My first Mother’s Day turned into a family disaster and I don’t know how to recover
Hey guys I (24F) honestly don’t even know where to begin because my entire family exploded this weekend and I feel emotionally destroyed.
My husband (27M) and I have a 3 month old baby. My mom came from NY to live with us in FL after he was born and has been staying with us for almost 4 months helping with the baby while we both work full time. At first it was helpful and we appreciated it so much, but over time there have been increasing issues with boundaries. She constantly criticizes our parenting, fights us on things like kissing the baby, sleeping with him, etc. My husband especially has been getting frustrated because he feels like she doesn’t respect us as parents.
Things came to a head on Mother’s Day. We got into a huge argument because she was criticizing me again and yesterday I basically told her we think it’s time for her to go back home. Part of the reason is because my husband’s mom recently lost her job and offered to help with childcare, so we felt like this was the right time for us to transition into having our own space again as a family.
My mom took this as us “using” her until my MIL became available. She started crying and saying we were replacing her. Then things escalated badly last night. She told us that if anything ever happened to the baby she would call the cops on us, which made my husband snap because we work extremely hard for our son and love him more than anything. He yelled asking what exactly he was “doing wrong” with his son and said she ruined my first Mother’s Day.
My dad and brother overheard this over the phone and now my brother is furious at my husband and saying he wants to “put him in his place.” My mom is now saying she bragged for years about having a good son in law and now she’s seeing his “true colors.” Meanwhile my husband feels completely attacked and disrespected in his own home.
At one point my husband took the baby to his mom’s house for the night just to get space and calm things down, and that caused ANOTHER argument because my mom thought we were taking the baby away from her.
Now I feel stuck in the middle of everyone. I love my mom. I love my husband. I understand why both are hurt. But I also feel like the living situation became emotionally unsustainable and everything completely exploded.
To make matters worse, my grandmother was just diagnosed with breast cancer, so emotions in my family are already extremely high.
I barely slept, I’m having horrible anxiety, and I still have to function and go to work. I genuinely don’t know how to repair any of this or move forward without destroying either my marriage or my relationship with my family.
UPDATE: My mom apologized but it sounded very desperate to have my son back in her care. She definitely has some sort of emotional attachment to my son and he is staying at his in laws for tonight. She said the flights are too expensive to book right now because Memorial Day is coming up but I did tell her that she had to leave when she can afford the tickets and she framed out as me kicking her out..I also DID defend my husband to my mom and my dad is the only one on my side here.