My Mother-in-Law Refuses to Use or Acknowledge My Baby’s Name | Reddit Stories

My mother-in-law refuses to use or acknowledge my baby's name. Posted by you/Theam Amazing Loki. I'm seriously at a loss for what to do here.

My 33F husband, 32M, and I welcomed our baby girl this last summer. She is our first baby and was conceived via IVF after a long battle with infertility. As such, we spent literal years coming up with potential baby names, and this was our top choice.

Her first name is quite unique, but not in a way that we think people would toss her resume because they don't like her name, if that makes sense. Importantly, the name has roots in the Nawat language, aka Aztec. And while I am Hispanic, I am not Mexican, but my husband is.

Her middle name is also in Nawat, though it is a slightly more common name. We also decided very early on that the baby would have my last name and not his. I kept my maiden name after we married and husband felt that after all we went through, it was my right to have the baby carry my name.

His father was also an abusive piece of crap who passed a few years back and my husband has zero connections to that side of his family. So, he had zero interest in passing on the family name. Notably, my mother-in-law remarried ages ago and doesn't have that last name either.

Given our complicated journey, I was very superstitious about saying our baby's name out loud before she arrived. As such, we kept the name completely secret from everyone until she was born. Baby's arrival was dramatic, and she ended up being born 6 weeks early after I developed preeacclampsia, labored for 40 hours, and then had an emergency C-section.

Needless to say, by the time she was here, we were so relieved to finally announce her arrival in her name. Husband messaged his mom to let her know me and baby were okay and sent her a picture of the baby and said, "Meet baby. First name, middle name, my last name.

" His mother's response to hearing of the birth of her grandchild wasn't congrats or what a cute baby but rather oh I would have named her middle name feminized version of husband's name husband's last name that's it since then she will only refer to the baby by her middle name we initially would correct her every time but after that didn't do anything my husband confronted her privately and told her to please use her first name she apologized and said she would but then hasn't won't all Her text messages are asking about baby middle name. Husband corrects her every time. We went to Christmas at her house and all of the baby's gifts had a tag with her middle name on it.

I'm at my wits end about this and it has now officially truly pissed me off. What do I do? How do we get her to use the correct name?

Husband has confronted her directly and we both correct her every time she says the wrong name. Everything else she does is fine and it seems extreme to withhold her grandchild from her based on this. But also, WTF top/relevant comments commenter.

Holy crap, that would drive me absolutely insane, too. At this point, she's doing it on purpose and being passive aggressive as hell about not getting to name your baby herself. Have you tried just completely ignoring her when she uses the wrong name?

Like, don't respond to texts that say the middle name. Pretend you don't hear her at family gatherings when she calls the baby by the middle name only. Make it real awkward real fast.

Ops response. Maybe I need to start doing that. I did obnoxiously say, "Oh, are you sure these are for baby name?

They don't have her name on them. " When my husband's nephews distributed all the gifts that were under the Christmas tree. Commenter two.

Ignore her and start calling her by a different name. Oh, look. Your child's name.

It's Donkey. Ops response. Donkey.

I'm dead. Lol. Commenter three.

Consequences. Tell her that until she uses the baby's first name, she won't have visits or contact. Boundaries without consequences are just suggestions.

Ops response: I hate that it has to get to this point. I just keep feeling like it's so extreme to cut contact over this, but at the same time, she is being so rude for no reason. Commenter 4: What's the big deal about the name for your mother-in-law?

Ops response: I have no idea. What's crazy to me is my mother-in-law is Mexican and I am not. I thought she'd be honored.

Happy that we chose to honor her. My husband's heritage with the name. Husband even explained the significance of it to her.

Mind you, my husband is very Mexican-l looking and she gave him the most basic Caucasian name. Think Christopher James or something. Like, does she hate that it honors her heritage?

