u/Xcheshire799

Hey THT fam! I like to frequent the in laws sub about issues like this but sometimes it can be an echo chamber over there so I wanted a more unbiased opinion.

My husband (30) and I (27) have had a rocky on and off relationship with his mom. To keep it brief, she has done disrespectful things like announce our pregnancy and lie about it, and when she doesn’t get her way she’ll block my husbands calls/texts. She views her relationship with husband as transactional (if you don’t visit me on mother’s day, I won’t talk to you because i’m mad). Over the years we have had multiple conversations with her about her behavior and it’s met with defensiveness, excuses, occasionally an apology with a short period of changed behaviors, but then back to toxicity.

She has always shown strong favoritism to my husbands sister (27). She takes sister on vacations, while only using husband as a favor donkey and therapist. When husband has happy news like getting engaged, having a baby, a new job, or passing a state test, it’s ignored completely or instead his sister is brought up to overlook his accomplishments and talk about hers. We no longer talk to his sister and his mom knows this, and she still has shown up unannounced at our house with her, in which my husband and his sister fought.

We had a baby 2 months ago and his mom visited once on the day we came home, and since hasn’t asked a word about our baby, or husband. She hasn’t asked for pictures, to come visit, or even to just check in to see how husband or baby is. She called once and instead of checking in or even saying one word about his 4 week old, she ridiculed him for something minuscule. He casually mentions to me “i’m surprised my mom hasn’t asked to come see her again, oh well she’s probably busy”. When our baby was 5 weeks old she ambushed us with his sister again knowing that their last interaction ended in husband frustrated while being torn down by his sister.

My husband reached out to tell his mom they needed to have a talk about some disappointing things she has done lately, and she told my husband she has no need to talk to him, shamed him, and then basically said she doesn’t want to talk to him anymore because “she has boundaries too”. We know she will eventually reach out again, but that response told me this woman is a terrible mother who will never change and my husband deserves better.

We weren’t really sure where to go from there so we set up some therapy appointments. The therapist asked my husband what she would need to do for him to forgive her. He said an apology and changed behavior and he would consider trying to mend the relationship. She then asked me the same.

I don’t think she could do anything. She is a terrible mom and I hate seeing how she makes my husband feel, and it’s clear she never has intentions of treating him better long term. She makes him well aware he’s not as important as her daughter, she views their relationship as transactional, she couldn’t care less that he just had his first baby, and when he tried to bring up his feelings she shut him down and said she’d rather not talk to him. I despise this woman.

I feel like that makes me a terrible person. I feel unforgiving and like our therapist probably doesn’t like this answer. I feel like if my husband forgives, then I should too right? I could never interact with her again and it wouldn’t even cross my mind. If I never forgave her but husband does, does that make me an unsupportive wife?

EDIT: WOW, everyone has been so kind and supportive, I truly appreciate everyone’s thoughtful and in depth responses, this sub is really amazing. Sorry if I didn’t reply to everyone but I am reading everyone’s comments and will continue to do so. A lot of people are bringing up great points that I will be talking about in our sessions, such as forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean reconciliation, which wasn’t something I had really thought about. Please keep the advice coming if you have more to add, these replies have been very comforting and helpful!

I’ll try to keep it short while also providing full context. My husband and I are no contact with his younger sister. She’s selfish, self serving and has main character syndrome and we got sick of it. His family is aware we haven’t talked to her in the past year.

My MIL tried to be devils advocate for a while, would enable sisters behaviors, and try to meddle, and we asked MIL to stop or else she would be distanced from us as well, so she did, or so we thought?

Last month (I posted about this here before if this sounds familiar), MIL and sister showed up to our house unannounced on my birthday, which was also 3 days before I gave birth, as husbands sister was here from out of town. Apparently husbands sister was driving MILs car so MIL “didn’t have a choice” in her stopping here. It created an issue obviously and his sister knew that, husband and her fought, MIL just stood by and listened, and they left in a huff and husband told his mom that wasn’t cool. She again, stated she didn’t have a choice in her coming here and her “staying out of it” was her not intervening or giving us a head up.

Husbands sisters reached out to me a few hours after to wish me a happy birthday like nothing happened, I let her know essentially in a few more pleasant words, her behaviors won’t be brushed under the rug, that she sucks, she treats my husband poorly, and we don’t want to be around her anymore. She never responded to this text and that was that.

