New Mom Says Her MIL Promised to Quit Work and Help With the Baby — Then Chose Her New Boyfriend Instead

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A new mom says her mother-in-law spent the entire pregnancy making big promises about how involved she would be once the baby arrived. Then, after the birth, she seemed to vanish into a new relationship and barely showed up at all.

The mom explained in a Reddit post that she and her husband had their first baby 10 weeks earlier. The baby is the first grandchild in the whole family, so there had been plenty of excitement during the pregnancy.

Her mother-in-law seemed especially thrilled.

According to the mom, her MIL was deeply involved throughout the pregnancy. She talked about quitting work so she could help babysit. She said she would come over and cook meals. She made it sound like she planned to be a steady, supportive presence once the baby arrived.

The mom said she and her husband were not expecting practical help from her. They were not demanding free childcare, cooked meals, or constant visits. But after hearing so many promises, it felt comforting to think they would have someone nearby who wanted to be involved.

That mattered because their support system was already thin.

Her husband has a terrible relationship with his father, and the mom said she has no living parents to support them. So even though she was not trying to rely on her MIL for everything, she did admit she had been counting on some level of emotional and family support.

Then the baby came.

Instead of becoming the hands-on grandmother she had talked about being, the MIL became distant. Around the same time, she started a new Tinder relationship. The mom said the relationship was about three months old when she wrote the post, meaning it began right around the final stretch of pregnancy and early newborn phase.

The timing hurt.

The MIL went away the weekend of the baby’s due date to see the new boyfriend. Even though she lives only about two minutes away, she had only come around to see the baby four times in the first two and a half months.

That was not what the mom expected after months of grand promises.

The lack of visits was one thing. The silence was another. The mom said they did not even get texts asking how things were going. After all the pregnancy excitement, the sudden emotional drop-off felt confusing and painful.

She tried to talk to her MIL about it because she wanted to understand her perspective. Maybe there was a reason. Maybe the MIL felt pushed out somehow. Maybe she did not want to overstep. The mom seemed willing to have a real conversation.

Instead, she said her MIL got defensive.

That made it harder to resolve because the MIL apparently did not see a problem. She had even said she had seen her boyfriend’s new grandson more than her own grandchild, but still did not seem to understand why that would sting.

For the new mom, that comparison probably made the hurt worse. It was not only that MIL was busy. It was that she had found time and energy for her boyfriend’s family while barely showing up for her own first grandchild.

The mom was left wondering if she was overreacting. On one hand, no one can force a grandparent to be involved. A grandparent’s role is not a contract just because they were excited before the birth. People get distracted, relationships change, and new love can pull attention away.

On the other hand, promises matter.

If someone spends a pregnancy saying they will help, babysit, cook, and be there, it is understandable for the parents to believe them. It is also understandable to feel let down when the baby arrives and that same person disappears into a new romance.

The post did not include a dramatic confrontation or a clean update where the MIL apologized and changed. It stayed in a quieter kind of family hurt: not a blowup, not a boundary war, not a screaming match, but disappointment.

Sometimes family strain is loud. Sometimes it is a new mom sitting there with a 10-week-old baby, realizing the person who promised to show up simply has not.

Commenters were sympathetic, but many told her to be careful what she wished for. Some said they understood the disappointment, especially because the MIL had promised so much during pregnancy and then barely followed through.

Others pointed out that an absent MIL can sometimes be easier than an overbearing one. Several commenters said many new parents would feel relieved not to have a grandmother constantly interfering, criticizing, or trying to take over.

A few commenters said the MIL was probably caught up in the “honeymoon phase” of her new relationship and might come back around once that excitement settled down. That did not make the broken promises feel good, but it offered one possible explanation.

Others focused on the emotional piece. The mom did not have parents alive to support her, and her husband’s father was not a healthy support either. Commenters said it made sense that she would feel the loss of the support she thought she had.

The strongest advice was to stop building expectations around someone who had already shown she was unreliable. If the MIL wanted to be involved later, she could make the effort. But the new mom should not keep waiting for the grandmother she was promised during pregnancy.