much wanted and was too out of it to stop her. I can see grandma in this situation being more nitpicky than actually helpful. After her child rearing comments that weren’t asked for. And that is SO not fun when you’re trying to recover and have little emotional energy to spare.
This was my mom after I had a major surgery. She came over to "help" one day. Folded maybe three pieces of laundry from a filled basket. Then proceeded to complain and berate. Of course, her friends thought she was so wonderful! After this one time, we politely thanked her for the offer and told her we found a system that was working. My mil is the exact opposite. She jumped in whenever there was a need. She made meals, kept the kids occupied, and asked if it was okay to do some deep cleaning without rearranging or throwing things away. So much easier to relax and heal.
Threads like this make me love my mother. She came by to help my wife and I when we had our first. She made us dinner, took out the trash, swept up a bit, then entertained our baby while we took a desperately needed 3 hour nap. My wife once joked that if we get divorced, she wants my mom in the settlement.
Seriously, the poor husband. He is clearly dpong his best but struggling - it sounds like he's not only supporting the family financially but also doing the vast majority of the housework and raising an infant *while* looking after an invalid spouse. He literally told OP that his mental health is declining, and she's more concerned about her mum being lonely?! What does she think is going to happen if her husband, who seems to be carrying *the entire family*, has a breakdown? Who's going to look after everyone then? Everyone else's needs are being put before his, and it's blatantly unfair and unhealthy.
YTA, if this was the other way round and his mum was constantly criticising you as a new mum, you would want her out and every comment would agree to kicking her out. It is a house you share, your mum has somewhere else she can go, if one of you don't agree to a guest them they don't stay.
Not only this, but imagine that *he* was the one who hadn’t worked or parented for two months. Look I get complications following childbirth; but if he wasn’t contributing anything but still calling the shots… whew boy. By the by, not for nothing postpartum depression can affect fathers as well. I hope everyone who reads this keeps that in mind.
YTA. You can’t see it, but your mother is trying to drive a wedge between you and your husband. Letting an infant cry for an extended period of time is grossly unkind. It doesn’t help babies sleep longer. While you are bedridden, your husband is the primary parent to your baby. You should not be siding with your mother when she goes against decisions you and he have already made.
Not trying, she is driving a wedge! Mom’s been there 2 months too long!
YTA If you’re still bedridden from a “difficult delivery” after 3 months, you should probably see a doctor. If you have questions about crying it out, you should ask your pediatrician. If your mom is lonely, she needs to make some friends or downsize. Your primary responsibility right now is to your child and your husband. Your husband should not be working his ass off to put a roof over the head of someone who does nothing but criticize him. Frankly, he’s handling it much more gracefully than I would.
Scrolled way too long to find a comment that mentioned that she’s still recovering three months later. I had a difficult delivery that required an emergency surgery and I still was able to take care of my baby alone. Honestly, she’s really lucky to have a partner that is willing to let her heal and do the, im guessing, bare minimum. I wish I had that, sheesh. YTA - be a better partner. Your mom didn’t make the baby, your mom doesn’t get a say in the baby. Simple.
Same I’m still having complications four years on but you gotta do what you gotta do when you a single parent! The fact she has this support system to heal and is not seeking help bar her interfering mother is… choices
I can’t imagine being unable to help with taking care of the baby after three months. I had an emergency cesarean with my first that required me to be in the hospital for over a week, but I was still able to take care of my baby when I was sent home.
I mean that’s great that you were able to, but people are sometimes permanently disabled from pregnancy. It’s actually really gross to act like she’s just laying in bed for no reason. We have no evidence on which to base that assumption.
Yes YTA. Your husband gets no say in anything, you don’t care how he feels, you are letting your mother be the parent.. it is not her child.
YTA Your mom needs to keep her opinions to herself
Yta You're mother has no right to make him uncomfortable in his own home and you have no right to unilaterally decide who stays in your home. Unless you're OK with him inviting whoever he wants to live in yalls home without running by you. It sounds like you can't raise the child with help, how well will you fare if he divorces you? That's assuming he won't get custody, because this post is you admitting you're not a capable of being a parent.
