In the beginning, my mother-in-law was the person who rescued me. During those early, hazy months of pregnancy when I couldn’t even stand the smell of the kitchen, she saw my husband bringing home takeout and stepped in. She filled our fridge with bulk meals I could actually tolerate, calling every day to check on the life growing inside me. I felt like a princess. I was the one who asked for her to stay for those first three months. I wanted her near me..
But everything changed on the day I was discharged.
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Unknown to us, she had already made plans. She had informed people that I would be staying at her house so they could come there to visit the twins.
At the hospital, I told my husband I did not want to go to her house. I had just given birth. I needed peace, quiet, and space to recover, not a stream of visitors carrying my babies and passing them around. On the day of discharge, when it became clear we were not going to her house, her face changed. She was quiet the entire journey home. Something shifted that day, and I felt it.
From then on, I did not know how to relate to her.
She started complaining about everything I did in the house. My cooking. The way I washed my husband’s singlets. She said I should not use the washing machine for them. She said my food disgusted her. She said I slept too much. She said I was too “botee,” too dull, and she doubted I could raise my children.
We had our big fight when the babies were only three weeks old. They fell ill and were admitted to the hospital. I had gone to pick up lab results, and when I returned, I overheard a nurse saying that while one of the babies was on my mother-in-law’s laps, she had dozed off and the baby fell.
She never told me. I didn’t know how to ask her directly, so I went to the front desk to confirm it with the nurses. They told me that if they had known I wasn’t there when it happened, they wouldn’t have said anything. I texted my husband about it, and I think he confronted her. That day, hell broke loose in the general ward. This woman finished me with words. She screamed that I must show her the nurse who told me, and I couldn’t utter a single word in response.
I thought it could better but it got worse each day. I started getting depressed, I could stay the whole day without eating but doesn’t feel hungry.
It got so worse that when my husband leaves for work, I stay in the bedroom the whole day with my babies without eating as breastfeeding mom till he returns because I didn’t want her complaining about me when hubby returns
Sometimes hubby will go buy me food before he leaves when later noticed what’s been happening
I started disappearing into my bedroom. I’d sit in the dark with the twins, breastfeeding and starving, waiting for my husband to come home with a bag of food I could hide and eat in secret. I’d scrape my leftovers into the bin quickly so she wouldn’t see, because she was already telling the neighborhood that I didn’t eat enough to stay healthy.
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I am a health worker. I’ve handled my own surgical recoveries before. I fought through a three-hour surgery and a brutal pregnancy just to bring these two lives into the world. This should have been the happiest time of my life, but I was being told I was “too dull” to even raise my own kids. She even blames me for my husband’s high blood pressure, telling anyone who will listen that I am the burden.
I look at my “miracle” babies and I should feel peace, but all I feel is the sting of her words. The woman who once helped me save my pregnancy is the same one who made me feel like I’d rather be dead just to be free of her. I’ve reached my limit. I am done.
—Brenda
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