Monster in law or not - RANT!!!
When my husband and I 32(F) were first house hunting before living together, my MIL self-entitled on an opinion in our financial matters, telling us on what budget we should stick to for our house, and even commenting that our house was hefty-priced and advised aginst buying it.
Whenever me and husband had any conflicts on the financing of the home over video calls (e.g. purchase of household items), MIL would input her opinions to husband that I was a reckless spender and even shared these opinions with her boyfriend (part time handy-man)privately. I later found out about this one day when husband called the boyfriend to come over our home to fix our television. Husband and I had a huge quarrel over this because he kept quiet about it and continued to defend MIL and even told me that he felt the same way. Mind you, I was the sole breadwinner and all the purchases were made with money I earned.
Throughout, husband had no savings and and was even very poor with managing his finances. He did not even have the means to support me financially during my pregnancy later and MIL was fully aware of it. MIL, whom herself was financially unstable due to debts incurred did not seem to have any self awareness or even any humility to speak of.
When I was 3 months pregnant, MIL volunteered to help out with the confinement, stating her reasons for it - cost saving on our behalf, not needing to entrust our baby to a stranger. At first, I had reservations on this arrangement, thinking back on all the unpleasant exchanges previously, that would mean living with her together in my home. However, I finally accepted on my brother's advice, which he reasoned that i should respect MIL intentions to help take care of her very first grandchild, which of old traditions was an important event.
Months down the road during the pregnancy, I felt that it would be good to hire a helper, as it wasn't a long term solution for MIL to have to take care of my baby since she was working full time, so did both husband and me as well. On the other hand, the helper could also aid MIL during the confinement period. Apparently, MIL was not too pleased with this from various interactions with her. More about that later.
I was then heavily pregnant and it was getting more difficult to move around. The closest I could get was joining hubs for running of errands and meals. When we finally paid a short visit to my in-laws home before giving birth, MIL lamented on why it took so long for us to finally pay them a visit. I was puzzled with her question, did you not go through pregnancy before? Do you not know the difficulties of being pregnant, especially so when you are at the later stage?
Unfazed by her remark, I politely told her that my helper was coming in soon, and asked if she could come to live in my home a month early from my EDD, so she could also help out with training of my helper on the household chores. She agreed and told us that it was not an issue at all, since she has informed her employer beforehand of this plan.
2 weeks before my EDD, hubs gave MIL a call and asked if she needed help with the necessary (groceries shopping, packing of her necessities for the live-in). MIL told us that she felt it was pointless to come in this early, since there was nothing much to do and the baby was not out. Then husband told her that I was already heavily pregnant and it could be likely for the baby to be out anytime soon and it could be earlier than the EDD. Moreover, we were nearing the Chinese Ghost Festival, which it was traditional belief to not do any moving of belongings etc. She told my husband that she was Christian and these Chinese beliefs are not of her religion. Funny thing was, she believed in Chinese Fengshui which was widely practiced by most who are non Christians. When my baby was finally born, she even told me that she went to the temple to
pray for the infant to be safe and sound. Contradicting much?
Subsequently, after a long deliberation, she agreed to come by a week before the EDD.
After a 17 hour long labour on the EDD, it was to our great surprise that MIL went out to meet her boyfriend without informing anyone. The helper was left alone at home, despite us conveying to MIL, that it was only the helper's first month with us and the trust was not built yet for the helper to be even left alone, unsupervised. Husband only found out about this when he went home to collect some of my belongings for the hospital stay, and even had to call MIL up to find out about her whereabouts.
Throughout the entire confinement which lasted about 1&1/2 months, MIL often refused to entrust our baby to the helper or even to train the helper with the baby duties despite me and hubs telling her that we needed the helper with the baby sitting duties once we return to work. She even sat us down to tell us that a stranger can never be trusted. Obviously, both hubs and I knew that. We even told her that we would have the helper and our baby placed at my mum's place (mum is a housewife) on days which both of us had to work, and night time baby sitting was supervised with a baby camera. But MIL was very stubborn and all seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Overall, the confinement period did not strengthen the relationship between myself and MIL and I really wished that I didn't agree at the very start when she initiated to do the confinement. It nearly cost the relationship between me and hubs, who constantly defended his mum when I voiced out my unhappiness on how things were done at times. Even though the entire arrangement was made in the name of saving cost for hiring a confinement lady, we didn't save much because both of us decided to remunerate MIL with what would have been paid to a CL, given her financial circumstances.