In a moment of crisis, she realized their true focus wasn’t on her well-being.
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’s 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 after I hit the ground.
Conclusion
The in-laws’ selective hearing and skewed priorities have led to a drastic cut-off of their help, leaving everyone to question where their true loyalties lie.
Will this family ever recover from this shocking display of neglect?
Here’s how people reacted:
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.
I’m aghast that your husband didn’t rip them each a new one.
“that she misses the baby.”
That’s all she misses. Not the baby’s “incubator.” Sorry you found out this way.
A tumble down the stairs is a lot of ruckus. An adult human cries at a much lower register than a baby.
I’m pointing this out because if they are trying to say that “my hearing isn’t what it used to be…”, then that is not a good argument. The first thing to go is hearing at the higher registers, meaning if anything, it would have been the baby’s cries that they couldn’t hear.
But if we ignore that, then let’s see what the situation is:
They heard the baby crying. Presumably YOU heard the baby cry.
If I’m at someone’s house, and their baby cries, I wonder, “Why isn’t mom/dad taking care of this baby?” After I’ve checked to make sure the baby is okay, I go to check out why the parent didn’t come. Where are you? Are you ignoring your baby? Do you need help? Were you in the bathroom? Did you *fall down the stairs?*
No matter what way you look at it, there’s something fishy about this situation.
NTA
What if you’d broken your fucking neck ? What if you’d been dead at the bottom of the stairs while they cooed over your baby ? Ask him THAT. ask him if he’d be ANGRIER IF YOU WERE GONE BECAUSE OF IT. he does not have the appropriate level of anger.
You are one hundred percent in the right here and your BIL can shove that “you should be grateful” comment up his freaking butt. He’d shut up real fast if it happened to him.
NTA
If someone shouts in this house, people come to check. Even if it’s just barely heard. Especially after sounds of things falling and breaking. Something could have affected how loud they could yell, and they needed help.
I think they can visit when your husband is around. You don’t need their “help”.
You should make sure he understands that he should be supportive of your choice because you’re the only person who is directly impacted. Not just because you’re the mom. If he wants them around when he’s at home and you’re not, that’s his right, too. If you let him rely on the reasoning that your opinion matters most just because you’re the mother, that will build resentment, because he’s the father so if something impacts you both equally then your decisions should be made together as opposed to unilaterally.
That said, if you actually *do* need help, punishing them will likely backfire.
And if you really want to take it step further, especially about being alone with baby, you can say they can’t trust them to be with baby. Because if they didnt hear your obvious yelling then there must be something wrong with their hearing and what if they cant hear the baby? See they can’t argue with that without sounding like they purposely ignored you.
If you can’t trust someone to help you when you need them why have them there?
You don’t trust them anymore and that’s fair
Baby starts crying, I think *first* parental/grandparental response would be to tend to the baby. And it’s possible that the time they left you at the foot of the stairs was shorter than ten minutes.
But, two adults, one baby, baby clearly alarmed but NOT hurt, that meant the NEXT priority is to go check on the person who just fell down the stairs – even if they didn’t hear you calling for help, as you say, they damned sure heard you FALLING.
What I’d say is:
“I fell down the stairs, and you heard me fall. I believe you when you say you didn’t hear me calling for help, but the fact that neither of you cared enough even to come out of the sitting-room and check if I was okay after I fell down stairs, says to me that I don’t want you looking after my kid. Next time it might be HER falling downstairs, and you sitting in the sitting-room not hearing her call for help and unworried by the fact that you just heard someone fall down your stairs.”
If they respond with “Oh of course we’d come check on OUR GRANDCHILD” you’ll know you were right to think they don’t care a bit about you, but you can then just reiterate that you have no reason to believe this claim, since they did, in fact, sit in the sitting room unable to hear you calling for help and not bothering to get up to check if you were all right, and you don’t want that to happen to *anyone*, but especially not to your daughter.