Loving gran or monster-in-law? New mum’s anger over fawning grandmother

Becoming a mother for the first time is life-changing, and while it’s unlikely to ever be beaten as a key moment in a woman’s life, becoming a grandmother is a huge milestone too

It can spark a lot of excitement within the family, as new grandparents clamour to spend as much time as possible with their new grandchild. But some grandmothers – it IS almost always grandmothers that come in for this criticism, very rarely grandfathers – become a little over-enthusiastic for their daughter or daughter-in-law’s taste.

So, how much interest in the new baby is too much? A new mother has sparked an online debate after saying she was sick of her mother-in-law referring to the newborn as “my baby” and “our baby”. It was, the young mum who posted the complaint said, spoiling her experience of first-time motherhood.

On the hugely popular online chat forum Mumsnet, the mother gave a brief account of her husband’s parents’ background, saying that his mother was an only child so “she’s used to getting what she wants”. The woman goes on to say her mother-in-law was a “strict parent” to her husband and his sibling, before divorcing their father around 10 years ago when both her children had grown up.

She went on to say that her mother-in-law became annoyed if she didn’t hear from her son at least three times a week, and that the couple lived close to her to ensure she didn’t get lonely, but that that closeness had become more difficult to handle now that they had become parents themselves.

“Me and her son got married a couple of years ago and we now have a baby. And she constantly refers to my baby as our baby,” the woman wrote on Mumsnet, which is often used as a sounding board for family and parenting issues. “This annoyed me a bit as I grew up with a lot of children and it’s my first baby so it’s a big deal for me!

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“Yes she is the grandmother and it’s her family too so I brushed the ‘our’ bits off thinking I was being silly … But am I being unreasonable to get annoyed when she starts saying ‘my baby my baby’ when she’s talking about… well my baby not hers??”

It sparked a huge debate among the site’s users, and the woman didn’t necessarily get the response she may have expected, with many reacting angrily to her comments on only children. Meanwhile, others accused her of being too sensitive.

“It’s an expression. Really just not worth losing any sleep over. My/out, I/we are all interchangeable, same as ‘you’ is both plural and singular,” one mother commented.

Another added: “Honestly, it’s just words. It makes no difference whatsoever to anything else. Maybe look at it from the viewpoint that at least she cares enough about your [child] to want to say ‘our baby ‘?”. Another wrote: “Think you’re being over sensitive. I call my niece ‘my baby’ but I don’t genuinely believe she is mine, I’m not considering laying any claim to her, and I’m not disputing she is in fact my sister’s”.

However, the new mum did get some support.

“I would be annoyed,” one user wrote. “My MIL keeps on referring to MY baby as her, as in ‘My Johnny’. And I actually once corrected her. The context is slightly different, MIL is obsessed with the baby to the point it is not healthy from my perspective, so I intentionally need to put her down a bit every once in a while, otherwise she would completely take over the baby!”

And others remained on the fence, saying that whether the mother-in-law’s behaviour was unreasonable or not depended on the wider family context. “I think you are reading far too much into this,” one commented. “But I agree it could be annoying especially if she is generally a pain in the neck.”

Is it too far for the grandmother to refer to the child as ‘my baby’? Or is it OK and oversensitive for the mother to complain?