I don't get it. OP adds an edit to her post. Wow.

did not think this would blow up, but thanks to everyone who responded and or made helpful jokes. We are seeing my mother-in-law at a birthday gathering this weekend, which is why I made this post. So, I'll discuss with husband and see what approach we are both comfortable with.

I did want to quickly address a few things. One, I will not be posting my daughter's name since I don't want to get doxed. Not even if you PM me and promise you won't tell lol.

Two, mother-in-law does not have a middle name, I can call her by boo. Three, the act like she has dementia advice is funny in a vacuum, but as I shared in some comments, my husband's late father did die after dealing with dementia, so it's a bit of a sensitive topic for my husband, and I wouldn't want to upset him. His father was a piece of crap, but was still his father, and I know it was still hard to see him decline like that.

I promise to report back after the family gathering this weekend. Probra will make an update post. Wish me luck.

Update 4 days later. Hi all, I'm again overwhelmed by how many people commented on my first post. Overall, most people were super validating and gave me some good advice and suggestions.

So, thank you to everyone that commented. I reiterate that I will not be sharing my daughter's name for obvious reasons, so you all will just have to take my word for it that it's not a tragedy. I can tell you it's literally just two syllables, and no matter what accent or country of origin, you'd be able to say it with ease.

On to the update. As I mentioned on my last post, we had a family get together this weekend. After receiving some good tips, I spoke with my husband before the get together to discuss how we wanted to address the name issue.

He was similarly frustrated with mother-in-law writing baby's middle name on her Christmas gifts. So, he agreed we needed to do something. We agreed that if and when mother-in-law said the wrong name, he would ask to talk to her privately and be a lot more straightforward and directly ask why she kept refusing to use the name and tell her that it was hurtful and frustrating that she continued to ignore our request to use her name.

The plan was to then tell her that it was important to us that baby has a good relationship with her, but it was equally important to us to know that our requests are being respected as her parents. If she couldn't be respectful of one, she can't expect to maintain the other. Well, the plan was great, but what ended up happening completely threw that out.

As some of y'all predicted, mother-in-law ended up escalating her boundary pushing to a completely unacceptable degree. To be honest, I'm still completely shocked, as is my husband. For some background, there is a member of my husband's family that he grew up in very close proximity to, but who was never kind or even just amicable to my husband.

My husband tried for years to maintain a relationship with this individual, but they were always toxic and cruel and eventually fell into hard drugs and alcohol and would always explode on my husband randomly, either by yelling at him, being violent towards him, or just the good old blowing up his phone, harassing him out of the blue. Once husband moved out of his house, the blowups were mostly limited to phone outbursts here and there, as he was mostly low contact with this individual. By the time we met, he saw this person maybe three to five times a year max.

So, it was tolerable to him. Things came to a head a couple of years ago when my husband found out during a routine traffic stop that there were several warrants out for his arrest for several minor drugrelated charges. It turns out this family member had basically stolen his identity and had given out my husband's info during some arrest a few years back and didn't show up for the hearing date.

For some reason, I still can't explain. All the information pertaining to that arrest was sent to that person's address and not our address, which would have shown up on my husband's personal info through the state. Needless to say, it was an extremely stressful time.

But thankfully, I am a lawyer. After providing a few affidavits about my husband's whereabouts and speaking with the prosecutor, who then reviewed the arrest photos and confirmed it's not my husband, the charges were quickly dropped. After that, I encouraged my husband to work with a therapist to work through the stress and trauma.

I think he hadn't cut this person out completely because he hoped someday they could work things out, but this was just plain unforgivable. He then decided he was going no contact with this person. With his therapist's help and encouragement, he drafted a very long message to my mother-in-law explaining that he never wanted to see this person again and asking her to please accommodate this boundary moving forward.

Since that discussion, my mother-in-law had been perfectly respectful of that boundary until this weekend. We showed up to her house Saturday and she greeted us normally and asked, "Can I hold the baby? " Of course, we said that was okay and let her hold the baby while we walked in and got settled.

