How much do you really want your mother-in-law knowing about your family? I'd be willing to bet not as much as one woman, who lost all trust in her husband after she found out he went behind her back and gave his mother the passwords to their baby monitors.
The parents have a 10-month-old baby and just hired a nanny.
Ever since they hired their new child care worker, the mother-in-law has been asking for access to their nanny cams, the mom wrote in a post on Reddit that has since been deleted.
The MIL wanted the passwords "so she could login and monitor what's going on during the day but I had told my husband I found it odd and intrusive," the mom admitted. "I mean I didn't even want my own mom to have it as you can look at all past recordings on it even when I'm home with the baby myself from work."
The mom thought she put the issue to rest when she told her MIL no.
She recently discovered, however, that she'd been deceived.
"I found out today through an inadvertent message she sent to a group chat that was meant for him that she has been monitoring everything from when he comes back from a walk to when he sleeps to when he eats," she wrote.
"The nanny brought him back from his walk ten minutes ago and now he is sleeping," her MIL's text read.
This isn't the first time that her mother-in-law has done something sneaky.
Her husband's mother has a long history of overstepping boundaries.
"To make a long story short she is from overseas and lonely and widowed," the mom wrote. "We had her here from when baby was three to six months when I went back to work after maternity leave to watch him."
Her MIL kept pushing to stay "for at least a year to look after him and 'help' cook and clean and do all the things I apparently wasn't doing properly and save us money on childcare." But the mom told her no because she'd rather have their baby in day care or with a nanny "and she became very emotional and threw a hissy fit until the day she left."
Now the mom isn't just mad at her MIL -- she's furious at her husband too.
"How much would it bother you if your husband behind your back gave his mother access to login and watch the nanny cameras any time?" she asked.
"I feel like my trust and privacy is completely violated and I don't know where to go from here," she explained.
This was beyond inappropriate behavior from both her MIL and her husband, people in the comments agreed.
"This by far is one of the worst incidents of boundary crossing from a significant other that I have seen, and trust me I've got my own boundary crossing SO," one person chimed in. "This needs to be addressed ASAP. The thought of her watching you whenever she wants is so unnerving."
"Change the password and don't give her the new one," a second person agreed.
A third person put it this way:
"This is beyond crossing the line. He is allowing his mother to surveil you in your own home. Does he honestly think that she just stops watching when the nanny goes home? That she doesn't spend her entire evening keeping tabs on everything you do or don't do? That she isn't possibly taking notes in order to use them against you? Counting how many glasses of wine you have, judging what you feed baby, timing your trips to the bathroom? Change the password immediately. H–l, if you trust your nanny at all, I would rather no nanny cam than one that can be used against me."
These are hard conversations to have with a partner, but the mom needs to address her concerns with her husband first and foremost. And if he can't put his foot down and draw firmer boundaries with his mother, then this mom needs to do what she has to to keep her baby safe.
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