Yesterday, MIL invited us to a cookout at her dads, he had just lost his wife, and stated it would be us, her dad, her, and husbands brother and wife. Today, we show up there with our 5 week old and to our surprise, we saw husbands sister there. I immediately felt sick to my stomach and was almost in tears with frustration/anxiety. Husband looked at me and apologized and said he wished we just wouldn’t have gone. I really already didn’t want to go because I’m exhausted, our newborn hasn’t been sleeping, and I felt extremely uncomfortable being around someone I had just told only last month that I don’t enjoy being around them and we don’t want them in our life. The entire cookout husband and I just didn’t acknowledge sister.

I almost feel like MIL is trying to parent trap us, even if she couldn’t control sister coming on my birthday, she didn’t attempt a text or anything to warn us she was stopping over. Today, again, no heads up or letting us know sister was there, likely because if she told us, we likely wouldn’t have gone. I’m not sure if it’s intentional? MIL is very good at playing the “I didn’t know/think about it” game to shrug off responsibility.

So are these intentional or do they seem it could just be coincidence or mistakes out of her control (like maybe MIL also didn’t know sister was coming?). I’m not sure…

Update: I’ve read a lot of your comments and appreciate all your advice! I talked with husband, read him a lot of the responses, and this is what we talked about;

He said he wants to have another talk with his mom to tell her what she did was shitty. I told him these conversations clearly don’t do anything and we cannot keep accepting her apologies and let her do disrespectful things. He said he agrees. I told him i’m ready to stop having conversations and put in consequences. I’m ready to say we’re not coming to any more family events, period, and I want nothing to do with MIL anymore. He said he’s game. He’s done with his mom’s shit, and today was his last straw. I’m sure she will reach out at some point and husband will tell her why we no longer desire to have a relationship with her. Fingers crossed for when that time comes.

My husband recently got an IT job working from home that made me able the stay at home. We have a 4 week old currently and decided that since i’m BF we’d do shifts at night, him 10pm-3am and me 3am-8am. This works great for the most part, he does a bottle at 1am and I do the other feeds at 4am, and 7am and still wake up to pump at 1am. Recently she’s been waking up for wet diapers so now add in waking up maybe at 5am too for a change.

I let husband know i’m getting burnt out waking up so often and mentioned maybe he could do the wakeups for changes if she doesn’t need to be fed. He said he needs a long stretch of sleep so he can be focused at his meeting and make sales, and mentioned he thought we did the shift system because I can just nap when baby naps. I let him know usually when baby naps, i’m prepping dinner, showering, laundry, dishes, etc. He said he would be happy to help with chores on his breaks, but I let him know I don’t need help during the day with chores, I need more sleep at night.

i’m starting to get resentful of his reluctance to wake up at night, but I also feel selfish because he does work during the day and I take care of the house and baby, so I’m not really sure where to go from here. He reluctantly agreed to do diaper changes at night, but I feel as though he’s not happy with this decision. This is our first baby, and I’m a new stay at home mom so we don’t really know what is typical.

For the past few years my MIL has shown she lacks emotional intelligence, empathy, and consideration. She enables my SIL that husband and I are no contact with, this has come forward during pregnancy and gender announcements where MIL put SILs feelings first and overshadowed our happy news. She has thrown tantrums when not getting her way like not getting a visit on mother’s day or being told we won’t be going to her house on Christmas. She recently showed up unannounced with our NC SIL and created an issue on my birthday which inevitably ruined my birthday and husbands day. She said SIL was driving her car and decided to come over so she “didn’t have a choice”. Husband called her and tried to bring it up with her, she brought up issues in her life, started crying and said she doesn’t want to talk about our boundaries, and it has not been brought up since (I think this is an avoidance tactic on her end). It came to a head when she came to meet our newborn the day we got home from the hospital and she said if we didn’t baptize our newborn she would. I was livid.

I feel like I keep putting off going NC because it’s like an issue occurs, she apologizes, time moves on and we get on good terms, and then she does something disrespectful again and plays it off as “a mistake” or “she didn’t know”. I don’t know why i’m finding it so hard to just be done. It’s like a mix of guilt/not feeling like my reasons are good enough. I feel she will use excuses like “I never intend any harm”. Anyone else have experiences in this field and have felt the same way?

My MIL came over the day husband and I got home from the hospital. We have had a rocky relationship in the past but have healed from that so I was happy to have her come by so soon.

