My mother has four children — me and three brothers.
Maybe that’s why she never smothers us with advice, surprise visits, or moral lectures. She raised us, let us live, and trusted us to figure things out.
My mother-in-law is different.
She has only one son — my husband — and from the moment our baby was born, it felt like she decided the child was hers, not mine.
She doesn’t visit. She invades.
The moment she walks through the door, she starts doing everything out of spite, as if proving that I’m incapable. She goes straight to the baby, pulls off the diaper, changes the clothes, and starts performing for everyone in the room.
“How could this be? She’s burning hot!”
“Oh my God, Mom, Dad, why did you dress her like this?”
She talks to the baby, but it’s clearly meant for us — especially me. As if her grown son were still a helpless child himself. As if diapers were invented only when she became a grandmother.
Then she rushes into the kitchen.
We already have food. Everything is clean. But she bangs pots and pans, slams drawers, peers into the refrigerator like an inspector searching for evidence of neglect. The noise alone is enough to wake the baby.
I try to stay calm.
I ask her, politely, to just sit down. To talk. To spend time, not take control.
And instantly — tears.
“I just wanted to help,” she sobs, loud enough for everyone to hear.
My father-in-law jumps in immediately, as always.
“Your mother means well,” he says. “Another daughter-in-law would be grateful.”
Grateful.
While she grabs the baby again, shoving porridge toward her mouth, ignoring the squeals and discomfort.
“She’s full,” I say. “She eats on schedule.”
“What do you know?” she snaps. “She’s skinny.”
I take my child back.
The baby cries.
And suddenly I’m the villain.
“Well, of course,” she says dramatically, “I don’t know anything. I’m nobody here.”
That’s the moment that hurts the most.
Not the criticism. Not the meddling.
But the way she turns herself into the victim — while I, the mother, am erased in my own home.
I don’t want a war. I don’t want to ban her.
I just want boundaries.
But every time I try to set one, she cries, and everyone else defends her — and I’m left holding a crying baby and wondering when I stopped mattering.