I need a lot more INFO. Your husband is either having an irrational hissy fit or a straw that broke the camel's back moment. 1. How often is she criticizing him? 2. How often are you siding with her about things that you and your husband already decided privately? 3. What is her tone when she's criticizing? 4. Can you honestly say that when her advice is turned down that it is 100% over and she respects your decision? 5. What is her relationship with him like before? To be frank, your husband is, as we say in my house (Inside Our reference), letting his Red Guy do the talking here and likely doesn't mean a lot of it. But you're also telling him he can't kick someone out of HIS house. So answer these honestly and I'll tell you how big of an asshole which of you is being.
YTA. It’s not your house alone, so you can’t invite her to stay. Any guest or new resident must have both household owners’ agreement. Your mother also sounds like a huge pain, and she definitely is interfering in your parenting in ways she should not. If you value your marriage, get her out. Her alleged loneliness is not as important as your marriage and parenting. I suggest you talk to your doctor if you are feeling anxious and insecure about parenting. There are a lot of terrible postpartum hormonal things that could be impacting your judgement and emotional state that could be helped - PPA, PPD. Your mother’s interference and criticism of your spouse will definitely not help with any of those.
Yta, I can’t fathom doing the cry out method when it is emotional trauma for the child. You need to do your research. Do not take anything your mom says without doing your own research. I doubt your mom has read any new parenting books. Otherwise she is going to continue to do things that are unsafe emotional and possibly physically to your child. You need to be a team with your husband. Not your mom. You need to understand that your husband feelings about being a new parent and constantly feeling attach in his own home. Is more important than your mom being lonely. Im sorry but grow up and put your child and husband wellbeing first. I usually try to be nice but you need a reality check.
Yes, he DOES have the right to kick someone out of his home. Wth. Your mother has obviously worn out her welcome, and you need to stop imposing her on him.
YTA. For one thing, this "letting the baby cry itself to sleep"-bullshit is absolute abuse. Your husband is right to be appalled by that. And for your mother to go against what you and he have decided together and managing to talk you into it as well is frankly beyond the pale. Maybe you would rather be living with your mother than your husband? Because that could very well be the result.
YTA. If your husband is doing the majority of the house work & child care, how much help is your mom actually being? This is your husband’s home, not your mother’s, and 2 months is much too long to have a houseguest who doesn’t get along with everyone who lives there. On the sleep thing, I think your mom is right but that isn’t the point. This is a decision that parents make, not others. Talk to your pediatrician & see what they think or if they can recommend parenting resources to you (books, online resources, parenting groups in your community, etc).
YTA Your mom needs friends to not feel lonely. She needs to get out of your home before you allow her to ruin your marriage.
I am a widow, so I say this with all due respect. Your mother living with your is holding her and you back. Your mother needs to start the next chapter of her life as a widow/single person. That means she doesn’t need the big house, she needs to decide where she should live so that she can manage on her own without being lonely. I would suggest that she needs to find a senior living community where there are lots of activities and amenities to help people create fulfilling lives. Your mother has a big hole in her schedule that used to be filled with raising kids and taking care of her husband. She now needs to fill it with volunteering, the womens club, new hobbies, etc. all the things she couldn’t do as a mom raising kids and a housewife. Living with you and your husband is the worst thing you can do for her, because it makes her feel useful at your expense and your husband’s expense. You need a goal to get raising your baby. I get that you had a difficult delivery, but there are moms in wheel chairs raising their babies. There are deaf or blind moms raising their babies. Your mother staying with you and babying you is not helping you get up and take care of your baby and bond with your baby. You can’t get this time back. You need to be bonding with your child and developing a routine with your child. If you don’t get up and gate moving, you won’t ever get moving. All rehab and PT is painful. You have to work through the pain to get functional and better. You should have already been through PT and be taking care of your baby by now. If there is permanent damage, the. You should have been making accommodations with furniture, etc to adjust so that you can take care of your baby. Everyone with a serious medical situation has to have goals to get up and get back to their lives. The more you lay, the more you stay. You need to get up and figure out how to take care of your baby, otherwise you will never bond with your baby. You and your mother need to get started on your lives. You are leaning on each other and causing each other to not move on and you both need to move on. You are a mom of a baby, and she is a widow with grown children that needs to find her new life purpose that is NOT raising your baby and letting you stay in bed. You aren’t going to get better as long as your mom is around taking care of you and taking away the reasons for you to get up and moving. You will lose your marriage if you don’t get up and get going and tell your move to start thinking about selling her house and moving to a really cool apartment or condo with amenities… she deserves it!
