Dealing with a sister-in-law from hell

Hi everyone,

I’ve been reading everyone’s stories for a while and have commented a couple of times, but now I’m ready to share mine.

Me and my husband have been together since uni (I’m now 29 and he is 30) and we’re expecting our first baby. This baby was a bit of a surprise pregnancy – we weren’t trying to conceive but we probably weren’t being as careful as we could’ve been about protection, as I recently had my coil out after 5 years and I struggled to get back into the routine of taking pills (also I hate the way they made me feel!!)

Anyway, we’re now 15 weeks pregnant and absolutely over the moon! We’ve been looking at names, buying gender-neutral baby clothes (for now!) and my husband has been so supportive. I had pretty bad morning sickness in my first trimester and he’s been heading out to the shops to grab me anything I needed and helped out more at home with chores which has been amazing.

The problem is with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law. My mother-in-law is generally lovely but sometimes she has outbursts and can be really cold and off with me and my husband for no reason. She definitely loves to help out and make herself useful, and face-to-face she’s always amazing, but over texts and Facebook messenger she can be really unkind and say super hurtful things. We’re currently disagreeing about middle names, even though we don’t know if we’re having a girl or a boy yet!

My husband’s mum and dad have been divorced for about 5 years now, and since the divorce, her behaviour towards me and other members of the family has gotten worse. However, my sister-in-law is pure evil and really seems to have malicious intentions.

SIL is 6 years younger than my husband, so younger than him and me, and she’s always been the ‘princess’ and ‘baby’ of the family. She’s not yet in a stable relationship and doesn’t have kids, and has made a lot of comments about not wanting to come to the baby shower, not ever wanting to help or babysitting and has literally sulked about ‘not being the princess anymore’. I honestly don’t know where this has come from though, as we usually get on really well apart from the odd snide remark, and nothing specific has happened between us, as far as I know, to make her act this way towards us!

I really don’t know how to deal with this as previously I’ve ignored her comments towards me as it seems to be in her character to be a bit mean, but I’m getting very defensive of the constant comments around my baby and I’m starting to get really cross and upset about it. I’ve chatted about it to my husband who says just to ignore her comments, but she seems determined to make my pregnancy miserable and due to raging pregnancy hormones, I don’t know how to approach it with her without crying or making an idiot of myself! I also don’t want to cause problems with me and her parents (and my husband’s parents!) by falling out with her.

If anyone else on here has experiences of dealing with dreadful in-laws during pregnancy, I desperately need some advice!!

2 thoughts on “Dealing with a sister-in-law from hell

  1. Anonymous says:

    Hi
    I know this exact feeling, when I fell pregnant with my first son it was a complete shock but we was over the moon but my hubbys family just thought they owned us! They always made sly comments when we talked about names as they really wanted us to have my husbands dads name (John). When my son was born she started showing my parents how to hold the baby properly and really be little them, well this is when I snapped I had enough I basically told her she needs to back off and how dare she tell my parents how to handle their grandchild. She didn’t talk to me for about 5 days but after that she came back and apologized she made me feel that way. My son is now 5 and she will leave me to do everything my way and just helps out when I need her so we have a great relationship with each other now. I believe you should speak up as maybe she doesn’t realize she is doing this.

  2. Anonymous says:

    honestly, the baby isnt the problem half the time, its the in laws! my problem is with my immediate family, my mother and her friends constantly telling me that my baby is ready for solids when she is just 4 months old. my own mother actually said that my baby is starving which really hurt when i breastfeed on demand! i would know if my baby was starving and she certainly isnt!!!

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