I think I have a husband problem?
I've posted here before and ended up deleting because I got paranoid my inlaws would see my posts, but I am a bit torn and need to vent, maybe even get some advice and perspective. It's a bit of a long story, so I'll try to stick to the facts. Sorry about the long post.
My husband and I have been together for 8 years and we have a 8 month old baby. We are both from different countries and live very far away from our families, so my relationship with my MIL has always been cordial but not really close.
Last December my mom was diagnosed with cancer and was told she would need a mastectomy and treatment, so my husband and I tried to come with different plans so that I could go help my mom and siblings out after the surgery. One of the possibilities was to fly my MIL over so that she could take care of the baby while I was away and my husband worked, but she has a job and could not come for more than one or two weeks so I decided to just take the baby with me in order to stay as long as my mom would need me. My husband called his mom to let her know our decision and she took it well, but then jokingly said "I want to see my granddaughter too, is cancer what it takes?".
I was appalled. It seemed to me like an incredibly insensitive joke, and especially because my husband just let out an awkward laugh. I said nothing (I was not even part of the conversation, I was just cleaning in the room) but afterwards told my husband that I did not appreciate that at all and asked him to talk to her so that she would be a bit more careful next time. Here's where I may have messed up: when he texted her, he included other grievances he had towards her, and her reaction was very dismissive (something like "Oh, you know I'm not a bad person"), so I decided to text her myself just to clear the air. I politely explained that I knew she was a good person, but that comment had been insensitive and I'd appreciate it if she wouldn't say things like that in the future. She sent me a short apology, then my husband sent me the screenshots of their conversation.
Turns out she was livid I texted her. She blew up my husband's phone complaining that I had called her a horrible person, that I was so sensitive she was scared of talking in front of me, that she'd had it worse with her own MIL, and that she had never said that. She accused me of eavesdropping and had only apologized because my husband had told her to. I tried texting her again so that she knew that I knew what she was saying and in an attempt to talk it out, but she left me on read.
This all upset my husband, who decided to mute her chat and not talk to her unless she reached out to me. She did not text me for four months, not even to ask about her grandkid, until a couple of weeks ago to wish me a happy birthday. At this point I am more upset about her attitude than about the original comment, but tbh I am also upset about how my husband has handled this. Because he is not responding to her texts, these last weeks she has been asking me to relay messages to him. When I ask him if he's ever gonna talk to her, he says he wants to but doesn't know what to say. The other day his brother wanted to facetime me to see the baby, and when I asked my husband what I should do if his mom was around, he replied "Its time to end the fighting anyway", which pissed me off because it feels like it is now my responsability to fix everyone's relationship.
Basically I feel like her reaction to being called out was to lash out and be emotionally manipulative, to which he simply shut down and avoided contact. They let time pass and now everything is supposed to be fine, my MIL gets access to my child despite not even asking about her or trying to facetime her during four months because she didn't want to talk to me. No accountability has been taken, no real apology for the things she said about me, and if I try to talk about this again I'll be labeled the problem. Also my husband doesn't want to talk about this because he is sick of it (I admit I try to talk about it quite often, but only because I HATE how childish this all is and I want us to find a way through). I intended to set a boundary in a very hard time of my life and all it achieved was damaging my relationship with my inlaws.
Am I to blame here? Do I have a husband problem? Should I talk to him even if it turns into a fight? Should I try to talk to my MIL again? I come from a very straightforward family where problems are talked about and solved, not ignored, so I do not know how to handle this.
If you made it this far, thank you.