After giving birth to my first daughters, I thought my husband would start to choose us over his mother, but it wasn’t like that. This time, she had chosen her side over mine for the last time, so I unmasked her as the bully and liar she was.
You would think that bringing home your newborn twins would be one of the happiest moments of your life. For me, it started out that way, but it soon turned into a real nightmare!
After three days in hospital, recovering from an exhausting birth, I was finally discharged and ready to go home to my beautiful twin daughters, Ella and Sophie. I had been imagining this moment for months: Derek, my husband, picking us up from the hospital with flowers, tears of joy in his eyes as he held one of the girls in his arms.
But instead, at the last moment, I received a hurried call that changed everything…
“Hello, darling,“ my husband said, his voice choking. ‘I’m so sorry, but I can’t pick you up as planned.’
“What?” I asked, adjusting the scarf around Sophie. “Derek, I just had twins. What’s so important that you can’t…?”
“It’s my mother,” he interrupted me. ‘She’s in a really bad way. Sharp pains in her chest. I have to go and get her and take her to the hospital nearby.’
His words hit me like a bucket of cold water. ”What? Why didn’t you tell me before? Derek, I need you here.”
“I know,“ he said, exasperated. ‘But this has happened suddenly and it’s serious. I’ll come and see you as soon as I can.’
I gritted my teeth, fighting the urge to scream at how disappointed and frustrated I felt, but I replied, ‘Fine. I’ll take a cab.’
“Thank you,” he muttered before hanging up.
My husband’s mother lived in another city, so the chances of her coming back that same day to pick up me and the babies were unrealistic. Knowing how obsessed Derek was with his mother, he wasn’t going to leave her alone, hence the taxi.
When the line went dead, my heart sank. I wanted to believe that Derek wasn’t insensitive, but that he was overwhelmed and a mama’s boy. Even so, the disappointment stung. The same mother-in-law who insisted we make a set of keys to our house so she could help me with the babies was now suddenly indisposed.
I tried to shake it off as I put the girls in the car seats that their father had left the day before and got us into a taxi.
When we reached the entrance, I was frozen. My suitcases, the diaper bags and even the crib mattress were scattered across the garden and by the door. My stomach knotted. I paid the driver and went out with the twins, nervously looking around. It was clear that something was very wrong…
I approached the front door, fiddling with the keys while absentmindedly shouting my husband’s name, even though I knew he couldn’t be home yet. The key didn’t turn. Confused, I tried again. Nothing. Then I saw it, a piece of paper folded and stuck to a suitcase.
Get out of here, you little freeloaders! I know everything. Derek.
My breath caught in my throat and my heart skipped a beat. My hands trembled as I read the note over and over again, trying to make sense of it while hoping it was a hallucination. This couldn’t be happening. Not Derek…
Not the man who held my hand at all the doctor’s appointments, who cried when we heard our daughters’ heartbeats for the first time. Then the worst part of that day began…
Wanting answers, I called her immediately. Straight to voicemail. Again. Voicemail. Panic took hold of me when Sophie’s cries joined Ella’s. I rocked their car seats, forcing myself to think.
“Mom,” I whispered. My hands trembled as I dialed her number.
“Jenna?” Mom answered the first ring. ”What’s wrong? Are the twins okay?”
I choked back the words, barely able to keep it together. I hadn’t wanted to involve my mother because of her illness, but I thought this was one of those dire moments.
“Derek… he changed the locks. He threw my things out. Mom, he left a horrible note.”
“WHAT?!” she raised her voice. ”Stay there. I’m coming.”
The minutes seemed like hours before she arrived. Mom took one look at the mess and narrowed her eyes, fuming.
“This doesn’t make sense. Derek wouldn’t do this; he loves you and the girls.”
“That’s what I thought,“ I said, rocking Ella to calm her crying. ‘But he’s not answering. And what does that mean, ’I know everything’?” I asked, showing her the offensive note.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she said as she hugged me tightly. ”Let’s go to my house until we can track down your husband, okay?”
He helped me put the bags in his car and drove us home. After my mother and I analyzed what had happened and repeatedly called Derek without getting a response, my anxiety increased. I hardly slept that night.
The next morning, I decided I needed answers. I left the twins with mom and went back to the house in his car. The yard was empty, my belongings were gone. I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I walked around to the back, looking in the windows, and I froze.
Derek’s mother, Lorraine, was sitting at the dining room table, drinking tea! I knocked on the door and she looked up, startled, almost spilling her tea before she saw me and smiled.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, knocking on the door.
Lorraine got up slowly and opened the door just a crack. “Jenna. You’re not welcome here, didn’t you see the note?”
“Where’s Derek?” I snapped. “Why…?”
“He’s in the hospital in my town,” she said softly. “Taking care of his sick mother.”
I looked at her in disbelief. ”Sick? You’re right here.”
