Mother-in-Law Horror Stories*

This morning, 7 a.m. 

Lesson 1: Do not underestimate the superglueing effect of mascara left on overnight. 

Lesson 2: Do not underestimate the superglueing effect of wine the night before for stapling your limbs to the mattress. 

It was all completely worth it though of course. Dinner, friends, wine. It was a ladies night and we're all new mums, so of course the conversation was dominated by poo – I’m afraid we lived entirely up to the cliché. But we also discussed, for some length – mother-in-laws. Most of us are either due back to work soon, or debating a night/weekend away from the little ones. Leaving the babies with someone else in charge is clearly an emotionally charged situation – and given the conversation we had it's no surprise why. It was lucky I had a fair amount of wine to drink otherwise I might not have slept so soundly. Here's why:

At some stage in your relationship your other half's parents bring out the baby photos and start reminiscing. Lovely. Cute to see baby photos and amusing to watch your macho partner squirm as you’re told how as a toddler he loved to stomp around in his mum’s high heels.

Then you have a baby yourself and some of the stories start niggling at the back of your mind. Like when he and his brothers used to 'fall off sofas and beds all the time' as babies. Or how the kids always used to sleep on the back shelf of the car 'until these ridiculous car seat rules came into force'. Or in a scene straight out of Home Alone how she piled into the car all the paraphernalia for a holiday, then realised half an hour in to the journey that the one thing she’d forgotten was the baby (Posh did this recently too apparently).  Or what about the time she gave his little sister the cat diarrhoea medicine when she was ill, reckoning it would work just as well on toddlers (chuckle, chuckle). I. Kid. You. Not.

Hope we haven't forgotten anything!

Alarmingly, the get-out clause all mother-in-laws (and mothers for that matter) use is the impossibly useless argument, 'Well, you turned out ok, didn't you?' At which point you just close your eyes, count to ten and go hide the cat medicine. 

*Luckily my own mother-in-law is the absolute best in the world and none of the above applies to her. This is entirely true and has nothing to do with the fact that she might read this post.

Anything similar happen to you?