Dear Prudence,
Three years ago my daughter was born a micro preemie at 25 weeks after I was in a car accident. She ended up in the neonatal intensive care unit three hours from our house for 14 weeks before coming home strong and healthy. Because my mother lives only 20 minutes from the NICU, I basically lived at her house during that time, with my husband coming for weekends and returning home for work during the week after the first two weeks. My mother can be completely oblivious to other people’s emotions and it really came out when I was at her house.
She would make comments about how I shouldn’t be tired since I didn’t have a baby to take care of (I was pumping every three hours around the clock, plus I would argue emotional exhaustion is worse than physical exhaustion) and how nice it must be for my husband and me to go out to dinner without having to get a babysitter like other parents would have to. She seemed inconvenienced by driving me to and from the hospital, despite volunteering for it and telling me not to worry about getting my car to her house once I could drive. If there had been another realistic option outside of a pricey hotel, I would’ve taken it, but there wasn’t. My husband and I would sometimes get a hotel on weekends for a break and we did end up getting my car there so I wasn’t so dependent on her. But those 14 weeks really did irreparable damage to our relationship, from my side at least. I’ve always been pretty independent and self-sufficient, even as a kid. This was the first time I really just needed to be taken care of. I thought since she was my mother she’d be able to understand how hard that time was and help me, but even when I would try to talk to her about it, she would just completely disregard how I felt and what I needed.
The last time she visited she asked if I’d done a baby book for my daughter and I said no but I did a memory box that I threw everything in and decorated the outside of because I knew I wouldn’t have the time or energy to keep up a book. She made a comment about how other mothers find time to and don’t have three and a half months at home without the baby after they’re born as I did. I told her that since she was there, she should realize that I wasn’t home and it also wasn’t the relaxing vacation time she seems to remember it as and she needs to stop making comments about that time because they were extremely hurtful then and still are now (this is not the first time she’s said something like that since the recovery time). She left hours earlier than she had planned and I’ve heard from my sister since then that she said I was rude to her and she isn’t going to be speaking to me or coming to the house for a while. Do I try to contact her and have a conversation about the hurtful things that have occurred between us to be able to move forward or just accept she won’t ever see my side of things?
—Tired of Hurt