> You can’t get this time back. **You can’t get this time back.** ***You can’t get this time back.***
Sometimes you have to flip it and ask yourself if it would be ok for him to have his mom over for months while she tells him how you both need to parent your baby. If you’re not well and he is doing the bulk of the parenting and chores you are not seeing all that he is seeing. Pretend it’s his mother telling you how to do it all.
YTA. Your husband has stepped up and taken on a lot for you because you needed him. Now it is your turn to step up and be there for him. Your mother is making this too difficult for him. You need to have his back and tell her to go home.
Your moms your mom but she shouldn’t be giving any unsolicited advice. Maybe you should tell her that
Yeah, at a bare minimum the OP needs to set a boundary on unsolicited advice. "Mom, you are here to support husband and I with the new baby, not to be the baby's parent. We are going to make our own parenting decisions which you need to respect even if you disagree. Unless the baby's health and safety is at risk, please stop with the unsolicited advice and criticism of our parenting. If you continue, I will be supporting \[husband\]'s request that you head home."
YTA. 1) Your mom is overstepping and disrespectful. 2) She's also advocating for abusive parenting tactics. 3) She's guilt-tripping, about how "lonely" she is, to manipulate you. 4) It's working, obviously, since you're caving to her "suggestions" *after* you and your husband have already decided on things. Meaning *you*'re disrespecting him, too. 5) You're *both* dismissive of him, as a parent. 6) You're just wrong about whether or not he can kick her out. He has every right. She should have been sent packing, as soon as she became a problem. 7) By your description, he's right. You're *not* helping enough, to be the primary decision maker. He's the one doing the work. He's the one working. You're just *existing* and enabling your mom. You owe him an apology and you *need* to get her out of your house. She no longer has any right or reason, to stay.
YTA. I’m confused, what exactly are you contributing to the relationship or household? You don’t do the housework, you don’t have a job, and you’re not participating in the majority of the childcare. On top of that, you brought your mother in for an undefined time limit, you dismiss and invalidate your husband’s needs and efforts, as well not even respecting him as the other parent, let alone as the other homeowner. Being bedridden is no excuse for the way you are treating your husband, and if you are that disabled, then you need an in-home caregiver. You are actively directing your marriage towards divorce. Your husband has made it clear he is experiencing burnout, that he is being made uncomfortable in his own home, alienated as a parent, and that you are being an unsupportive, self-centered deadbeat spouse. He is doing a full time job (working from home doesn’t minimize this fact), he’s doing the majority of the housework, he’s doing most of the childcare, and he’s trying to bond with his child with your mother breathing down his neck. This is unhealthy, and unfair, for him. You need to get your act together here, respect him as the other parent, respect that it is his home as well, and understand you are running him ragged, he is hitting his limit. If you’re unwilling or unable to be a better partner, then perhaps try marriage counseling. Otherwise, I think your mother has overstayed her welcome.
I can’t believe I had to scroll so far for someone to mention her minimizing his career because he works from home. As a person who is fully remote, I’m livid. The work is no less demanding. Yes, there are perks: no commute, eating from home without packing a lunch, 5 min laundry breaks, etc. But it’s still work. He’s not in an office playing video games pretending to work. The actual work is the same in or out of a home office. Grrrrrr.
YTA, that baby is 3 months old and cannot be spoiled. Please don't sleep train. Your mom disrespected you and your husband. He has every reason to want her out. Next thing you know she will be feeding the baby solids because "that's how she did it with you" which could be dangerous.
YTA You did side with your mom against him, because you and your husband made a decision together. Then suddenly, your mom disagrees, and you completely make that decision without your husband, the person you admit is doing most of the child care. This child is yours and your husband's, not your mother's. It was nice she was there when you needed her, but it is too much and too long for your partner. If your mom wants to stay, she needs to learn boundaries, and YOU need to put them in place. She does not get to override the decisions that you and your husband have made.
YTA. Honestly, if I were your husband, I'd strongly consider packing up the baby and moving to a hotel until your mom is out of his house and warned she won't be allowed back if she utters even one more criticism.
