Before I became pregnant with the first biological grandchild my inlaw's all became very attached to a little girl. They practically raised her from the age of 4 months until her family moved away when she was a little over a year old. Her parents are the same age as me and my husband (their son) and worked at the same place as my father in law. They had problems with their marriage and would leave the child at my in law's during the day so they could sort things out and then at night sleep in my husband's room (we were away at college). That's fine of course but things got to the point where my mother in law made a nursery, bought a crib, clothes, toys, everything you can think of. Instead of encouraging the couple to spend more time with the child they kept her 4 days out of the week. My mother in law started to refer to her as her granddaughter and was abolutely smitten with her.
That's when it started to weird me and my husband out. We would come home from college to visit and the couple would be there sleeping in my husband's room and the baby would be sleeping in my in-law's room in the little nursery. My brothers and sister in law were referred to as Aunt and Uncle with the baby. When I became pregnant and married their son we had to put a stop to it. We felt like we were getting jipped out of a very special event in life...giving them their first grandchild. We talked to them about it and my mother in law got very defensive and said that it shouldn't be an issue but that she wouldn't call herself "Nanny" to her anymore since that's what our child and all her other real grandchildren would call her. I believed her but we would catch her sneaking out to go visit with her when we lived with them. We couldn't understand why she had to sneak around about it. It's not that we wanted her to cut ties, we just wanted there to be bounderies when it came to who was the first grandchild. I didn't want my child treated any differently. After my daughter was born things were ok, we just all ignored the issue.
Once the little girl and her family moved back things picked up again. We didn't say much and I didn't even pitch a fit about my mother in law leaving up all the little framed pictures that say things like "Grandma loves me" and "I love my nana!" with her picture in it. Well they stopped by for a visit recently and the little girl is around 2 now. I thought things were fine and resolved and we all had found a happy medium but the little girl was standing next to me and pointed to my mother in law and said "nanny nanny nanny!". I asked her mother who I was politely chit-chatting with what the little girl had just said so that I could be sure I heard right and she got really uncomfortable and told me but said that she wasn't sure why she was still calling her that. That made me realize that my mother in law must have said something to her about how it was making me feel and she was also still referring to herself as Nanny with the child because she wouldn't have remembered from when she was 7 months old (which was when she said she'd stop calling herself Nanny around her). I felt betrayed and hurt. I havn't decided if I should say anything yet because we just now got on better terms and seem to be building our relationship.
Do I even have reason to be upset? Is this all just jealousy and were we wrong to even step in on any of this?
Should I just let it go? If so, why am I even feeling so hurt and jealous? She's not the kind of woman that can calmly and logically discuss emotions and issues. She's very defensive. I'm just hurt and overwhelmed. Thank you for any help you can give
~Allison