In the hours after giving birth, you are tired, sore, and desperate for a full night's sleep. The last thing you need is someone invading your space (especially after a whole team of doctors and nurses were all up in your lady business). Unfortunately for one woman, her mother-in-law didn't seem to get that memo. Not only did she butt in while the daughter-in-law was trying to nurse for the first time, but she also went so far as to "manhandle" her nipples in the process.
The poster first explained that her pregnancy hadn't been easy -- but her MIL made things SO. MUCH. WORSE.
She experienced hemorrhaging, preeclampsia, and even severe prenatal depression. So the last person she wanted to see after her emergency C-section was her MIL.
"It was all very traumatic and 5 months [postpartum] I am still not ok," she says.
"Four hours after my Dear Daughter was born, I was doing skin to skin," she continued. "I was exhausted, in pain, and overwhelmed. [MIL] arrived at the hospital and tried to take DD off me four times, telling me i would spoil her by holding her too much." But then things went from bad, to really, freakin' bad.
"As I tried to breastfeed she marched over, taking full advantage of my drugged up state, got my nipple between her fingers and started ramming it in my daughter's mouth," the mom wrote. "I was shocked and froze, she kept squeezing them and forcing it into her mouth."
The next day, the poster's MIL returned while she was alone in the hospital and began to criticize the mama who — oh, yeah — was still recovering from major surgery. "She handed me a box of chocolates and said they were for me to give to guests," she continued. "She criticized the room for being too hot then too cold, the way my DD was dressed and positioned, the fact I wanted to shower, me holding DD, me supplementing with formula, and everything."
For the next three hours, mom was forced to hang out with the pesky parent. "Finally she announced her departure and said she would be bringing a little girl she babysits for to visit tomorrow. I said no, my partner rang her and said no, we thought that would be the end of it," she added.
But of course, MIL wouldn't take no for an answer. After another sleepless night trying to get her baby to nurse and sleep, around 10 a.m. both mom and baby were finally knocked out. "I was loudly woken by the door opening and a child I didn't know shouting and throwing seven balloons at me and the bassinet," she recalled.
"I was shocked and DD started crying. It was MIL and the child we asked her not to bring," she continued. "They rushed to grab DD and i said no, at which point MIL got angry and left. She rang DH shouting and saying i was 'not hospitable.'"
Not. Hospitable. Oy.
"Had I not been in pain, traumatized, exhausted and vulnerable I would have handled it very differently but it was hard to react at the time," she wrote.
The comments section of the mom's post quickly got heated.
"I'm so (expletive) angry on your behalf. What a horrible person," one commenter wrote.
"Did you ask the hospital to deny her entrance? This is absurd," a second person added. "The nerve of this woman!!! I hope you and your partner went No Contant with her, or at least Very Little Contact . I'm cheering for you. You'll definitely get better."
"This is why such creatures are forbidden access in the hospital. How appalling," a third person agreed.
But oddly enough, the mom wasn't alone when it came to handsy in-laws.
"My JNMom did that to me too," one person shared. "I had a crash c-section and was drugged up and incredibly traumatized – my son and I both almost died during the delivery. She pulled that (expletive) in the hospital when I was too bleary to stop it."
But unfortunately that isn't the worst thing that happened to this commenter. "When we got home she went full [expletive] and I caught her trying to 'breastfeed' my son. I snapped 'Get your goddamn tit out of my kid's mouth!' and she frantically tried to explain she was just checking to see if he could latch."
And someone else also knew of a MIL who had zero boundaries. "I have a friend who this same thing happened to," the commenter wrote. "Her brother caught her MIL trying to breast feed the baby with a supplement nursing kit from Amazon."
As for the poster, she later shared that "spoiler — 5 months later and I'm no contact."