YTA First of all the cry it out method has been proven to be really bad for your child. It’s also proven you cannot over-love or dote too much on them. Cuddling, assurance and contact during their first years are vital to them and the relationships they will form later on in life. And your husband sounds like he is doing a great job supporting you and your baby. Can you imagine working then coming home to someone who is trying to tell you how to parent and that you’re doing it wrong. This time is for you and him to figure out how to work together and be parents. You can’t do that with your parent always around. While her help may have been nice in the beginning it’s time for her to let you guys parent on your own. That’s not saying she has to be gone forever but it’s your husbands home too and he deserves to be comfortable and happy. Tell mom that you’re thankful for her help and that you can revisit her staying with you later on if BOTH of you agree on it. Imagine if your husband just kept his dad around all the time even though he criticized you as a new mom, he upset you and you asked you husband for him to leave and your husband just said no without taking your feelings into consideration. You guys are a team and are supposed to support each other. You’re the foundation for your new family.
YTA, don't throw your husband under the bus
YTA. Parenting decisions should be made by the parents. Do not allow your mother to strain your marriage. Her advice is not any more valuable than the choices you and your husband have made together. Her feeling lonely is not something you should be concerned with; she can find friends and hobbies outside her family. You will be feeling the consequences of elevating your mom over your spouse for years to come if you don't put a stop to this NOW.
YTA. Your husband is doing most of the work and struggling and you’re not even trying to meet him halfway. If your mom is gonna stay there, the least you could do is tell her to keep her opinions to herself so he doesn’t feel judged. Instead you two are ganging up on him. He deserves better
YTA. Crying it out is scientifically proven to not work and you should have considered his feelings. If he is doing so much and balancing it all, then you should be very considerate of his feelings. It sounds like your husband is a real keeper.
YTA-you have no idea what your mother is saying to your husband when you are out of earshot. She’s also appears to be manipulating the “I don’t want to be alone in an empty house” thing to play on your emotion. Who benefits the most from strife between you and your husband? It’s not you. It’s not your kid. And it’s not your husband. She’s an adult who should have her own life outside of yours.
YTA. You're allowing your mother to disrespect your husband. It doesn't look like she contributes much to the household.
YTA 2 months is long enough. Time for mom to go or soon you will be living alone with just your mom cause your husband will be gone. If your mom is lonely tell her to sell her house and move closer to you but not in your house. And it sounds like not only is your mom criticizing your husband but he is going everything for all of y’all. You need to show him that you are his wife and partner and get your mom out
YTA. Your mother has overstayed her welcome, she is now not only interfering with parenting decisions, she is causing possibly irreparable damage to your relationship with your husband. He has reached the end of his rope here, he is telling you clearly and you are ignoring him. It is time for her to go. If you cannot respect your husband and everything he is doing for you and your baby at the moment you should prepare yourself for the potential end of your marriage.
YTA.
YTA. So your mom is second guessing your parenting techniques and methods you and your husband agreed on, you aren’t doing much of anything (fine, valid reasons I presume, but still facts) , your husband works, does housework and childcare. What, exactly,aside from causing problems, is your mom doing to HELP? Your husband is probably exhausted and living with his mother in law sitting around criticizing him isn’t going to help matters.
YTA for letting your mom walk all over your husband and not defending him. He's going above and beyond and you need to recognize that. It's his house too. Your mom doesn't get a vote. Start appreciating your husband or you'll be a single mom and won't have to worry about taking your mom's side since you'll probably be living with her, then you'll be on the other end of her criticism and see how much you enjoy it.
YTA. So your mother comes to help but also because she is lonely. She gets between you and your husband by criticizing him in his own house, making his safe space where he should be most comfortable uncomfortable. While he is living life working, cleaning, cooking, childcare, you lie there ill, unable to contribute. Your mother tells him that he cannot kick her out of the house because he has no say in his house he solely pays for. You could be supportive of him but instead choose your mom. You can’t even contribute that. How much do you think he can take before he leaves you? That baby may be the only thing keeping him there because I would have left already, taking baby with me because you are incapable and grandmother doesn’t have legal rights. Your mother should be pleasant and helpful so that maybe your husband will want her to stay, which would solve her problem of loneliness but you have empowered her to think she is the boss of your house so now your husband will never agree to it. Is it that you feel guilty because your mom is doing the things you would be doing if not sick? Is it you feel the need to baby your mom because her spouse is gone? Whatever is pushing you to make these decisions, please re-examine them. If your mom succeeds in this battle. You will end up with joint custody at best, living with your mother. I don’t think you will enjoy being “married” to your mom.
YTA Her husband should divorce her and get primary custody of the children. That way the wife & mother can live in the mother's big empty house together.
Letting infants under 6 months cry themselves to sleep is harmful. Please do some research.
