TLDR is my mother in law has started making hints and comments about us having grandchildren and I feel it could be way worse but it bothers me so much. I am 24 F and my husband is 25 M. Please please give me tips on how to deal with it.
My mother in law and I have had problems mostly a since her son and I got engaged. She was very angry when he moved out of her home to move in with me before the wedding because she is religious and was extremely controlling during the wedding planning process. It caused me constant anxiety and stress to he point where I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning. Fast forward to a year and a half after the wedding, I have managed to make peace with her. I distanced myself from them a bit but we are now back to regular-ish visits. She was treating us pretty nicely because she is mad at her other child (one of her toxic behaviours) and I feel like I had managed to move on in a way from the way she had been treating us.
Now, she has started making comments to us about grandchildren. It’s not outright asking us about having them but it’s comments like “when you have grandchildren I’ll teach them how to read”, “when you have grandchildren I will do this…” it really really bothers me because we aren’t even sure we want to have children and I hate that she is just assuming and it feels selfish. I also have endometriosis and complications from that. I know if we were to try to get pregnant, it may not be an easy road and that’s also something I have had to come to terms with. She isn’t aware of this because she is really toxic and intense about health stuff and I don’t want to have to talk to her about it. I also feel like we are so young and I want to enjoy my life before thinking about. ALSO it is 2026, I thought we all agreed that having children is something you don’t bring up to people.
She makes comments to my husband more when they are alone apparently and he tells her “we aren’t even thinking about that yet” and tries to deflect. He does set boundaries with her for me. Like during wedding planning, once it got really bad, he told her not to bring it up with me and it worked for a while. But she is extremely persistent and does not like to be told no.
When she makes these comments it will literally bother me for weeks and my heart will race when I think about it. I can’t deal. Please help.