After about 20 minutes of her meeting our baby, she said “are you planning on baptizing her?” husband and I said we think so, but we don’t know if the church we attend semi-regularly does infant baptisms. She then said “well it’s my belief that a baby isn’t saved to go to heaven if they’re not baptized, so in my beliefs if you don’t do it then I will.” I was shocked she would say that, especially after she is aware of the past issues we’ve had. She just met OUR baby 20 minutes prior and was making demands of us/her. She then giggled and said “hopefully you don’t think i’m overstepping!”

When she left, I told husband her saying that was not cool, and i’m very uncomfortable with the “if you don’t do this with your baby i’ll go over your heads” mentality. He said she probably just meant herself sprinkling water on her head and praying over her herself.

I texted my SIL as one thing we have common ground on it our MIL being annoying and toxic at times. I told her what MIL said and she said “I just read that to my husband and found out she sprinkled water on our daughter when she was born and prayed for her, that’s annoying but funny I guess.” I said that’s what husband said she meant when she said she’d do it.

Is this a sweet innocent nothing that I just let go or is this a boundary being crossed? I feel very uncomfortable more about the principle of “I don’t care it’s your child, I know what’s best”, especially in the future when she desires to watch her. What might she do in the future? Feed her foods I don’t want her to eat because she knows best? Not follow her schedule because it’s not her schedule?

I’m wondering if I just let this one go or tell husband to have a talk with her. I’m annoyed as again, we’ve had past issues with her, and this feels just like “another thing the wife is making a big deal about to cause issues” (which his family has already made remarks about), so I don’t want to make a big deal if it’s really not a big deal, yknow?

Husband and I haven’t talked to his sister in about 8 months, as we have learned she is toxic and refuses to let anyone’s happy news not be about her. This started when she essentially put a sour twist on our pregnancy announcement and gender reveal, crying about how she was told both not in her “preferred method” instead of being happy for us. You have seen my posts before if this sounds familiar.

MIL meddled and was told by husband she needs to stop or we will be taking a break from her as well, we’re adults and can deal with SIL without her intervening. MIL knows we are still not talking to SIL. Today is my birthday, as well as I am 39 weeks pregnant and could go into labor at any moment. My pregnancy has been so peaceful since cutting SIL out knowing she can’t spoil any more of this pregnancy for me.

I am currently in my closet as MIL just pulled up to our house unannounced with SIL who is visiting from out of state. I am not giving SIL the satisfaction of seeing me pregnant, touching the belly, nothing, so I told husband tell them i’m not home and I put myself in my closet with the door shut in case they try to come inside.

I am furious with MIL for bringing her over here and breaking the boundary of “no meddling, just let us deal with our relationship with SIL how we need to”.

Edit: He did not let them in, he went outside and said it wasn’t a good time and they should go. As of right now we (thought) we were at a good point with his mom, she had been respecting the boundaries we put in place. His sister acted like everything was grand and tried to happily give him a hug, he said no, and let her know that if she wants to try to make amends or get back to a point of being civil, she needs to apologize. She of course argued, and he just told them to leave and came back inside. He said she basically told him the family thinks he sucks and she told him he’s “just like his dad who would throw away family for his wife”. (His dad is wonderful and actually the only non problematic one in the family).

He said he’s only mad at his sister, I told him his mom is a problem too for allowing her over here. He said his mom remained silent during the encounter. He’s frustrated, I encouraged him to make a therapy appointment and he said he probably will.

Edit 2: Husband called his mom. He let her know what she did wasn’t okay. His mom claims that his sister (who was driving his moms car on the way the the airport) wanted to stop by before his sister left, and his mom questioned “are you sure you want to do that?” and sister was adamant. MIL considered her stopping it or saying no as meddling, which we asked her not to do. He then said “my mom said she’s going to call you later to wish you happy birthday”. I don’t even know how to respond, is her answer bullshit? I don’t even know what to say if she calls me. Part of me wants to tell her she really put a damper on my birthday because my husband is super upset now and it ruined his day.

Update: So after all of that with his sister and her saying really awful things, she texted me and said “happy birthday!! Let me know how your pregnancy is going and if you need anything!” This girl is something else.

Edit 3: His mom ended up calling me. I remained civil, she asked how my birthday was and I just said “it was alright”. My husband mentioned that his mom on the phone was crying and said she really didn’t want to talk about the “boundaries” right now, (her mom, husbands grandma was just given 6 months and we all found out about 2 weeks ago). I told husband he should leave it for a few days and call his mom again to talk about allowing SIL over here. We understand if she wasn’t behind the wheel that she did not have control where the car went, but does that mean she couldn’t have tried to verbally stand her ground more with SIL? I’m not sure. I think another phone call with MIL will give more clarity.

