Woman ordered not to breastfeed in ‘family spaces’ while staying with in-laws at Christmas

A new mum visiting her in-laws before Christmas claims her father-in-law ordered her not to breastfeed her baby in any of the family rooms, becoming furious with her after she broke the ‘house rules’

A new mum has revealed that she was forced to leave a festive trip to her in-laws’ early after they yelled at her for breastfeeding her own baby. The woman says that every year she and her husband will visit his parents in mid-December before going on to spend the day itself with her ‘Christmas-mad’ family.

This year, she had her reservations, knowing how ‘pushy’ her in-laws could be with their ‘ideals’. In the past, her father-in-law has made intrusive comments about how they feed their baby son, who will occasionally have formula due to supply issues, urging them to ‘just pick one’.

Prior to the trip, her father-in-law rang her husband, telling him to inform her she wouldn’t be allowed to nurse her baby in any ‘family spaces’ as this would just make him too ‘uncomfortable’. She would instead be expected to breastfeed either in the bathroom or guest bedroom.

Taking to Reddit, the fed-up mum wrote: “I agreed just because I didn’t want the judgement, but when I got there they asked me repeatedly why I ‘bothered to breastfeed’ when he obviously likes formula.

“I was upset but once again let it go and my husband had a word with them. So, I was already uncomfortable, and my baby was hungry. Constantly going upstairs was getting frustrating.”

While her mother-in-law and husband were smoking together outside and her father-in-law was cleaning up in the kitchen, she decided to give her baby a feed during a moment of quiet and didn’t move from where she’d been sitting. Unfortunately, it wasn’t long until she was disturbed.

The woman continued: “My father-in-law happened to walk back in the room and kind of groaned and asked me what I was doing before leaving to complain. My mother-in-law came back in and yelled at me for breaking the house rules and doing something that I knew would make other people uncomfortable. Called me selfish, asked how I’d feel if they walked around naked, etc.

“I was pretty upset and my husband did his best to mitigate the situation. I called my mum sobbing and she offered to pay for my and my son’s flight to them but refused to pay for my husband as it was his parents at fault (and, from her perspective, he didn’t do enough to support me).”

She ended up taking her mother’s offer as she felt so ‘horrible’, but says this has made the already tense situation worse. Although her husband isn’t ‘overly angry’, he has told her she shouldn’t have broken the house rules, which she feels is quite a ‘childish’ perspective to take.

Although she still believes she is in the right, she has begun to doubt herself after her own dad reasoned that, as it was their house, her in-laws had every right to make the rules, and has now reached out to fellow Reddit users for their thoughts.

One person commented: “Yes normally you should respect other people’s house rules but this rule was designed to make you stop breastfeeding and switch to formula as they wanted and that’s wrong.

“They can’t tell you or force you to do what they want when it comes to your child, house rules or not. This was a rule to shame you and make you compliant with what they wanted. Screw them for that.”

Another advised: “Your child is hungry, you must feed him. If someone is uncomfortable about it that’s a ‘them problem’ and perhaps they should mind their eyes and business.

“The whole shaming women for feeding their kids is bizarre. If certain men can’t help but sexualize breastfeeding they need to grow up.”

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