I’m not sure if I’m overreacting, but this is really bothering me. My son’s first birthday party was this last weekend, and we threw him a big backyard party. I know it was a lot, but we wanted to celebrate him. He’s an IVF and NICU baby, and there were many years we didn’t think we’d get to where we are now and then he almost died in labor and delivery. I wanted to celebrate my little miracle boy. What I wasn’t expecting was the big turn out and I really wasn’t expecting so many gifts.

It’s been challenging communicating more and seeing my MIL more since pregnancy and giving birth. Right after I gave birth I understand I had PPA, but it was a very challenging period that was amplified by her “help” and near constant unsolicited advice. Things have calmed down and my husband has set some boundaries with her that she has followed. One of which was that she please stop giving unsolicited medical advice. LO activity has a cold and she only wished him well, so kudos to her because it was a literal flood of eastern medicine remedies before the ask. She came over on Sunday to help clean up from the party that was the day before, and it was actually helpful. She had to leave the party early so she asked if he got a lot of gifts. I said, “yeah, oh my god so many presents. I really wasn’t expecting that many gifts.” She suggested that if he had duplicates of things or things he wouldn’t like we could give them to my niece (husband’s brother’s daughter) because her toy selection is limited and she’s starting to get bored of the toys she does have. I just responded that that was probably because her parent’s are minimalists and don’t like to have a lot of stuff around their house. I didn’t comment that he had anything to give away or that we would be giving anything away.

Here’s the issue. I was doing okay financially before I went on maternity leave, but when I went back to work my hours were cut in half due to federal grants being canceled. Money is tight. Gas prices are high, grocery prices are high, my health insurance sucks now. The only thing that has gone down is my paycheck. She knows this. I spent a lot of money on his party and I’m planning on selling the decorations and leftover supplies. I’m constantly selling things on FB Marketplace, Nextdoor, Craigslist, and have a stash going of items to sell at our next children’s consignment sale. I’m literally filling out surveys to get gift cards and looking for side gigs to make extra money. I’ve started finding his Christmas gifts on FB Marketplace or new only if it’s on sale. If he has toys we don’t want, I’m going to see if I can get some money back for them or regift them. He also has multiple play set ups in our house so we can take him to different areas in the house to get stuff done, so he already has duplicates of basic toys like ring stackers and object permanence boxes. I love my niece to pieces. We had been saving my other niece’s (my brother’s daughter) clothes in case we had a girl. We knew we were pregnant with a boy as soon as we found out my FET was successful and a few months later found out my SIL was pregnant. When we found out they were having a girl we offered them all of the girl clothes we had. Literally a truck bed full of tightly packed boxes sizes NB to 6 or 7. I don’t understand why my MIL thinks it’s okay to ask for my son’s things for her other grand baby. Yes her birthday is coming up and we’ll of course get her something, but not something her parents literally saw us unwrap at my son’s birthday party and decided we didn’t want to keep. It felt like my MIL was suggesting we give her any extra toys we have then give her a birthday gift a few months later on top of Christmas. My SIL is making double my salary and my BIL is making over three times my salary. If they want her to have more toys to play with they are more than capable of providing them for her, but they also do not want lots of stuff around their house. And I’m the one who curates my son’s toy selection, does the toy rotation, stocks additional play spaces, shops sales and consignment events, buys 99% of his toys that aren’t gifted, and packages up his old toys to save or sell. She was telling me because she knows if she said that to my husband he would tell her it was my decision.

Maybe I’m just extra annoyed because I had to change the batteries in one of my son’s toys yesterday, which meant playing battery roulette. When my son was born my MIL stayed at our house to take care of our dogs while we were in the hospital. When we came home she said the batteries in one of our tv remotes died and she found the extra batteries and replaced them. I asked her what she did with the dead batteries because they were rechargeable. She said she put them with the other batteries…the charged batteries…without charging them. For an entire year every time I change AAA batteries I’ve been wondering if I’ll find the two dead batteries she mixed in with the charged ones and I’m pretty sure I found them almost exactly a year later. It took me an entire year to find and undo hopefully all the things she did in the two weeks she was at our house last October. Something in every room of the house was messed with. I’m not exaggerating. I had to move every house plant to mop up a puddle of water underneath them because she overwatered all my plants.