Probably a niche question, but I will be a SAHM for a while, and i’ll be keeping my BCBA license active. I need to re-attest my CAQH provider ID for work, never knew *exactly* what it was, just that my job needed it.

If I won’t be practicing do I need to keep re-attesting while SAH?

Just venting, and yes I have been saying no or my husband has been doing the asks for me instead. I am over 37 weeks pregnant, we are in a state with a heat advisory currently where the highs are reaching about 100°, so needless to say, I have been staying inside, even walking in and out of the grocery store is a lot for me in this heat.

My husbands step mom and dad are moving home from out of state next month, she has over 50 house plants. She sent them to the new house with her husband who came to drop off a load of stuff, and then texted me and asked if for the next month before she moves here, I can go over a few times to water all of her plants (which are all currently scattered on the floor, and if you know pregnancy, bending is not fun or easy).. I get it, I have plants too, she probably doesn’t trust others, but still irked that it had to be me asked rather than anyone else.

My SIL texted me and said the next few days they’ll be out of town and asked if I could come by everyday either morning or night to come turn on their garden sprinkler and water the garden for them. Again, asking me, not anyone else or my husband… My husband said to text her and say I won’t, and she can text him and ask him to do it.

I get it, i’m capable of things, but of ALL PEOPLE, yes let’s ask the 37 week pregnant in law to do our chores for us.. smh

EDIT: HA you guys I forgot I made a note in my phone back in January, as my therapist told me to try to find my in laws behavior “predicating and amusing” to not be so bothered by them. One of my predications was that the week of or weeks close to my due date, my SIL would either plan an event or ask for a favor such as babysitting or another dumb ask (as she likes to make others feel less important than her/likes to have the spotlight). It’s amazing how I can predict the way they will act.

The other predication was her stopping by in the first month of no visitors with either food as a disguise to meet the baby before others, or with her kids because they were “too excited to meet their new cousin”.

When I wrote these I wrote if she does 1 of 2, my husband owes me a nice dinner of my choice, and if she does 2 of 2, I get $200 to spend however I please. Husband said he now owes me a dinner. I guess we’ll see if he also owes me $200 to go on a post partum shopping trip.

My mom has always been obsessed with her kids getting married, having kids and giving her grandbabies. My siblings and I have always hated this as we have a close knit family, but she will still look at other families who are not close, but she’ll express jealousy because the kids are married/have kids and she wants that.

I am the youngest of 4 and am the only one with a partner and a month away from having my first baby, and my mom’s first grand baby. She is OVER THE MOON. But some things have been bothering me about her reactions to our boundaries. I don’t feel they are super aggressive.

-Only my parents will meet baby in the hospital.

-Everyone else will wait one month to come meet baby (so husband and I can be in our newborn bubble just the 3 of us, we’ll be learning a whole lot of new stuff, plus we have dogs that go nuts for guests and we just don’t want a revolving door.)

-No kissing the baby, anywhere.

That’s it. My sister told me that my mom was complaining to her about the kissing rule as “it never used the be that serious.” I’ve explained to her that we don’t want the baby ending up in the hospital, and also we don’t want her to catch anything, whether a cold, or HSV. My dad was in the room and both of them told my mom that it’s our baby and our decision. My sister let me know since then she has brought it up again complaining about this rule.

My brothers came over today and they told me that my mom asked them the other day “So how do you feel about your sister making you wait a whole month to meet your niece?” and they just said they don’t care, and she got a bit snippy and said she thinks it’s silly and that they’re family. They brushed it off and didn’t engage.

I’m becoming increasingly annoyed by the fact she is talking smack about our simple boundaries to my other family members and seeming to try to get people on “her side” of thinking she’s in the right and i’m being over the top.

How would you deal with this? My mom is the type to get offended if I bring it up, and I don’t want to create any animosity, but I also am feeling disrespected and my mom has never made me feel like this.

Edit: I should also add I don’t want to throw my siblings under the bus so i’m a bit wary of how to bring this up if I decide, without throwing them under the bus/letting my mom know they told me.

