Hi all!
Sooo I'm a new mum too a 5 month old. He’s my parents 2nd Grandson; but he’s my In-laws first GC.
Soooo whilst we’ve had our fallouts we are on good terms but I have noticed my MIL is really struggling to accept a Grandparents bond and a mothers bond are very different things..
Theres been a lot of arguments over the MIL not respecting our boundaries. She didn't agree with him being EBF as she wanted to be able to feed him, she had a go at me frequently as she wanted to bath him change him the job lot, we had issues with her being very very possessive with the baby often saying ‘he’s not just your baby he’s mine too’, obsessing over sleepovers often falling out with us and crying because we said no.
We tried to see some of it as purely excitement but then we saw a lot of it as really quite selfish behaviour; the thrusting herself onto the baby, pushing for things we said no too, disregarding how we felt as parents and turning up on mass inviting her entire family too our house regular (MIL, FIL, 2x SIL’s and GGM & GGD) often we had 9 people in our small living room forcing me to sit upstairs on my bed in tears as I couldn’t sit down in my own house; we sort of hit a wall and we all fell out big time! But we finally sorted it and got too a safe point for us all where we found the medium level for everyone. I had to be tough with my choices and my partner had to basically had to be firm and say ‘mum your too much, your being too invasive. Your trying far too hard to be like a 2nd mum please back off your making her really anxious and your going to cause my GF to get post-natal depression!’. All fine. We all get along a lot better since then. She still doesn’t like the fact he’s breastfed but id have thought she would be more supportive considering she breastfed all her children!
But the more we spend time with her the more I can see that the MIL is very obviously struggling to transition from Parent to Grandparent. She gets so insulted and very obviously upset with me when the baby cries and wants to come back to me. My boyfriend noticed it today and said ‘my mum looked quite upset when he cried and you said ‘pass him here for 10 mins, he’ll just want a little drink and a comfort suckle’ which he did!
We’ve noticed her getting very clingy again and when shes around him you can see her DESPERATELY trying to push for a very intimate motherly kind of bond with him and then she gets very obviously upset when she doesn’t receive. He comes back to me and you can see her face DROP as shes so disappointed and hurt that she isn’t getting the same kind of bond I have with my baby.
We just don't know how to help her understand that the bond she will have isn’t INSTANT nor is it like the very intimate bond of a mother and baby. She will have a different kind of bond with him but it comes in time. We’ve tried boundaries with her and she just accused us of stopping her from being a central caregiver and we tried to explain we didn’t ask for that and she isn’t required to be that, we simply asked for her to just step back a little and enjoy spending time with him, enjoy watching us thrive as parents, be proud of how well were doing and not focus so heavily on doing everything a mum does! We just dont know how to approach the new obstacle of her bond with him, we dont doubt she’ll be a good grandparent but we want her to stop trying so hard to that maternal bond shes so desperately yearning for!
How do we help her see all this and transition into grandma!?
