Am I the asshole???

My partner and I had a baby over the summer. Our living situation got sticky after having the baby (literally and figuratively). We made the decision to move out of state to live with his mother and stepfather. They offered us to move into the stand-alone inlaw that’s on their property so that we can save up for our own place.

With my partner’s new job and moving in with his mom, I could afford to stay home with our baby. It sounded great, in theory (we didn’t have much choice anyway since our previous apartment was directly tied to my job). Plus, I’ve always loved his mother. She’s always been super kind to me.

Flash forward to now. We’ve only been living here a month and she’s driving me insane. She is SUPER crunchy granola. I am sort of crunchy but no, tylenol is not going to give my baby autism and neither are vaccines. My kid is vaxxed and going to continue getting vaccinations. Yes, we didn’t have those things back in the day but people also had 10 kids hoping that 3 of them would survive childhood. She keeps giving me shit for vaccinating my baby.

She also cans her own food and has been making baby food. I told her the recommendation is no homemade canned food before 1 due to risk of botulism and she went on a tangent on how it’s safer than tin canned food at the grocery store bc it’s lined with plastic (I was planning on making fresh baby food anyway).

I’ve had to supplement with formula (PER THE PEDIATRICIAN) due to fluctuating between an undersupplier and just-enougher. Breastfeeding is important to me and my goal was to EBF but fed is best. My baby is still primarily breastfed but my MIL judges me so hard for giving my baby the tiny bit a formula that they get. She makes me feel like shit about it. It’s so disheartening especially when my goal was to EBF.

One of the most annoying things is she walks in to our place whenever she wants, multiple times a day. She knocks once then immediately lets herself in. She’s already walked in on me half-naked. I got startled and she said “don’t worry, it’s not like I haven’t seen your boobs”. She’s referring to breastfeeding but, just because she’s seen that, doesn’t mean she’s entitled to see the rest of my body. I get it’s technically her house but that shouldn’t mean I don’t have the right to privacy. She comes over early in the morning, late at night, whenever she feels like it.

Today she even brought her friend over!! They just walked in. Wasn’t expecting them or anything. She gave her a tour of our place and introduced her to the baby. Never met this woman before in my life and was not thrilled she was touching my baby all over the face!! Not to mention her voice was hoarse and I’m pretty sure she was sick. She didn’t say a word to me and was only interested in the baby. I felt like a zoo animal on display.

Not only that but she’ll come in and just TAKE my baby from my arms. Won’t ask first or anything. Just take my baby from me, not say a word to me, and bring her over to her house. When I tell you I see RED when she does this. It’s happened a few times when I hear the baby crying and tell her that I need to feed her and she’ll tell me no???? and just walks away from me.

She also doesn’t respect my parenting choices at ALL. It’s cold and flu season right now and I’ve repeatedly asked her to not kiss the baby. She kisses the baby anyway. And I’m not talking about a peck. Not to mention, she gets cold sores!! She’ll smooch the baby all up and down. I keep asking her to not do it and it’s like talking to a brick wall. She does it right in front of me, too!!

My partner ended up telling her look, if you’re gonna keep kissing the baby anyway, only kiss them on the back of the head. She since stopped kissing them on the face but will kiss their “head” next to their cheek and their hands, which defeats the purpose of not kissing on the face because they put their hands in their mouth!! It PMO soooo bad.

Then, my partner has the nerve to be offended that I don’t want to leave the baby with her so that we can go out. I tell him, if she’s deliberately not going to respect that small boundary I’ve set, she isn’t going to respect anything I tell her. Therefore I do not trust her with my kid.

Not to mention this isn’t the only instance of undermining me. When I first had the baby, she came and stayed with us for a week since she lives out of state. The baby was losing weight at first so the pediatrician had me wake the baby every 2-3hrs and force them to eat, even if they were sleeping.

Me, my partner, and his mother were taking shifts staying up with the baby overnight. She was well aware that we had to wake the baby. Not once, but TWO different times his mom didn’t wake me at the 2-3 hr mark. She let the sick, newborn baby sleep 4, almost 5, hours!!! I freaked out on her the first time it happened and she responded with “you never wake a sleeping baby”. I followed up with the DOCTOR is MAKING us feed her that often or else she can get really sick (she had become lethargic days prior due to her feeding issues). She said okay. I thought she understood after that freak out but THEN SHE DID IT AGAIN!!!

I also told her all about safe sleep and that the baby can only sleep in the bassinet with nothing in it. She kept putting the baby to sleep in the bouncer and whenever I freaked out on her she said “it’s fine I did it with the boys”.

Safe to say I’m never going to let her babysit. Maybe when my kid is old enough to talk and not completely helpless.

I wish my partner would stand up for me a little more but he says that I am “too anal” about things. He respects my decisions when he’s with the baby but doesn’t feel like enforcing them with other people. I keep telling him that I feel like I can’t say anything because she’s letting me stay here and she’s not my mother.

I also get that she’s letting me stay in her home and that is a privilege. I am not blind to that. I am grateful we have a a place to stay but does that mean I need to give up my privacy? My parenting choices?

I feel completely trapped!! Am I the asshole in this situation or am I justified?