Edit 2: A lot of comments are debating me about the one month rule. I’m not posting to debate that rule and i’m not posting to state my mom cannot have her feelings about the rule. I am posting because I feel disrespected that she’s talking poorly about these decisions to my siblings. We don’t want visitors in the first month and that won’t change. We have dogs that bark when people come over, i’ll be half naked 24/7 learning how to breastfeed, husband and I have 1 month before he goes back to work, and it’s our first time meeting our baby too, we prefer to not have a revolving door for the 20+ family members that would come visit.

Apologies ahead of time for the long winded post.

My husband and I are looking for advice and wondering if we are making a bad decision not personally telling his sister when our baby is born.

My husband’s sister is about 2 years younger than me, I am 27, and husband is 30. We are expecting our first baby in about a month. Last year we experienced 2 miscarriages and this really tore us up, we were heartbroken, and one of the pregnancies was even twins which husband and I both really wanted. My husbands family was aware of these losses, and were less than supportive, but that’s a story for another time.

My husbands sister lives out of state, she has always been spoiled and the baby of the family. As this was our third pregnancy and the excitement of telling others had worn off, when we announced this pregnancy we told parents in person, and everyone else just got a text with the exciting news. Husband texted his sister and sent her the ultrasound picture and let her know we were happy to tell her we were expecting again! Instead of the expected happy response, she responded with “congrats, but i’m surprised you decided to tell me over text.”

I was annoyed, so was husband but we just chalked it up to her being a brat. We soon find out from husbands mom that his sister had called her bawling saying that she was upset with the way we told her about our pregnancy. I was even more annoyed. A few weeks later we found out the gender. We told husbands mom on the phone and instead of being happy, she said “congratulations! You should make sure to call your sister this time so she feels included.” I again, was frustrated that our happy news was being surrounded by my husbands sister emotions being more important, it’s REALLY put a sour taste in the exciting moment to tell his mom.

My husband said okay and ended the conversation, he said he was going to call his sister, I said it was feeding into her tantrum but do what he wants. He called, no answer. So he texted to tell her we were expecting a baby girl. She never responded, and next time we talked to husbands mom, she made sure to let us know that his sister was again, upset that we texted her to tell her because she had “barely missed the call and we didn’t give her a chance to call back”.

I was over my happy moments being spoiled, his sister never even reached out to tell me congratulations other than the “congrats” text she sent my husband. At 28 weeks, she finally reached out and asked how my pregnancy was going. I didn’t respond, she never apologized for her attitude and to this day still has not ever responded to my husband telling her the gender. My husband and I are a team, and I will not respond to her as if nothing happened when she can’t even respond to my husbands happy news.

We both have not spoken to her in 6 months. I am due with my baby in the next 4 weeks, and my husband said he has no desire to reach out when the baby is born. We both don’t want her to put a damper on that for us, but family keeps telling us that is petty and disrespectful. We plan to just text everyone when baby is here, and seeing as how she didn’t like being texted before, I can see her getting mad about that. I know MIL will give us flack, my parents have told me even me not responding to her asking about the pregnancy was rude and we should “think about our actions and how they will effect our relationship with her”.

Would we be awful to just let someone else, like MIL tell her when the baby is born so we can just avoid a poor reaction or her putting a sour mood on how we tell her?

To add extra info; Yes we have spoken with MIL and have set boundaries with her letting her know she is no longer to meddle in our relationship with husbands sister and her behaviors were disrespectful.

Edit: I see people commenting the same that sister is allowed to have feelings and we can’t control them. I agree. If I learned anything in therapy is was feelings are always reasonable and you cannot control your feelings, it’s actions that you need to control and that can be unreasonable. We’re not saying sister isn’t allowed to be upset, we’re saying the way that she showed that anger; not being able to be happy for us and instead making our happy news about her, is unacceptable in our eyes.

If she would have expressed her happiness and then another time came to us and said she was disappointed with how we told her and maturely expressed her feelings, this whole situation would be completely different. Instead she is brushing her poor actions under the rug and acting like nothing happened, all the while still not expressing happiness for her brother and his first child after loss.

So far we’ve had Amazon drivers hit a maple tree of ours and kill it, hit a sign in our yard, drive in our grass and rip it up, and get stuck and need to get towed and in the process leaving huge holes. We have a box at the end of the drive with a sign to put packages in the delivery box and we’ve put in delivery notes to use the box and it’s still ignored.

Today we had a driver again ignore the box and the instructions, and when they took off they drove off so fast they left black tire marks on our front concrete.

