My husband and I were living temporarily with my parents when I had my third child by cesarean after a high-risk pregnancy. She was born a little premature (36.5 weeks) but healthy. I couldn’t say the same for me; I had acute bronchitis that led to severe coughing fits anytime I even considered laying down.
Between the coughing and surgery, taking care of the newborn, and being unable to lie down to sleep, I was basically a complete zombie for the first month and lived on the couch so I could sleep sitting up. My husband did try to help with the older kids, but he had to work full time and couldn’t be there all day. My dad also worked, but my mom was retired and had nothing outside of the house to do, so she was there all the time to “help out”. In theory. But she has always treated everyone like their problems weren’t as important as her problems.
My one-week-old was asleep on my chest and I was trying to get some desperately needed sleep myself when my mom came loudly stomping into the room. I opened my eyes to see her pulling my five-year-old along with her.
Mom: “You need to go look at the mess your daughter just made! Her crayons are everywhere!”
Me: “So? Just ask her to pick them up. [Daughter], can you please pick up your crayons?”
[Daughter] nodded and skipped back to her room, and I tried to close my eyes again.
Mom: “No, you need to see this! She broke her crayons into pieces! On the carpet!”
I rolled my eyes and very carefully stood up from the couch, trying not to pull on my stitches or wake the baby. Then, I slowly followed my mom into the back room while she ranted about having to get crayon out of the carpet.
Mom: “See?! It’s everywhere!”
There were a dozen or so crayons with the paper torn off and broken into pieces, most of which were on the notebook my daughter had been using, but yes, some of it was ground into the carpet. My mom then walked off — I assumed to get a trash bag — so I told my daughter it wasn’t nice to make messes and asked her to help Grandma pick up the pieces.
When my mom returned, she actually had a hot washrag and a bottle of carpet cleaner, which seemed reasonable, so I turned to head back to the living room. But before I could react, she put the cleaning supplies down on the floor, grabbed my sleeping newborn from my arms, and flounced back to the living room, shouting over her shoulder:
Mom: “She’s your daughter, so you get to clean it up!”
I was too exhausted to fight it, so I just got down and cleaned. This, of course, caused a coughing fit, which pulled on my stitches, which made my eyes water from the pain, which caused my five-year-old to ask why I was crying. By the time I had finished, the baby was awake, so I didn’t get to nap, either. I ignored my mom for the rest of the day out of spite.
Later, when my dad and my husband each got home from work, my mom, of course, went on and on about the “horrible” mess that was made and how hard it is to get out of carpet, saying that I was being “extra grumpy for no reason,” conveniently glossing over the fact that she’d made me clean it up.
And she wonders why we moved three states away.