In the past my husband has said he doesn’t want our daughter to receive any clothes as gifts after age 1 because of the fear that getting the wrong size could cause body image issues (this is something I told him happened to me as a kid). Our daughter is 13 months and for one of her Christmas gifts, my mom got her a hand-knit cardigan at a craft show. It’s an objectively beautiful gift and we all absolutely love it. But on principle my husband is furious at my mom for crossing this boundary and says he wants to reevaluate whether she’s allowed to babysit based on the crossing of this boundary. In my mom’s defense I wasn’t very clear about this, and certainly haven’t been clear about it recently.
She hasn’t been allowed to watch our daughter since she was 2 months old, due to not properly following our bottle feeding instructions. I have moved past it but my husband hasn’t. I have had my issues with my mom in the past but I think there is complexity to mother daughter relationships that my husband does not understand. In the past couple weeks he has mentioned maybe being open to letting her try babysitting again but this puts us back at square one.
My husband travels for work very often, on average for a week every 5-6 weeks, and when my mom comes to help out she’s only allowed to help with the dog, not the baby. Since she’s not allowed to be alone with the baby at all, it’s extremely exhausting for me. I feel like my husband keeps moving the goal posts on having my mom be allowed to help, based on his own dislike of her. It bothers me that he is the only one who gets a say. I am a stay at home mother and the days can get very long especially when he is traveling. I am exhausted from doing all the daytime child care, all the cooking and chores etc and it’s getting exhausting to keep telling my mom excuses why she can’t visit for an afternoon to give me a break.
I don’t know how I am going to be able to handle 17 more years of this.
EDIT: thank you everyone for all your comments and for advocating for me, a random internet stranger. I had a conversation (well, argument) with my husband about all of this a few minutes ago and it basically ended that I’m the one who created the boundaries and the no-clothes-after-one rule, that I’m moving the goalposts, that we made all the decisions about my mom together and that I need to take responsibility for my actions. I feel like I’m absolutely losing my mind because I swear this isn’t the case. But he reiterated that everything he does is for our child’s well being. So idk.
EDIT 2: to everyone suggesting therapy, he and I have both been in individual therapy for nearly three years at this point and have had therapists in the past as well. I think this is a situation where therapy isn’t actually doing any good since no progress has been made.
She hasn’t been allowed to watch our daughter since she was 2 months old, due to not properly following our bottle feeding instructions. I have moved past it but my husband hasn’t. I have had my issues with my mom in the past but I think there is complexity to mother daughter relationships that my husband does not understand. In the past couple weeks he has mentioned maybe being open to letting her try babysitting again but this puts us back at square one.
My husband travels for work very often, on average for a week every 5-6 weeks, and when my mom comes to help out she’s only allowed to help with the dog, not the baby. Since she’s not allowed to be alone with the baby at all, it’s extremely exhausting for me. I feel like my husband keeps moving the goal posts on having my mom be allowed to help, based on his own dislike of her. It bothers me that he is the only one who gets a say. I am a stay at home mother and the days can get very long especially when he is traveling. I am exhausted from doing all the daytime child care, all the cooking and chores etc and it’s getting exhausting to keep telling my mom excuses why she can’t visit for an afternoon to give me a break.
I don’t know how I am going to be able to handle 17 more years of this.
EDIT: thank you everyone for all your comments and for advocating for me, a random internet stranger. I had a conversation (well, argument) with my husband about all of this a few minutes ago and it basically ended that I’m the one who created the boundaries and the no-clothes-after-one rule, that I’m moving the goalposts, that we made all the decisions about my mom together and that I need to take responsibility for my actions. I feel like I’m absolutely losing my mind because I swear this isn’t the case. But he reiterated that everything he does is for our child’s well being. So idk.
EDIT 2: to everyone suggesting therapy, he and I have both been in individual therapy for nearly three years at this point and have had therapists in the past as well. I think this is a situation where therapy isn’t actually doing any good since no progress has been made.