Seriously how can we get them to stop coming to the door and use the box/instructions? They damage stuff everytime, and yes we can complain to Amazon and get reimbursed but it would be nice to just not have to deal with it.

In our birthing class the instructor mentioned that if you don’t want to have an IV injection site placed you don’t have to, but on the off chance there’s an emergency, most opt to have one.

What was your experience?

Edit: Thank for everyone for the responses! After reading everyone’s experiences I marked to have an IV site placed just in case on my birth plan sheet:)

Since announcing to my family and friends, everyone has been ecstatic for husband and I about our pregnancy! In laws? Not so much. I’m 35 weeks along now.

My husbands sister didn’t even text me to acknowledge the pregnancy until 28 weeks (literally not even a congrats text), now suddenly she’s texted a few times to “check in” (I haven’t responded). My husbands mom initially called to congratulate me. She had a friend who was pregnant at the same time, same timeline as well. Any conversation I had with her went about like this;

“How’s your pregnancy?”

“It’s good! I’m feeling her move a lot, she’s very active! I’ve been feeling tired lately”

“My friend thinks she’s going to have a c-section.”

“Aw shoot that stinks, I’m sure that’s not what she wanted. Hopefully everything goes good for her. We’re taking a birthing class to learn about unmedicated births and it’s been super helpful!”

“Yeah my friend wanted to try unmedicated but now that’s out of the question. It’s due to her placenta placement” cue 5 minute tangent about her friends pregnancy and doesn’t ever bring up mine again.

She basically made it obvious she couldn’t care less about our pregnancy and only asked about mine to talk about her friends, never had any follow up questions.

Now suddenly my husbands mom will randomly call me and have an abundance of questions about the pregnancy and talk about how excited she is for us.

Why is this? The lack of care up until recently makes me feel like they ONLY care about the baby/they only act like they care now for access once she’s born.

Like a dummy I ordered the wrong size filter rollers for my Bubble Magus. I attempted to contact AquaCave to initiate a return/exchange for the correct size, didn’t hear anything so I emailed again, both times using the contact us form on the site. Still nothing! I tried to call but it just asked for an extension and then hung up.

Frustrated I accepted my loss and left a bad google review, and within an hour someone called me. They said they never got my emails, and then sent me an email to initiate the exchange. They did not provide a shipping label and when I brought it to the UPS store it was $30 to ship it back! That was more than half of the cost of the initial product, so I’ll just be trying to resell the rolls myself.

I understand I made the mistake of ordering the wrong product, but returning this item has been a huge pain and is costing me more than I thought! I don’t think i’ll be ordering from them again given the trouble to just exchange for the correct size rolls.

Is this an individual experience? Anyone else had issues with this seller?

We have an appointment with the dealership but not until August. My driver side back door won’t open from the inside or outside. Two mechanics now have told me they won’t touch it and it’s too complicated for them, making me a bit worried about the potential cost to have this fixed at the dealership.

It’s $150 just to diagnose at the dealership, anyone had this issue before and remember a rough estimate of how much they paid to have it fixed? We also have a baby due next month so just trying to get an idea of how much we’ll be in the hole with this car that we’ve already dumped money into.

It’s crazy how you can set a boundary and it’s still made into a melodramatic event that isn’t necessary.

Husband and I had to set a boundary that his mom could no longer talk to us about husbands sister. Sister would treat me and husband like shit, and when she would be treated poorly back by us, she would cry to MIL and MIL would try to be middle man and defend SIL to us, and try to guilt us. We went NC with SIL, and to avoid going no contact with MIL, husband told her that our relationship with is separate from ours with SIL, so we ask she no longer talks about or defends SIL to us, because it just causes problems.

Recently we had a dinner with MIL, husband and I, and husbands brother and his wife, Jen. Jen brought up husbands sister and just casually was talking about her relationship and was asking about how she’s doing and what not, no big deal at all, we didn’t think twice about it.

Today, Jen came over and she mentioned husbands sister casually in passing. She then mentioned that she got scolded after dinner before because MIL told her “you’re not suppose to talk about husbands sister in front of OP and her husband”. I told Jen that was really dramatic and she’s totally fine, that the rule was for MIL because she was causing issues.

I was just annoyed, like of course MIL had to make a bigger deal of something. It also irked me because if anything that would just cause more drama, as in Jen talking to husband sister and letting her know “oh yeah no one in the family can talk about you to OP and your brother”.

