Your mother-in-law can do things that drive you nuts, but we're sure it's nothing compared to what one mom has had to deal with after she was lied to by both her MIL and husband. In an advice column online, the mom vented that her ruthless MIL convinced her husband to secretly change her baby's name while she was asleep recovering from her C-section. Online, people were completely furious at both her MIL and her husband, but no one more so than the advice columnist, who urged the mom to consider this a "fireable offense" against her husband.
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The new mom explained that it was only when she went to put away legal documents for her newborn that she realized what had actually gone down at the hospital.
Writing in to Slate's advice column Care and Feeding, the anonymous mom shared that it took some time, but she finally caught on that legally her son's middle name was "Finlay," not "Finley" like she and her husband had planned before his birth.
"His mother even sent a Christmas gift to middle name 'Finlay,' and when I made a comment to my husband he didn’t even have the decency to tell me!" she wrote. "He just let me keep believing for two months that our son’s middle name was spelled Finley when it legally isn’t!"
It took two months for the truth to come out when she saw his social security card and birth certificate. But now she's even more torn because she also found out that her MIL was working behind the scenes to convince her husband to spell the name with an A instead of an E.
Her husband said that his mother had 'guilt-tripped' him into making the switch while his wife was sleeping.
The MIL even went as far as to try and convince her son to ditch the first name they picked and go with something the mom "very much hated."
"[She was] doing this while I was asleep after my emergency C-section. Keep in mind she lives a few states away, so this was all over the phone," the new mom wrote.
Although the dad didn't fall that far into grandma's scheme, he did agree to compromise and change Finley's spelling. Based on his mom's insistence that his wife would “get mad, but get over it,” the husband agreed to tweak his son's middle name to make his mother happy. "She thinks that 'Finlay' is more masculine than 'Finley,'" mom explained.
But boy did the dad underestimate just how mad his wife would get!
"She blatantly disrespected me and the name my husband and I had chosen for our son," the mom wrote. "I really think she put his whole name in his Christmas gift as a jab to me, knowing I would see it. She manipulated my husband into thinking it was all right to lie to me about something as serious as the spelling of our son’s name."
The mom knows her husband is to blame for all of this, but now she's looking for the right way to tell her MIL that she absolutely crossed a line.
The mom said she and her husband are going to work through this issue, but she doesn't want to let her mother-in-law off so easily. She wanted to know what the right way was to call her MIL out on what she did — and don't worry, the mom wrote that she has "no desire to have any sort of relationship with her moving forward, so I am not worried about playing nice."
People were flabbergasted that both mom and son had pulled off the plot behind this recovering new mom's back.
One person was straight-up confused why this MIL would put herself on the outs with her daughter-in-law.
And another person commented that the mom needs to change her son's name and forget any future trips to grandma's.
But a third person wrote that this 100% isn't her MIL's fault — it was her husband's.
And some people thought the mom was overreacting. It's just one tiny letter, they reasoned.
Some couldn't believe "the level of outrage over the middle name."
They reasoned that sure it was "lame" for her husband and his mom to lie to her, but that's no reason to get divorced … right? Mother-in-law issues are a relatively common thing for married couples, and this definitely falls into that category.
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And another person wrote that perhaps this new mom is just a bit of a drama queen ....
But it was the advice columnist who was the most upset about the lie.
He wrote that he wouldn't even approach the MIL 'because I'd be afraid an actual fist fight would break out.'
Columnist Carvell Wallace had some specific words for the letter writer's husband, too. "What in the entire f*ck is up with your husband?" he wrote. "He’s got to decide if you are his co-parent or if his mother is."
Wallace urged the mom to consider changing her son's name behind her back a "fireable offense. He owes you a very significant and full-throated apology," he wrote, "and if he doesn’t see why then it’s hard for me to imagine that you are in a relationship with a trustworthy partner."
He ultimately advised the mom to be direct with her MIL and allow herself to be as mad about this as she needs to be.
Then just casually let it go, he continued. "I would drop the subject and let this woman spend the rest of her days anticipating a retaliation that may or may not be soon coming."
"I’m mad just reading about this. You and your kid deserve so much better," he wrote. "You need to be as angry about this for as long as you feel like being angry about it."
