Deal with your in-laws

Yes, I’m talking about your baby’s other grandparents.

It seems like there are only two ways to go: the high road and the low road.

High road: Become bff’s with your mother-in-law and never ever put your husband in the middle. Learn how to defuse even the most irritating situations with your good humor and self esteem in tact.

Check out the new book The Daughter-in-Law Rules: 101 Surefire Ways to Manage (and Make Friends with) Your Mother-In-Law! for ideas on that path. Heather read the whole book in one sitting and is eagerly awaiting Carol’s next visit to kill her with kindness.

Low road: Bitch to your girlfriends and turn to the Internets for anonymous support. I might be inviting criticism here, but may I suggest that one way to deal with someone who annoys you is to complain about them to others who do not know them.

Either way, venting to your partner is a really bad idea when it’s his parents you’re bitching about. That’s, as Dionne Warwick would say, what friends are for. And today, that’s what the Internet is for.

A friend asked me to start this thread because at 8.5 months pregnant she is aware that everything that’s annoying her now really could send her over the edge when her post-partum hormones kick in. She has given me the example that her mom told her mother-in-law in advance that she was going to buy the new baby a nice stroller, and then her mother-in-law went and bought that stroller herself, annoying my friend and clearly stealing her mom’s thunder. Who does that?

Use the comment link here as your opportunity to complain to someone who won’t send this URL to your mother in law. If you’re too shy, visit M.I.L.D.E.W. (Mother-in-laws do everything wrong – HA!) or Motherhood Uncensored for a feeling that your grass may in fact be greener.

The thing is, she’s here to stay, so get used to her. I sort of want to remind you that she did raise at least one child, and did a pretty darn good job. You must agree since you married him. But I’m not taking her side; I’m taking yours.

Be petty. Be irrational. Just don’t be Dear Abby. Let everyone who wants to complain wallow in her self-pity.

Author
Recent Posts

Whitney

RookieMoms.com co-founder Whitney lives with her husband, son, and daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area where she writes about parenting, crafts, and activities that moms can do with babies in tow. She and Heather also publish 510Families.com, a site for East Bay parents.