I tried googling and found different answers so figure I’d ask here.

I’m freezer prepping a bunch of casseroles, but since it’s just me and my husband I am cutting all the recipes in half and instead of putting them in 9x13 pans I am putting them in 8x8 pans. Most of the casseroles (including egg casserole, chicken and rice, tater tot casserole) are assemble without cooking and freezing, the one exception is lasagna which is cooked then frozen.

Typically, would you decrease the cook time if the recipe is cut in half? Or leave it?

*I know the rules state to be specific with the recipes so if more info is needed I can provide, just figured a general answer would be good enough for me.

Edit: Thank you everyone!

My mom recently has started to really let her insecurity show. Growing up I had an ED from my mom constantly talking about how fat she was, despite her being skinnier than me. She always made comments about how she had to skip dessert because “ate bad that day”. When I was at my skinniest I was constantly praised at how skinny I looked and how small my clothes were.

She’s now on weight loss drugs secretly and if anything is more insecure than she was before. She makes comments about other people’s looks; “wow did you see her crows feet?” “that’s some interesting hair”, etc., still talks bad about herself, and takes everything as a personal attack ie my dad made a comment about how he felt lazy because he didn’t hit his steps in the day, my mom stormed off and told my dad that she got less steps than him so that makes her feel like a loser.

My mom wants to watch my daughter at least once a week, as it’s her first grandchild and she’s been waiting forever for a grand child. I’m scared that her behaviors and words will rub off on my daughter as it did with me, and I’m not sure how to bring it up. My mom gets very defensive when confronted with these concerns, and my dad enables her. I want to protect my daughter but don’t want to jeopardize the relationship with my mom.

Any other moms had to deal with a similar situation?

Apologies if this is a bit ranty, but my sister and I have been struggling with my mom recently, and we just don’t really know how to navigate it. Let me preface by saying I love my mom, we have a great relationship, but her own insecurities really show in an ugly way, and recently it’s been magnified. My mom doesn’t think she’s a narcissist, but she shows many of the traits; taking everything as a personal attack, making others events about her, having little empathy, etc.

Growing up, me and my sister both had eating disorders due to my mom’s toxic body image and relationship with food, even though she was always perfectly average size. We were always bigger than her but she constantly made comments about how fat and disgusting she was. When I was a bit older, and worked on myself, I brought this up to her and she went ballistic, saying sorry she was a “terrible mom and a bitch” and saying my issues were not her fault, I never brought it up again.

My mom recently was put on weight loss drugs, and it’s obvious that she has lost weight, she looks frail and sickly if i’m being honest. She doesn’t know I know, my sister told me in secrecy. At a family get together recently everyone was saying how good she looks and would ask what she’s doing different, she would state she’s been working out and eating healthy. One family member even made a comment about how she wishes she could lose weight but feels like nothing works and my mom said “consistency!” I recently hung out with my mom, I’m 8 months pregnant, and she asked how much weight i’ve gained so far. I could tell she was trying to compare it to when she had kids.

Ever since starting these drugs, I notice how much MORE insecure she is and how much she projects that more than before. We went to a family friends visitation recently for a kid I grew up with. My mom has always been insecure about never having grandkids, but is excited i’m giving her the first grandchild. At the visitation, we talked to the kid who passed aways mom, she mentioned having 5 grandkids now, and how she’s sad she’ll never get any from her son who passed away. On the car ride home she made a comment about how wrinkly the mom was, and then said she just “felt the need to bring up she had 5 grandkids”. HER SON JUST DIED.

With her basically starving all the time, she’s irritable as hell. My mom and dad were on the couch the other day and my dad looked at his watch to see his steps. He made a comment about how he was lazy today and didn’t get a lot of steps in. My mom stormed off into the bedroom and slammed the door without saying a word. My dad asked what was up, and she said him saying he’s a loser for not getting a lot of steps insinuated that she is a loser since she got less steps than him. This has always been a thing my mom has done; thrown tantrums when someone says something even slightly that she could take wrong.

Honestly, my daughter is due next month, and I’m terrified of the things my mom will say and do around her. But if I bring it up, she immediately goes into defensive mode and doesn’t see her wrong. I’m scared of my child hearing the negative body talk, negative food talk, seeing how my mom throws tantrums around my dad. I know I don’t have to worry about it for a bit, but I feel ever since she started losing weight on the drugs, she is more insecure and toxic than ever.