They may come to the hospital to meet their new grandchild, or perhaps introductions happen over video chat. In the emotional rush, sometimes grandparents do or say things that rub parents the wrong way.
We asked members of the HuffPost Parents Facebook community for some of the rudest things that they have seen grandparents do when a new baby arrives. Here’s what they had to say.
1. Refusing to use the name the baby’s parents gave them.
“[My mother] doesn’t like my son’s name (Elijah) so she refused to call him by it. Instead she would say ‘That little boy’ or ‘That little baby,’ as if he didn’t have a name.” — China Shock
“My Aunt didn’t like the name I’d chosen for my firstborn son (Zachary) so just decided to rename him and continue to refer to him as ‘Joshua.’” — Maria Harris
2. Being upset about not having been present at the birth.
“With my second child, my water broke at 32 weeks, and I was on hospital bed rest until I hit 34 weeks, at which point I was induced. Knowing that my daughter was going to be premature and most likely taken straight to the NICU, my (ex) husband and I decided to keep it to just us at the hospital during labor. We would have family come once we knew she was stable and ready for visitors. Sure enough, she was taken to NICU minutes after birth. We texted the family to let them know she had arrived and was healthy, all things considered. My mother immediately called me, furious that she hadn’t been present for the birth. I told her that I needed to be supported, that we had been unsure of how healthy the baby would be and that we needed to focus on the baby. She argued that she had a right to be there and she would have stayed out of my way. I told her that this was about us being able to focus on the baby, and the birth was not about her or what she wanted. She screamed into the phone, ‘Yes it is!’ and then hung up on me. She never apologized, and until the day she died believed I had greatly wronged her.” — Lisa Nodarse
3. Saying the family was less than prepared for another child.
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