'AITA for not letting my in-laws help with the baby after I injured myself?' UPDATED
"AITA for not letting my in-laws help me with the baby after their reaction to me being injured?"
throwRAflorafauna
I (21f) have a 7 month old son with my boyfriend. My family lives abroad and are coming over to stay and help at Christmas time. For now, my MIL and FIL (60s-Debra and Bob) are helping me with household stuff and the baby. So far, we haven’t had any real issues and they’ve been a massive help.
About 3 weeks ago, I fell down the stairs. I wasn’t holding the baby and the baby was safe. However, instead of helping me, Debra and Bob both jumped to comfort the baby who was crying… and left me at the bottom of the stairs.
My legs were fine, but I was wobbly because of shock and asked one of them to help me up. After nearly 10 whole minutes of being ignored, I managed to stand up on my own and hobble through to the living room. I sit down and Debra says, ‘What happened to you? Are you ok?’.
I’ll admit, I saw red. I just said 'I fell down the stairs, didn't you hear me calling you for help?' Debra's eyes widened and she said she was too busy fussing over the baby.
After an hour, my arm was swelling up and I was taken to hospital. Luckily, it was nothing serious and recovery time would be quick. After my boyfriend got home and his parents left, I told him I no longer want their help after today's events.
I can manage on my own, even though it'll be hard. He was taken aback and said they've done a lot for us. I said I appreciated it all but they ignored me crying and calling them for 10 minutes after I fell down the stairs. They don't care about me, only the baby and I was embarassed I didn't see it sooner.
He called his parents to let them know we won't need their help anymore and his dad said 'is it about today? we really didn't hear her.' My boyfriend just told them they're invited to sunday roast this week and that's all. I could tell he was not happy about my decision but he said he went along with it because I'm the mother.
Fast forward to Sunday and my BIL and SIL are guests as well. SIL has a 3 year old and is totally on my side but BIL is not. He told me to 'be grateful' for his parent's support as they're significantly more well-off than my parents are and paid for many newborn/infant expenses and plan to pay for many more as the baby grows.
Since then, Debra keeps calling asking if we need any help and says she feels awful not seeing 'the both of you' and that she misses the baby. AITA for not wanting them helping me in my day to day life?
EDIT: Was the baby crying loudly enough that there is a possibility they didn’t hear you? No way. The baby stopped crying after 10 seconds and the stairs are like 2 meters from the living room.
There is absolutely zero way they couldn't have heard me 1- scream as I fell 2- the general noise of someone falling, including books falling and wall plates breaking 3- me crying and shouting for help I fell at the top of the stairs and fell all the way down.
This wasn't a missed step and a bum shuffle down that hurt my pelvic bone. I fully fell down the stairs and cracked the banister. No way they didn't hear. The baby also started crying AFTER the initial smack of me hitting the ground.
Here were the top rated comments from readers after the OP's first post:
mfruitfly
NTA. You are the only one who knows the layout of your home, the timeframe of the crying and the noise, and how everyone reacted. I can't imagine that upon hearing thumps and screams, they would rush to a baby- who is fine- and for the next 10 minutes they didn't bother to call out for you or to investigate where the noise came from.
While they may not have intentionally ignored you, they displayed a lack of care for you, and weirdly for themselves. If I hear a big noise, I'm looking around, and I'm certainly yelling out for anyone else who would be home, both to make sure they are okay but also to make sure we aren't being robbed or something is wrong.
My dad drops a pot on the floor once a day and we still all yell "YOU OKAY" even though we know exactly what the man did. And you know what, it doesn't matter if they want to help, or if they have given you a ton of money and stuff.
You aren't going no contact with them and you aren't keeping them from the baby, you just don't want them around every day. Your feelings are hurt and you don't want to rely on them in the same way. I might agree with your BIL if you were fully not speaking to them, but you are just scaling back their involvement, and that's fine.
The OP responded here:
throwRAflorafauna
Thank you. You worded my feelings on the situation perfectly. Maybe it's my mum senses, but I heard my boyfriend drop a shoe once and I called up to him to make sure he was ok. I genuinely cannot fathom how you don't hear all the noise-- or even check where the mother is.
_A-Q
NTA-They heard you and are gaslighting you like a mf. Thank your lucky stars you’re not married to this guy, because his family calls the shots. BIL’s comment about them being better off is worrying and I’d be wary of financial abuse.
I hope you have your own job and finances because anyone that holds money over your head can’t be a good thing .I’m glad you have family coming to support you soon.
Normal_Fishing9824
It sounds dramatic but is it possible they wouldn't have been upset if the OP never got up again. It doesn't take two people to look after a fussing baby. They could have easily checked and their is no way they didn't hear.
It's only once the OP recovers enough to be in the same room do they respond to her at all. Were they hoping if they left the OP long enough it'd be too late. ? "A terrible fall"... "we did everything we could"... "we can take care of the baby for you now". NTA and take care of yourself.
KeaAware
I wondered this. A fall like OP had is easily enough to kill someone or do life changing injuries. It's so serious I just can’t understand why they didn't care.
Two months later, the OP returned with an update.
"UPDATE [AITA for not letting my MIL and FIL help me with the baby after their reaction to me being injured?]. I am the OP."
throwRAflorafauna
A few more weeks went by of selective visits from my in-laws. I read a lot of comments speculating on why they didn’t hear me/check on me but ultimately, I needed my space. Regardless of the reason, they didn’t seem like responsible babysitters.