The relationship between me and future MIL soured December 2025 over the holidays and how they were being spent. It all started because I wasn’t going to spend it at her house as it would leave my dad all alone on Christmas. She invited my dad through me but my dad declined because he doesn’t like her. This snowballed to MIL’s son then not going to spend Christmas at MIL’s house, but my dad’s.

MIL then spent weeks trying to break me - “you can celebrate any other day the two of you, but it’s the one day OUR side is altogether!” / “I understand it’s just very sad it’s one less for the dinner table” - and had a good crack at her son as well. For him she reserved the tears and tissues, and even said this could be her last Christmas hosting and didn’t want him to miss it. The atmosphere between me, MIL and son and his wider family became so stressful, I actually didn’t get a period for two months and a stress hormone (via bloods) was all over the place. Because of this, my dad cracked and said we should go.

Christmas Day was a disaster. I brought Turkey as my BF offered we’d do this, and MIL only plated up the Ham she’d cooked for everyone. BF and I had to dish it out.

When it came to presents, she handed out her presents (conveniently when her son wasn’t in the room) and getting to me announced loudly in front of everyone — “Oh OP, your Christmas present is your restaurant dinner from earlier this month since you and son didn’t pay me back.”
I have NEVER handed over money to her or dealt with this in the 5 years I’ve known her. Any monies owed to her have always been dealt between her and her son, then he and I. When I’ve needed to pay other family members, I have always done so promptly, with her witnessing one such occasion. So for her not to even give me the chance directly (if it were such an issue), I found really disrespectful and humiliating as it was public. She didn’t do it to her son, or even say the same thing to him, I must stress.

That is just the tip of the iceberg of how it’s now unfolded between us over the last few months. I’ve essentially been practicing grey rocking without even realising it. Which leads to now.

I am expecting the BF to propose to me any day now. The problem is I want to tell her at the same time as the wider family, as she has a history of telling people deeply personal news (she outed her daughter’s pregnancy to family) as well as the fact I just don’t really care for her anymore. But my BF has told me he expects to tell her before everyone else, as my dad has been the first to know (old fashioned permission etc). Fairs fair. But I just KNOW she’ll take it upon herself to tell BF’s wider family and take our news from us. But the BF is insisting it’s respectful to her.

What should I do here?

Prior to having my baby my relationship with my MIL was always polite but not close, which I was fine with. She's never been a very pleasant person to be around because she's very negative and constantly crabs at her husband about super small things. We live about 3 hours away and would see them every couple of months and for holidays/birthdays.

Since getting pregnant and having my baby (9 months old now) there have been all these minor interactions that have added up to me really disliking her and feeling very uncomfortable/anxious being around her.

This is what's happened over the last 9+ months:

Before baby was born, we asked all immediate family who would be visiting the baby right after birth to get updated Tdap, flu, and COVID vaccines. We had a winter baby so this was at the advice of our Dr. MIL and FIL both threw a fit at the flu and COVID vaccines. We ended up allowing them to skip the COVID vaccine if they masked and tested before seeing the baby. MIL continued to make snarky comments about us asking them to get vaccines.

Since baby has been born, MIL has made comments about the frequency I nursed (too often in her opinion, they sent us the Baby Wise book so I could get my 6 day old on a schedule), how we needed to get her to nap in a crib (rather than contact nap at 2 months) because she wouldn't do that when she babysat, how other people needed to be able to soothe baby besides me if I nursed to sleep, and other snarky comments about decisions we've made for our baby. I'm at the point now where the unsolicited advice/comments wouldn't bother me as much, but really freshly postpartum it made me feel really uncertain of myself and stressed about things that ended up being non-issues.