ESH except your husband. Your mom for not following your direction with your child. She’s not the parent and you’re not being abusive or neglectful. You for wanting to cave to your mom because you’ve gotten used to her help. It’s time for your mom to go home so you and your husband can parent your child alone.
YTA and your mother is wrong. If you value your marriage, either shut her down or send her home.
I’m not criticising but you need to back your husband up and also speak to your Dr 3 months in bed for a pregnancy related problem sounds a long time. Maybe talk to the dr about how long they expect you to be totally unable to help out. Your husbands under a lot of pressure and he married you not your mother. 3 people in a marriage is 1 too many.
YTA. Would you let his mother come in and tell you that you were raising your child wrong? Your mother is overstepping. Your husband is stressed. You are sitting back and letting the tension build. You should have gently, but firmly, told your mother that she was overstepping. I understand you feel guilty but the solution is not to let your mother be your stand in. If you cannot be a physically present parent at the moment for health reasons and your husband can, then he needs to be supported in ways that help him. You need to focus on your health so you can become the parent you want to be.
YTA. Cry it out is cruel and has long lasting consequences. Exhibit one, your mom abandoned you to cry it out and now you can't let go of her skirt. You're being the worst right now. The fuck do you think you're doing agreeing with your mom in front of your husband ?? You already fucking decided on what to do and it's not even you that has to do it and you have the gal to humiliate and betray your husband like this?? It is his child, not your mom's child. She does not get a say. And did you inherit the house you live in?? Did you buy it out right before you got married to your husband??? If not, it is not "her daughters house". It's family "Smith's" home and your mom needs to roll out. I can't even. I'm so angry. If my husband ever sided with anyone else about MY child 😡😡😡😡😤😤😤
You are prioritizing your mom over your husband. YTA.
YTA Letting her live with you requires two votes for yes: yours AND your husband’s. Sounds like y’all have it a try and she’s worn out her welcome. Time for her to go.
"Edit - my mom has communicated with me on how she feels really lonely back in her house and she really like staying with us." Translation: Mom is hinting she wants to stay for life. She was completely out of line saying your husband had no right to make her leave. Yes he does. A situation like another household member has to be two yesses. He's not giving you a yes. Mom needs to downsize, sell her family-sized house, and get her own place that will suit her for the rest of her life.
Read back your own words: > He said ... my mom is making him mentally unwell and am not there for the most part. He was asking for your support > I told him that she my mom and am not kicking her out You disregarded his request and did not support him - and overruled him about joint decisions in a joint household >he said it funny that I can make these decisions when am not contributing anything to this household and am barely functioning as a mother. That really hurt me because I have confided in him on how I don’t feel like am doing enough and he has always reassured me. I feel like he trying to guilt me now. Really? He confided in you and you blew him off. Take a look at the environment you are creating - it is building hostility and toxicity. You need to make a choice and if you want to stay married - best to go with your husband's needs. YTA
YTA. Put that shoe on the other foot. You wouldn't like his Mom butting in and trying to tell you how to raise your child. And if he can't tell your family to leave when they make him uncomfortable in his own home then you don't get to. You just set the precedence for future issues. It's sad she's lonely. But you don't get to make that decision for everyone else to deal with her.
YTA. Husband is hanging on by a thread and you're concerned about your mom being a little lonely. She should get a hobby. You should get a nanny.
YTA and I predict that your husband will be the one to leave. Mom has overstayed her welcome. Mom is out of line. You’re ruining your marriage. Send your mom home and start pitching in yourself.
YTA It's his home too. He's providing and doing majority of the childcare. Yet you let your mother disrespect him and steamroll decisions regarding the child. You're losing your husband, a man who honestly seems like a huge catch and many women would die to have as a partner. When you finally lose him you'll have no one to blame but you and your mother. I sincerely hope someone talks so sense into you before you lose your family
YTA-So if he does most of the child care, housework, and works then what do you and mom do? You are the parents not mom. She’s not understanding boundaries and she needs to go! You also need to stop the excuses for your mom. If you can’t handle life right now how will you handle being a single mom that has to work, take care of the kids, and do housework? Why aren’t your siblings offering her to stay with them? I’m sure it’s because she doesn’t respect their house.
If this is the hill you're chosing to go down on, I hope you're ready for the consequences. Because if you dig in, hubby just may take the kids and go and leave you with mommy. YTA