My in laws ruined our first Christmas with our new baby son. We invited them against my better judgement, as they had been behaving very poorly towards both me and the baby, and boy, were we to find out why.

We had also invited my parents and my auntie and uncle, and it started off nicely enough. However, towards the end of the afternoon, they started talking about my husband’s older brother (who is their favourite, even though they deny it).

They told a story that made it sound like the older brother was beating up his girlfriend (which was categorically untrue), and that they were proud of him for doing so! This horrified my relatives, but they prattled on, oblivious. Then they started talking about the older brother’s children. He has two girls, one was three and the other was three months old. The youngest is six months younger than my son.

I will never forget my mother in law’s next words: “I wanted (older brother’s youngest girl) to be a boy, because then I would finally have a grandson!” Then she said it was a shame older brother wasn’t trying for any more children.

My husband is not adopted, or the product of another marriage. My son is not adopted, and we made a point of letting them see him whenever they liked, even though they were rude and horrible to me and not particularly kind to my husband and son. They lost my respect that day, and any privileges that they had as grandparents. After a whole year, we are only just at the point where we can be civil to each other. But I don’t think I will ever forgive my mother in law for what she said.