Mother mother-in-law love marriage indian family oppression indian woman

My In-Laws Tried To Kill My Baby But I'm Still Expected to Be Nice to Them 

( words)
*For representational purpose only.

 

I had a love marriage and am blessed with two cute baby boys. Everything is perfect except my in-laws.

My elder son who is just 4 years old hates them and so do I.

It all started before we got married. We were madly in love with each other. When I told my parents about my relationship, it took a lot of convincing before my father finally agreed to speak to the boy’s parents.

I was happy but my parents were not. My father paid a surprise visit to the boy’s hometown to inquire about their family. Unfortunately, everyone told him that the boy's father was not a good person. He never did any work and spent his whole day loitering.

My father was disappointed with my choice and strictly disagreed to our match.

But we were so deeply in love that my boyfriend and I decided to get married against our parents’ wishes. After the marriage, my family was very angry with me and I felt extremely guilty.

Throughout my life, I’d always been a good girl but this decision turned me into the black sheep for the whole family.

His parents were angry with me but were willing to meet their son alone in their hometown.

As time passed by, both of us worked hard in our jobs and slowly, my parents accepted our marriage. Then I got the good news that I was pregnant. During the 4th month of my pregnancy, his parents visited us.

Being a working professional, my office hours were very long and our home was a mess. But I cleaned the entire house and made every possible arrangement to welcome my in-laws.

When they visited us, it was evident that my mother-in-law was upset with me.

I was not surprised because getting married against their wish was the not the right approach. However, I did my best to keep them happy.

My in-laws would visit our colony temple at any odd hour. One morning, I gave them breakfast and they left for the temple. My mother-in-law asked me to rest and said that they would lock the door from outside to avoid disturbing me.

When they left, I went to the kitchen as I was hungry.

I found the gas regulators on and a burning diya kept next to the stove.

I quickly switched off the regulators and thanked God because any accident could have occurred had I gone to sleep. The next day, when my in-laws left for the temple, I noticed that the gas regulators were on again. This happened for three days and I was completely shocked.

That is when I realized that they were trying to kill my baby and me!

But I was unable to share this incident with my husband. Then my in-laws started pushing me to eat papaya, which is not permitted during pregnancy.

They made several such attempts but I ignored everything because I felt guilty that we got married without considering their feelings.

My due date was near yet my mother-in-law kept abusing me for the smallest things while in front of the world, she pretended to be the best mother-in-law.

All these things started driving me into depression and were affecting my newborn baby too. He was underweight and needed a lot of care.

After the delivery, my mother took care of my son, my husband and me. Even my mother-in-law stayed in my parents’ house for 40 days but was not ready to help at all. She would just criticize everything.

She did not even give my husband and me any privacy and slept between us.

We could not have any communication in her presence. One day, my mom suggested that my mother-in-law join her for a walk so my husband and I could spend some time together.

The very next morning, she suddenly started crying. When my mom asked her what was the matter, she said it was nothing. But in a separate room, she said something to her son and he got very angry with my mother.

They went away, leaving my son and me at my mother's place.

My mother cried a lot and I cursed myself for being the cause of her problems. My relationship with my husband was also getting strained because my mother-in-law lied to him about me.

It reached a point where he wanted to divorce me. I was very angry because my mother-in-law was responsible for it and I didn't want my baby to be affected.

I directly told my mother-in-law that we would get a divorce if she wanted but I would also file an "attempt to murder" case against her.

She got scared because I’m an advocate and I know the law. She requested my husband to not break the marriage and by some means, he agreed. But the love between us had vanished and we were always fighting.

I decided to resume my work and my parents started taking care of my son. Slowly things were settling down. One of my neighbours told me to forget the past and move on.

She suggested that I do the best for my in-laws and they'd finally realize their mistake and accept me. I did everything I could and finally, they offered to shift with us to take care of my son while I was away at work. I agreed.

They came to our house but were not willing to take care of our kid.

My mother-in-law never even played with him. In fact, it was my father-in-law who fed him, bathed him and took care of him. I suggested that I could hire a maid to do all the work but they were not ready for that too.

Slowly, I noticed that they felt trapped at home and were bored of babysitting.

They became very rude to us and my 1-year-old son changed from a naughty kid to a silent and serious one who cried all the time. He was very scared of his dada ji and I was worried about him.

After staying with us for 2 months, my in-laws said that they didn’t want to stay any longer and left.

One day when we were out, my son played some mischief and a shopkeeper slapped him. I was surprised when my son said that his dada ji also slapped him. Through actions, we tried asking him more about his dada ji.

That is when he told us that his grandfather beat him a lot and hence he was afraid of him.

We felt very sad and mutually decided that I would take leave from work and give our son all my time. It took around 2 months for him to become normal. Life went on and I tried to ignore everything that had happened.

My son was 4 years old when I got to know that I was pregnant again. Through this time, I was a very good host whenever my in-laws visited us.

They were happy because I showered them with gifts, gave them a lot of respect and didn’t let them do any work.

I was surprised when my mother-in-law offered to come and help me during my second delivery. I was on cloud 9 because I felt that they were finally seeing me as a human being and I happily said yes.

They came around my due date and I was a good host. My mother-in-law did not do anything the whole day. I had no option but to take care of my family and our guests (my in-laws) too.

I was worried that they wouldn't look after my son even during my delivery.

Since I had to do all the housework, I was always tired. Whenever I felt hungry, I would eat fruits because I did not want to cook at odd hours. But my mother-in-law hated the fact that I was eating fruits.

According to her, fruits were to be served to the in-laws only!

Finally, I gave birth to my second baby boy and everyone was happy except my mother-in-law. She said that I could rest only for 13 days, after which I was expected to go back into the kitchen and do all the work.

My husband tried supporting me and told me to rest for 40 days as his sister had also taken the same amount of bed rest after her delivery. But I was worried about my elder son, as there was no one to take care of him.

He was not brushing his teeth, not getting a bath and was surviving only on chips.

I decided that I couldn’t let my son suffer. After just 5 days of delivery, I started bathing him and doing all the other work even though I was in pain due to the stitches.

My husband felt bad for me and took over the work. He looked after our kid very well. But my in-laws were angry because their son was doing the work.

After a week’s leave, my husband rejoined work. Once again, my in-laws showed their true colours.

They started brainwashing my elder son that his parents didn’t love him and that the baby was not his brother.

My son was so disturbed that he would cry in his sleep and wake up screaming at night. He kept saying, “Mummy, I don’t want to live here. Please let's go to nani’s house.” Since my in-laws were staying in our house, I could not leave them and go to my mother’s house.

One night, my son shouted again in his sleep and I became very worried. He was running a high fever too. My newborn son had just taken his first vaccination and he was also in pain.

Since there was no one to look after my kids and my husband was also out of the station, I decided to go to my parents’ house. This angered my in-laws.

In my parents’ house, my son told us how his dada ji beat him even this time and told him that his parents didn’t love him.

Due to this, my son developed bad feelings towards his baby brother. Luckily, my parents helped us a lot during this time. I even begged my father-in-law to tell me if he had a problem or was upset with me. But he denied it.

After my in-laws left our place, I never answered their phone call.

Now my second son is 6 months old and the older one is 4.6 years and is still scared of his grandparents. He was a bold boy but now, he has become very timid. His class teacher has helped us a lot with his counselling.

My in-laws have started emotionally blackmailing my husband again.

He wants me to resolve all issues with them. But I’ve made up my mind that I won't resolve anything, in fact, I don’t want to meet them ever again.

My husband can stay in touch with them but I won’t. Do you think I am wrong?

Share This Story

You Might Also Like...