Mothers-in-law can be a particularly tough breed to deal with. There are a lot of reasons why MIL relations can be challenging, especially for their daughters-in-law. Sometimes it has to do with overstepping boundaries, or the MIL believing their son is God's gift and that everything the son's partner does is wrong. Sometimes it just boils down to communication issues. But it's seldom easy or cut and dried.
One situation that seems pretty cut and definitely dried up (a pun that you'll understand in a mere moment) is what happened when a mother-in-law attempted to breastfeed her grandchild. A user on Reddit called @milbfthrowaway described the situation in a post where she wondered if she was wrong to no longer allow her MIL to watch her baby while she works.
The post had a lot of people debating, but most agreed that, no, breastfeeding your grandchild isn't cool and that the mom was definitely in the right to put a stop to the babysitting gig.
The user began her post by describing what the babysitting setup was. She even said that at first, it had been working great and that she and her husband were so appreciative of the help her mother-in-law had been giving them. It seemed like things were going smoothly with the arrangement.
"My husband and I both work full time and we have a 2 month old," she began. "My mother in law comes to our house every weekday and watches him for free while we work. We’re on week 3 of this arrangement since I went back to work after maternity leave. It’s very kind of her to do this for our family and I appreciate it immensely."
She also shared that her baby is breastfed: "I pump milk for her to give him during the day and he gets milk right from the source on evenings and weekends. He loves nursing and I do too. It’s been a wonderful way for us to bond and a beautiful experience overall."
That's where things got a little complicated. The mom happened to peek at the video baby monitor on her phone, which most people these days have, and got a big surprise. And it wasn't a good one.
"She had been texting me saying he was crying really hard so she was thinking about just holding him for a nap, so I wanted to check and see if he was okay and if she ended up just holding him. When I looked at the camera, MIL was holding him and she had her shirt up and he was latched onto her breast," she wrote.
It had to be a huge shock. I mean, you probably don't expect to see your mother-in-law's breasts really any time. But seeing her breastfeeding your baby is a whole 'nother story! While in some cultures it's totally normal for people to nurse one another's babies, in the US, it's probably the kind of thing you should clear with mom first.
"I was shocked and horrified," the mom wrote of seeing what was happening. "I called her right away and she didn’t answer, so I had to sit there and watch her attempt to breastfeed my baby. He was latched on, but obviously not getting any milk as my mother in law is not lactating."
Finally, her husband did get her on the phone, she wrote. But the mother-in-law had her own gripes. She said it was an "invasion of privacy" that her daughter-in-law had checked in on how the day was going via the baby monitor. While that might be an understandable feeling, the fact that she saw her MIL nursing her own child without permission kiiiind of negates the right to argue about PRIVACY, of all things.
The real question that the mom posed was whether or not she's in the wrong for saying that she doesn't want her MIL watching her baby anymore while she and her husband are at work. Truthfully, a lot of people have taken away babysitting privileges for far less-strange offenses. Most users agreed that what the MIL did was really wrong — not just because it's weird, but because she didn't have permission.
One commenter wrote, "I would be MORTIFIED. I can’t even start to think about how someone comes to the conclusion that the only way to calm a baby down is by sticking your boob in his mouth when you’re not the baby’s mother. They make binkies for that right?"
Even users who said they had experience with wet nurses said that this is never OK. The real issue here is about consent. If there had been an arrangement that was agreed upon by everyone, that would be one thing.
But the consensus here seems pretty clear: Breastfeeding someone else's baby without asking? Definitely not OK, and mom totally has the right to remove her baby from a situation that just downright creeps everybody out.
Sorry, MIL. You done effed up.
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