It’s great when grandparents want to be involved in their grandchildren’s lives as firstly, the children are surrounded by family, and also, the parents feel like they don’t have to do this alone as raising a person might get overwhelming.
While they are a big help, such big involvement in their grandchildren’s lives may lead to conflicts. This young couple has already gotten into a fight with the man’s mother and their child isn’t even born yet. They were wary of telling her the name of their unborn daughter because they didn’t want their grandmother announcing it on Facebook, which she did anyway after promising to keep her silence.
More info: Reddit
Future mom doesn’t want her MIL to know her child’s name before she’s born, afraid of it getting announced online
Image credits: Emily Burnett (not the actual image)
The OP is a 23-year-old woman who is 8 months pregnant with her 25-year-old fiancé. They are expecting a baby girl and are excited to get to meet their first child. All of their relatives are also very happy about the new addition to the family and have helped the future parents to prepare for what is coming.
The person who is most overjoyed is the fiancé’s mom, even though she didn’t fully accept the OP as part of the family. She went as far as to say that her son could have done better, but now he has fallen into the ‘trap’ of having the woman’s baby.
Image credits: u/loawren
Such words caused a lot of pain in the OP’s heart, but thankfully, her fiancé was on her side and tried to talk to his mother about it. Unfortunately, the future grandmother isn't willing to apologize. The only thing left for the OP was to ignore it, so she did.
Another annoying habit the future mother-in-law has is to post on Facebook frequently. Maybe it wouldn’t be a problem for most, and they would deal with the embarrassment if they felt any, but the OP gave an example of a post that really bothered her.
Turns out, as soon as the future MIL found out about her son’s and the OP’s engagement, she went straight to Facebook to tell the world about it before the couple could announce it themselves.
It happened once before when the MIL made a post on Facebook congratulating her and her fiancé on their engagement before they revealed it themselves
Image credits: u/loawren
If something important happens in your life, you would like for people to learn about it from you first. The joy of sharing is not the same when someone else has already told everyone about it and there is no longer an element of surprise.
That incident taught the couple a lesson of not telling everything to the man’s mom because she might blurt it out on social media. But the son slipped and accidentally revealed to his mom that the parents had settled on a name for the baby.
Image credits: www.bluewaikiki.com (not the actual image)
However, the MIL was very insistent and was starting to guilt trip her son, saying he didn’t love her
Image credits: u/loawren
The future parents knew they couldn’t tell her this information, but it was hard because she was demanding to know. The couple was convinced that as soon as they told her, it would be on the internet, so they weren’t comfortable revealing it just yet when the girl wasn’t born yet.
Excluding the grandmother from such information obviously offended her, so she started guilt tripping her son by saying he doesn’t love her and that she was afraid of not being allowed to see her granddaughter after her birth.
The OP pointed out that neither she nor her fiancé ever suggested that would be the case. That is when the woman had the idea to tell the grandmother a fake name just to see if she would post it on Facebook after being asked not to.
Sure enough, 5 minutes later, the OP checked Facebook and the future MIL had announced to the world that she would be a granny to Charlotte. The fiancé was furious, but his mom’s response was that she couldn’t contain her joy and had to share.
Image credits: u/loawren
Bored Panda got in touch with the mom and she told us that she and her fiancé wasn't surprised at all to see the post online, but it made the man mad "that his own mother could jeopardise her grandchild’s safety by posting about it online. What if she posts more information about baby girl when she is born to FB that nobody other than close family should know?"
The rest of the family were confused and started messaging the future parents asking if Charlotte was really the name they chose as there were no announcement from their side, but telling the grandmother a fake name was somewhat of a test that she failed.
The son informed his mom that Charlotte wasn’t the actual name and she will be learning how they named their daughter along with the rest when the baby is born. After this phone conversation, the grandmother was trying to get in contact with the parents, leaving tons of messages in which she was calling the OP a jerk for lying.
So the future mom told the MIL a fake name to make her calm down, but after 5 minutes, the news was on her Facebook
Image credits: leakhena khat (not the actual image)
However, since posting the story the FMIL has changed her behavior and became less demanding. The family had a long chat over the dinner table and the future mom is hopeful their relationship will improve, "We set boundaries and I spoke to her about how her treatment towards me had upset me a lot, I said that I was willing to start on a clean slate with her and she agreed. So let’s see where that goes and what happens when baby girl is born!"
The OP also said that after this chat she is willing to give her future MIL the chance to prove she can be a good grandmother because after all, "she has brought up [her] fiancé and his brother to be great people and [she's] pretty sure she wouldn’t try and do anything to physically hurt her grandchild."
The future parents were quite mad at her as she was specifically asked to not share the name, and in turn, the grandmother was angry for being lied to
Image credits: u/loawren
People in the comments didn’t think the OP was in the wrong because in the end, the future MIL did exactly what she promised not to do. Redditors were suggesting that the MIL wasn’t to be trusted and warned the future mom that it may just get worse after the baby’s birth.
The mom told us that she was really overwhelmed with all the support and kind words and is planning on posting an update when the girl is born so the story is not yet over.
Do you think the OP could have handled the situation differently? Do you think the grandmother has the right to know the baby’s name and share it on social media? Let us know in the comments!
People in the comments loved OP’s plan of checking if the MIL was trustworthy and believed she was setting healthy boundaries