To our surprise, she immediately walked off to an adjoining room and we overheard her say hi to Uncle Nim. My husband immediately sprang into action and all but ran into the room to intercept. Apparently, my mother-in-law was trying to get the baby to hold his finger or something.

My husband grabbed the baby and brought her to me, and I promptly left the house and got her buckled into the car seat while he got our stuff together and dealt with my mother-in-law. He said he was too shocked to say much more than not effing okay, and we left right away. My husband was extremely quiet the whole drive home, so I let him be until the following day to give us both time to cool off and process.

Once we got up Sunday, we had a heartto-he heart about where things stand. For now, we are putting mother-in-law on timeout. I voiced to my husband that whereas before I thought she was being rude and annoying, I now don't feel she is a safe person to be around because of how grossly she violated our boundaries.

I also don't trust her judgment if she thinks that our daughter needs to ever be around that type of individual. Husband feels the same way and is frustrated as he had hoped that this person would never get the privilege of knowing our beautiful daughter since they haven't earned it. He is also furious that mother-in-law would essentially use our daughter to try to heal a family riff that predates her and should never place her in the middle.

So, that's kind of where we are now. Mother-in-law completely trampled our boundaries, and we are not going to be engaging with her for a while. I've encouraged my husband to start up therapy again to decide how he wants to move forward with her and go from there.

At the end of the day, we do want her to have a relationship with our daughter, but this was a bridge too far for us, and we need to re-evaluate whether the benefits of a relationship will outweigh the risks. My heart is breaking for my husband since I know he wants mother-in-law in his life, but he agrees our daughter's safety is first and everything else is secondary. Thank you again to everyone that commented and sent helpful suggestions.

I think for now we'll just keep mother-in-law away from baby until we can figure out next steps. As heartbroken as I am for my husband, I am equally proud of him for continuing to place our daughter first and keeping her away from the family drama. Here's to hoping we can figure out a safe place to land.

Top slrelevant comments commenter. Surely there should be some legal proceedings for this uncle for using your husband's identity. Ops response.

We filed a police report but they never really followed up with us. I wanted to pursue it but husband decided the less he had to deal with that person the better. So he never followed up with the police department.

Commenter two. Why in the world would you want your daughter to have a relationship with her? I never had any relationship with my paternal grandmother and from what my parents told me, I'm glad she wasn't part of my life.

She also did the name thing. She wanted my sister to be named Susan and wouldn't call her by her real name. Ops response, I wish things were that black and white.

At the end of the day, she's my husband's mother and they were quite close growing up. She has a lot of faults, but ultimately she sacrificed quite a lot for my husband growing up. Until these recent shenanigans, I hadn't personally had any issues with her either.

She had always been respectful of me and didn't cause any drama until our daughter came about. With that said, we are both taking this very seriously and will not resume contact and access to our daughter until some very specific things are addressed to our satisfaction. At the very least, we are both agreed that she will never be allowed unsupervised access to our daughter.

Commenter three, time out. My dad played some similar BS with me and I never spoke to him again. I never saw him after he went into a care facility.

He died without us ever closing that loop. I skipped his funeral to be with my sick wife. I took my mom to his grave site and we talked about how I walked away and why he treated me the way he did.

That was some decent closure for me. You need a timeout like that because this BS will never get better and never stop. Ops response.

I don't entirely disagree with you, but it's not 100% my call to make. Husband made this call with his late father and didn't see him for many years up until he buried him. I think there's a part of him that regrets not having one last discussion with his father, so I don't know.

I don't want to push him into having the same issue with his mother, too. I'm just so heartbroken for him because all he keeps saying is how frustrated he is by his family's issues. This is why I encouraged him to resume therapy.

I don't want to push him to a decision that he will one day regret. I'd rather he come to a decision he can live with through therapy and counseling. As long as our daughter is safe, I want to support him as best I can with dealing with his family.

For now, getting lots of space is the priority.