'My mum keeps making weird comments – I think she wants to take my baby' – The Mirror
A worried woman, pregnant with her first child is concerned her mum and first-time grandma is ‘going to take the baby away’ after making ‘uncomfortable’ and overbearing comments
Any parent knows the excitement of welcoming a new baby into their family, but one expecting mother has drawn the line after she started to fear that her mum wants to take her baby.
Not only is a new baby exciting for the parents but becoming a grandparent for the first time is also a huge milestone. One woman, who is 23 weeks pregnant, says that while she is pleased her mum is "excited" to become a grandma, she has started making "uncomfortable comments".
Anonymously taking to Mumsnet, the daughter said she is "panicking" that her mum will be overbearing when the baby arrives; she has already insisted taking time off work to look after the baby and says "I can look after it" as soon her daughter expresses uncomfortableness in her pregnancy.
"My problem is, she keeps saying she is going to take the baby away from me", the concerned first-time mum said.
Explaining her mum's expectations for when the baby arrives, the concerned woman said: "She is dropping a day at work to help – I told her not to do it until after I finished maternity leave, but she'll start from when the baby is about 6 weeks old.
"She expects that she will be able to take the baby to hers as soon as she drops the day at work. She said she wants to show her off to her friends and workplace. I said today in a light-hearted way that I'd had to tell my dog off and she called me a mean mum and said if I do that to her granddaughter, she will come and pick her up and take her home."
The worried mum-to-be said her mum has also been negative about her passion to breastfeed her baby. She commented: "I haven't been able to tolerate anything spicy since I got pregnant, and I told her I couldn't wait to have a takeaway curry and I was going to get one that week after she's born, and my mum said 'the baby can stop at mine'."
The Mumsnet user added: "Whenever she says something like it, it puts me really on edge and upsets me, I can't seem to shake it straight off. It has taken me a long time to conceive, over 10 years and I already had a bit of an irrational fear of the baby being taken away from me and these comments just make it worse.
"I know I don't know how I'll feel when the baby is here, but at the minute I can't imagine wanting her to be away from me for a good while. I want the baby and my mum to be close, but to me there's a time and a place for that when she's a little bit older."
The expecting mum added that despite being "quite close" now, she and her mother have had their disputes over the years; she believes she "was not a good mum to me growing up". "I do find the thought of the baby going to her unsupervised quite scary in general anyway," she wrote.
Asking Mumsnet users for her advice, she added: "If pull her up on these comments she just gets stubborn and doubles down, or just goes quiet and changes the subject. I've tried to be polite about it, I don't want to upset her or spoil her excitement.
"Am I being unreasonable to be bothered by these comments?" One individual commented: "100% not unreasonable. You won’t want your six week old breast fed baby to leave your sight. She can come and visit on her day off, help you in the house so you get to just hold the baby, but no to overnights or baby leaving your site to go to hers for the day to play mum."
One other advised: "You need to shut it down. For your own sake but also hers. Just tell her – you’ll be waiting until you’re comfortable and that’s on your (and the baby’s) timeline. You need to be blunt because she’s making so many of these kinds of comments."
"You need to shut it down now – firmly but no-nonsense because it will be much harder when your baby is here, you're tired, and your defences are down," another wrote.
Another questioned: "I wonder whether on a subconscious level she sees this as her 'do over' as she wasn't great to you growing up – so sees a sense of ownership over baby?"
Do you agree? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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