Am I Wrong For Making My Husband Choose Between His Mother and Me After The Birth of Our Baby?

Here’s my birth story:

Now, a disclaimer — my mother-in-law, Sandra, hates me. She’s hated me since the day Levi introduced me to her.

Anyway, throughout my pregnancy, she hung around making me smoothies and ensuring I ate properly.

“Just listen to me, Elle,” she would say. “This baby needs to be healthy.”

Fast track to the day my son, Wyatt, was born.

I was in labor, and she didn’t let my husband stay by my side. She said he needed to sit in the waiting room with her while I was inside.

She was sitting next to the baby’s bassinet and holding his little first when I eventually came to. He was usually quiet for a newborn. When my eyes finally adjusted to the light, I noticed Levi in the room.

I tried to sit up, to reach out to get the baby, but Levi held his arm out.

“You better lie down again,” he said. “You just gave birth. Rest.”

Then, he handed me the newspaper that he had been reading.

“Read,” he said.

My back still ached from giving birth, so I was okay with laying still. But I was confused about being instructed to sit there.

I wanted to pick up my baby and hold him.

Then, Levi handed me a form. It was a legal form rejecting a child at birth, filled out and signed.

Dread washed over me.

“What is this?” I managed to stammer.

Levi’s eyes searched mine for a moment. He looked regretful and helpless and tried to explain, but Sandra cut him off with a triumphant, cold gaze.

The room spun. I couldn’t believe it. My husband and his mother had conspired to take my baby away. She was trying to take legal action against me — to take my baby away and to raise him as her own.

“No,” I said. Despite the postpartum pain, I found a strength I didn’t know I had. I got up, my legs dangling off the side of the bed.

“This is not happening,” I said. “You have no right to take my child away. Levi, think about this.”

My husband looked torn, but his mother was relentless.

Then, I realized that this was her plan all along. Sandra wanted to undermine me. She tried to make me look incapable of being a mother.

But I wasn’t going to let her win.

“I am his mother,” I declared, my voice steady. “And I will fight for him with everything I have.”

Then, my parents walked in, and we took immediate legal action — making sure that everything was done before we left the hospital. There was no way that my child was going to be separated from me.

I was grateful that the hospital’s legal team was there and helped me with the entire situation.

My mother-in-law, defeated, stepped back.

As my mother packed my belongings, ready to take Wyatt and me back to her place, I turned to my husband.

“It’s her or me,” I said, my voice steady. “You need to choose. Your son and I will be at my parents’ house. You decide.”

Then, things went south. Levi chose his mother, and I realized I couldn’t live in the shadow of a woman who saw me as an intruder in her son’s life.

It’s a few years later, and Wyatt is growing beautifully. He’s a happy and artistic boy and loves the family he has. Sometimes, I feel bad that Levi isn’t featured in his life. But I know that my child is better off without him and Sandra.

But in the remnants of that pain, I find the strength of a mother who stood up for her child and herself.

Now, I’m sitting here and watching my child play with Playdough, and I know that everything that led to this moment was worth it.

But still, was I wrong in asking Levi to make a choice?