She shrugged and her lips curved into a mischievous smile. “I might be feeling better. Miracles do happen.”
“You lied to him, didn’t you? You pretended to be sick.”
Her smile widened. ‘So?”
My hands clenched into fists. ’Why did you do it?”
She folded her arms and her smugness grew.
“I told Derek from the start that our family needs a boy to carry on the family name. And you? You gave us two girls. Useless,” she confessed without apologizing, finally telling the truth after so many years with her son.
Her words left me breathless. I was too stunned to speak, and she took my silence as permission to continue.
“I knew you would ruin my son’s life, so I took matters into my own hands. The note was a bit over the top, but I needed you to believe that I wanted you to leave. I even made sure that he couldn’t call you by taking his phone out of his pocket when he wasn’t looking. You were supposed to get your things and get out of our lives, but here you are…”
I couldn’t breathe. That woman had orchestrated everything, she had lied to her son and got him to take her to the hospital under false pretences before sneaking out, she had locked me out of the house and stolen his phone, all because she disapproved of my daughters!
“Is that why she threw us out?”
“Of course,“ she said, unperturbed. ‘I even bribed a nurse at the hospital to stay there. And it worked, didn’t it?”
I felt bad. ’You’re out of your mind!”
“Call it what you like,” she sneered. “I call it protecting my family. Besides, my Derek always takes my side and he’ll see things my way, as always.
Her words echoed in my mind as I drove to the hospital, where my husband was still waiting. With every mile, my anger grew. How could she justify such cruelty? My hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, knuckles white with fury.
I knew my mother-in-law was mean, but I didn’t think she was evil. She never approved of my relationship or my marriage to her son, she always thought that Derek deserved someone richer and more elegant, not like me.
When I arrived at the hospital, I found my husband pacing in the waiting room, his eyes shadowed with worry.
“Jenna!” he said, running towards me. ‘Where have you been? I don’t have your phone number or know it by heart, so I couldn’t call you.”
“Your mother took your phone away,’ I cut in. ‘She pretended to be sick and locked me out of the house!”
He stood there, frozen, confusion and anger shining on his face. ’What? That doesn’t make sense.”
“She set me up, she wrote a fake note from you kicking me out and she bribed a nurse to lie to you,” I said, my voice shaking. ‘Lorraine is at our house, drinking tea like she’s queen of the world!”
“Wait. What? Why would she…?”
“Because our daughters are not kids,’ I said bitterly.
Astonishment turned to anger on his face. Without saying a word, he picked up his keys and stormed off, and I followed close behind. When we got home, Lorraine was exactly where I had left her, looking completely unfazed.
But her smugness disappeared when she saw Derek’s determined look.
“Mom,“ he said, his voice cold and cutting. ‘What have you done? I thought you were in the hospital.”
She opened her mouth, ready to lie, but Derek cut her off. ’Save it. I know everything.”
“Derek, I was just trying to…”
“You’ve done enough,” he snapped at her. “You made me abandon my wife and daughters for a fake emergency! Then you locked my wife, who had just given birth, and our newborn daughters out of the house. On top of that, you cut off our ability to communicate at such a crucial time by stealing my phone.
“Derek, darling… I just wanted to keep you safe. This wasn’t supposed to be how it would turn out,” my mother replied pleadingly.
“Keep me safe from my wife and daughters? Who told you I wanted kids? What makes you think my daughters aren’t good enough for me just because of their gender? That’s your problem, not mine, and if you want sons, I suggest you go and make them yourself!”
My mouth fell open, I had never seen Derek so angry! I won’t lie to you, part of me felt proud that he showed he was worthy of me by defending my honor and that of the girls. In that moment, I loved him more than ever!
“Pack your things and leave,” he demanded.
She stared at him, open-mouthed, tears in her eyes. “You can’t be serious. I’m your mother.”
“And Jenna is my WIFE! They are my daughters! If you can’t respect them, you are not part of our lives.”
For once, Lorraine was speechless. She went upstairs to pack, slamming doors behind her. Derek turned to me, his eyes full of remorse.
“I’m so sorry, my love. I didn’t know.”
I breathed a shaky sigh and the tension eased a little. “I just want us to move on.”
Lorraine left that night. My husband apologized repeatedly, promising to make things right. And he did. He changed the locks, blocked his mother’s number and even reported the nurse who had accepted the bribe.
It wasn’t easy, but for months we worked to rebuild our lives. One night, as I rocked Ella and Sophie to sleep, I realized that Lorraine had tried to destroy us, but had only managed to bring us closer together.
Unfortunately, Jenna is not the only daughter-in-law who has had to face a difficult mother-in-law. In the following story, Michelle’s mother surprises her and her husband with a DNA test for their son, thinking that this would separate them for good. But things did not work out in her favor, as she imagined.