Dear Prudence,
My husband and I just had a baby. We didn’t want to know the sex beforehand and picked a neutral-sounding name, but my mother-in-law was obsessed with the idea of having a granddaughter. She’s always wanted a girl but had four boys and five grandsons. She got us everything in pink (my own mom said it looked like she robbed a cotton candy factory), no matter how much we protested. We ended up shrugging and accepted all the gifts. Then we had a little boy. We do dress him in the pink outfits his grandma gave us since it is too late to return them, they fit, and the baby resembles nothing so much as a potato.
My husband thinks it is funny, but his mother is very hurt. She hates it and makes comments about me “making fun” of her if I post a pink picture online. I tend toward deadpan humor and will include a caption about getting spit up on six times before noon. She is making a big deal about this, and it keeps coming up. I don’t understand why or what to do. The rest of my husband’s family even told her it doesn’t matter because the baby is going to outgrow everything anyway. She is still upset. What do we do about this? My husband tells me to ignore it, but I really don’t want to hurt my relationship with her.
—Angry Pink Mother-in-Law