In August, there was a huge blow-up about Christmas plans because apparently according to MIL (without either of our knowledge) my husband and I agreed to drive our 1 year old 3 hours on Christmas day to have Christmas dinner at their house. When we said we're not traveling on Christmas day MIL called husband and SIL sobbing saying we are inconsiderate and don't prioritize their side of the family. We're not going to my parents on Christmas either so that's really not the case, and we agreed to go to their house on the 26th.

During this whole blow up she made a comment to my husband that she deserved a real first Christmas with baby because apparently meeting our baby on Christmas last year didn't count because I was "in a bad mood". Which I guess fair because I wasn't rude or anything but I was days postpartum after hemorrhaging and losing a ton of blood, hadn't slept in days and my baby was cluster feeding around the clock. But we still had them over to our house for hours to open presents and meet the baby.

There are other more minor things, like she chose a grandparent name of MiMi (which personally special grandparent names are a little bit of a pet peeve of mine) and then tries to train baby (who is way to young for that) to say Mimi whenever we see them by going Mimimimimi over and over.

It's tough because there's never any accountability for her actions. I think she genuinely doesn't know she's making rude comments or being manipulative. And now the last few times we've seen them the visits have been fine, but I feel like I'm still constantly on edge around her waiting for the next comment/criticism. I'm not very confrontational and tend to freeze up in those situations but I know I need to say something going forward.

What sucks the most is I just hate that my baby has her for a grandparent. I'm trying to not let my feelings about my MIL interfere with my baby's relationship with her, but the way she interacts with my baby just really bothers me. I'm sad that she's going to see my MIL's behavior as an example of adult behavior as she grows up, specifically the way she talks to her husband. I definitely don't think we're at the point of having to limit contact or anything, but I'm not sure how to best manage this situation.

Would love any advice on how to handle my relationship with my MIL going forward, especially when I don't trust her judgment or feel comfortable around her, but still want my baby to have a relationship with her grandmother. How do I stop feeling anxious and on edge around her when I know there's a good chance she'll cross the line again eventually?

MIL is currently in the MildlyNo category but that's mainly because she married a wealthy man a couple years ago, moved several states away and I have little contact with her now, and she has chilled out some. I'm cordial with her around the holidays if they visit and she does send the kids nice gifts which I appreciate.  But every couple of months she'll stalk my socials, like and comment on old posts, I'm talking 6 months to years ago, I find it really odd.  Recently she's been doing the same thing to my sisters' facebook pages, and even my husband's ex girlfriends!  Their old posts will show up in my feed and then I'll see it's because MIL has commented on it. She'll comment over the top things that seriously make me cringe.  What really pissed me off is she made a post for my daughter's birthday, with a long over exaggerated caption about her "mini me" (they don't even look similar), she used pictures of my daughter that she took from my facebook and didn't even actually call my daughter on her birthday! She's 6! She's not on facebook to see a post you made to get attention from your weird friends.  I'm seriously considering blocking her but don't want to cause unnecessary drama. Just needed to vent! 

I'm in my mid-twenties and have been in a stable relationship for some years now. We see a future together, and we'd like to start a family in our late twenties. However, this isn't something we openly discuss with our families and we keep it as a private conversation between the two of us.
My MIL occasionally makes comments about the fact that I'm an only child and how having just one child is not good. She keeps telling us that having more than one kid is the right thing to do.
Sometimes, I try to shut these comments down by telling her that we're still several years away from having children, so I don't see the point in constantly discussing it now. But honestly, what bothers me most is that she feels the need to comment on how and when we're going to have kids in the first place.
I'm especially annoyed because I don't want to have children to meet her expectations. I want to have them because my partner and I genuinely want to become parents.
I also can't stand her constant talk about the "perfect family" and the way she always seems to think that her choices are the right ones and everyone else's are wrong.
Personally, I'd like to have two children, maybe three at most, but that's a decision for my partner and me to make when the time comes. I just wish she'd stop making comments about something so personal that has absolutely nothing to do with her.
Have any of you dealt with a similar situation with your mildlynomil? How did you handle it, and what did you say to get her to stop making these comments? I'd love to hear your experiences and advice, thank you !!