Let me first say that I love my in-laws. They’re wonderful and so sweet to me, and do so much for my husband and I. My MIL is becoming a problem and a situation though and I’m not sure how to delicately handle things. I first noticed the behavior with my wedding. My husband and I paid for our own wedding, but she would demand certain people be invited (like friends my husband hasn’t seen since he was five and obviously I had never met, a co-worker of hers, etc.) even though she knew we wanted to keep our guest list under a certain number. To avoid a fight we compromised and allowed a few of them. Then when she bought her dress she brought it over to ask my opinion on it (I said I wanted a certain color for her and my mom, but the style was up to them). She bought a different color than I asked but, yet again, to avoid the argument I said it was fine. Her remark? “Are you sure? I don’t want to overshadow you and your dress.” .......😐 I wasn’t sure how to take that.

Skip to now. My husband and I are pregnant with our first baby. We haven’t publicized it and only wanted to tell close family and a few friends. Now there are a couple of things that I feel are necessary to know: this is my in-laws first grand baby and my parents 7th, and my in-laws neighbors and close friends know my dad and see him semi-regularly. Because of proximity it turned out that we told my in-laws first. We wanted to tell our parents in person and knew it would be at least a week before we told mine. When we told my husbands parents we explicitly said to not tell anyone because I didn’t want word getting back to my dad before I had the chance to tell him. It was a huge deal to me. Two days later my in-laws come over and the first words out of my MIL’s mouth were that she told another neighbor because she just couldn’t keep it to herself. I was so hurt and angry because we trusted she would honor our request. Then she said she plans on retiring in September so she can babysit our baby. My husband I had already discussed that and have decided we don’t want any of the grandparents to be the babysitter because we feel those roles should be separate. When told that wasn’t necessary she got very offended. A few days after that she had my FIL ask my husband and I to take a picture holding a sign saying we were expecting because SHE wanted to do her own pregnancy announcements for their neighbors and friends. Mind you we haven’t told my parents yet. I said absolutely not. I understand that it is their first grandkid and they are excited, but I’m feeling robbed of our own excitement of telling people now. Once my parents were told we asked that if they did tell their neighbor that it is kept top secret. We haven’t even had our first appointment yet and won’t until 11 weeks and we want to make sure everything is ok before we make our announcement. She snapped back “well then I may as well wait. Why not? I’ve already had to this long.”

I’m ready to pull my hair out and am not enjoying what should be such an exciting time with them because of it. How do I tactfully explain this stuff to her without her feeling attacked? It’s hard because she takes such offense to everything or doesn’t get a clue. Anyone else had to deal with this?