I want to make it clear that I NEVER intended to go no contact or even low contact. I just didn't feel comfortable with them helping out. That seemed to be a point of contention in my original.
They became increasingly more ‘worried’ about the baby and I turned to my SIL (Fiona-30s) for advice as I felt she was the only one who understood me. She told me that when her daughter was an infant, the in-laws were pretty hands on, too but only with the baby. It was like she wasn’t there.
She told me a story where she straight up went and stood in the garden for 30 minutes and they didn’t notice she had gone. They were only there for the baby. She said that we were ‘luckier’ because they paid for some post-partum stuff for me but not for Fiona.
It was just stuff for the baby, which was accepted and she was grateful but she was completely ignored by them. She said by her daughter’s 3rd birthday, they started to taper off, mainly because my son was born. She is still mostly ignored by them, though.
Things started to click. It became clear that they just want a baby to fuss over and the mother doesn’t really matter to them. It didn’t truly explain the logistics of their reaction to my accident but a lot of things have made sense.
I told my boyfriend and we had a big discussion about boundaries. Fiona also asked to come along for moral support and to speak her peace. My boyfriend always had a hard time saying ‘no’ to people and keeping boundaries but we’ve agreed to fully commit.
We invited the in-laws over to discuss some stuff. I told them that I felt confused and upset by their reaction. I explained what Fiona had told me and how it's not ok for them to ignore the mothers and they shouldn't do it to my other BIL's girlfriend if they decide to have kids. Fiona also said her peace and stuck up for me when MIL/FIL tried to interrupt or twist the truth.
MIL was clearly very uncomfortable and kept trying to interject with her side whilst we were talking but she eventually listened to us. She told us her side. Apparently, she was neglected by FIL's side of the family and that they hated her for being poor (FIL is old money, MIL grew up in a pit village).
She also said she grew up with 5 younger brothers and took care of them all and never learnt how to communicate with other women as she never got a good education or had friends because she was a caretaker.
Obviously, I was extremely sympathetic to all this. My boyfriend had briefly mentioned that MIL had a very bad relationship with her own parents but never went into detail. I then asked then both about the stair incident.
MIL said she 'didn't care about it' in the moment and assumed I'd be fine because if I was crying, I was alive. I was taken aback by her response. It honestly took everything in me not to storm off.
My boyfriend told her that that was a callous answer and not all problems (specifically medical) are immediately present and how I still had to go to hospital afterwards due to an injury.
FIL stopped him and said they thought the baby had fell out the crib/crib had fallen over which is why they went to him after he started crying. I said I understood that but it would take maybe 10 seconds to check and see he was ok. What were they doing for the other 10 minutes?
Unfortunately, we didn't really get anywhere regarding the stairs incident. They both believe they didn't do much wrong as 'most mothers don't have a support system like us'. I told them that I am not comfortable with them taking care of the baby if they can't understand why what they did was upsetting and wrong.
On the positive side... I guess I now understand MIL's motivations a bit more? It explains a lot about her character. We're not going NC or LC at all and they can still come over for visits but I've told my boyfriend he also needs to be there as they seem to listen to him and not me.
So that's the update. Thank you for reading and thank you Morgan for reading my post and giving advice. I'm logging off, but before I go I just want to say that I have no issue with standing up for myself. There's a LOT of nuance and personal details I left out but we have our reasons for not going LC/NC with MIL and FIL.
People seem to think that because I have the capability to understand and empathise with my MIL's past abuse that I'm letting it slide. I am not. I simply said it explains her better. I don't really know what I expected. Won't be coming back here lol.
Here were the top rated comments from readers after the OP's update:
Talisa87
"If you're crying, that means you're alive."
Are they serious??
Natural_Garbage7674
Baby was crying, too. But they didn't stuff their fingers in their ears then.
PsychologyAutomatic3
It should have also occurred to them that one of them could check the baby (MIL) while the other checked on OP (FIL, in case she needed help getting up). They’re both incredibly selfish.
Kadaaju
"We're not going NC or LC at all and they can still come over for visits but I've told my boyfriend he also needs to be there as they seem to listen to him and not me."
Yeah, it's fairly obvious that the mothers are just incubators to the M/FIL. Once the baby's safely out, who cares about the incubator right????
hungrydruid
No mother needs a support system like them. And to be honest, I don't care about the MIL's trauma or whatever excuse they're using. Both MIL and FIL literally ignored OP screaming for help for 10 minutes.
That's inexcusable, I don't care if she never learned how to bond with women or whatever bs she was spewing. It doesn't take a bond to call an ambulance or to walk over to see if she's okay.
I'm on the same board as the other comments... if I hear a loud noise, okay yeah check the baby but make sure everyone else is okay too. This is just such a weird, irregular action to take.
MagicCarpet5846
Interesting they’d even attempt to go the “we couldn’t hear you route”. More interesting still that OP didn’t just say, “okay, well if you genuinely didn’t hear the sound of a grown adult falling down a flight of stairs and breaking the banister, nor were able to hear the screams and 10 minutes of calling for help, you ABSOLUTELY cannot be trusted caring for my infant child.
You need to be WAY more aware of your surroundings to make sure my kid isn’t dying in a corner somewhere. I’m sorry, it isn’t personal, but I will not be relying on your help with the baby from now on.
Time will only be limited to supervised visits with both me and boyfriend present so we can make sure our child has people around who are able to hear such obvious commotion.” Because that certainly would’ve gotten them to backpedal real quick.