This 21-year-old woman and her Husband, 23, have a 7-month-old son. She and her husband have known each other since they were kids, and they’ve been in a relationship since she was about 11 or 12.

When she was 17, she and her now-husband started living together. Before moving in together, she was living in a different state, but she moved to the state he was living in because they wanted to be together.

They’ve been busy with their baby, so their home is a bit disorderly sometimes. Once in a while, they have an empty pizza box or a to-go bag from the food they ordered lying on the countertop, but they don’t wait too long before taking out the garbage.

In addition, sometimes they set their mail on the counter, and they wait a bit before sorting through it. But they try to maintain a clean, safe space for their son.

A couple of months ago, she felt motivated to deep-clean the house and do some babyproofing. Since there were a few messes to clean up, she moved items from the bathroom into the living room, gathered items to throw away, and put them in a box, along with unsafe items she wanted to toss. She organized clothing into piles that she wanted to throw away, keep, or wash.

When she ran out of garbage bags, she contacted her mother-in-law and asked if she could bring over some more. Her husband’s mother agreed to stop by, and she told her mother-in-law beforehand that the house was a disaster because she was in the middle of deep cleaning and organizing.

Later, her husband’s mom came over, and her brother-in-law and his wife were with her. They hung out with her son and left after a while, and everything went smoothly with their visit.

The next day, the cops knocked on her door to do a wellness check on her son. They said that someone claimed her baby was heard crying for several hours. However, that information wasn’t true. In reality, he didn’t cry during the night, but he cried for a couple of minutes while she made a bottle for him. He stopped crying soon after that.

During the visit from the police, they told her that her son looked content and healthy. Her son didn’t cry while the cops were there, and they acknowledged that. Before leaving, the police gave her some tips on what to do if her son cried a lot. She and her husband brushed off the incident as an irritated neighbor or someone being rude, so they weren’t worried.

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Two days later, she was startled awake by a phone call she received from Child Protective Services. The woman on the phone told her that some made allegations against her. She asked if this phone call and report were connected to the wellness check from the police two days prior. The CPS Social Worker told her they weren’t connected, and she’d been unaware that the cops had already visited her home.

Several hours after receiving this phone call, CPS arrived at her house to look around and find out if there was any validity to the allegations made against her and her husband. When the woman first arrived and stepped inside, she looked a bit baffled and asked if she could check around the home.

The CPS social worker only spent several seconds in each room before returning to the living room, where they sat on the couch to chat. Before reading off the allegations, the social worker told her and her husband the allegations were obviously fabricated, adding that before stepping into the house, she was afraid because the allegations were incredibly serious.

“She told us the allegations: 1. Trash covered the floors, to the point the ground wasn’t visible. 2. Toilet paper covered in feces all over the place. 3. The bathtub was full of feces. 4. Large boxes full of Panda Express bags, moldy food, rusty items, 20-30 soiled diapers, and trash stacked in the hallway. 5. The baby has no food and is fed curdled milk,” she said.

The social worker continued reading the allegations, which also included claims that their son’s crib was filled with roaches, that he had wounds and welts, and that he was unmonitored almost all the time. Apparently, the list continued, but the social worker didn’t read the rest of the claims because she acknowledged that all of these allegations were fabricated.

She told her and her husband that some of the other claims she didn’t bother reading were even more ridiculous and outlandish than the allegation of their bathroom being full of feces. The social worker said that she wasn’t going to investigate the claims any further since she’d been in the house and knew the allegations were untrue. She’d be closing their case but asked some follow-up questions.

While answering these questions, it dawned on her that the only people who could have reported her to CPS were her mother-in-law, brother-in-law, or her mother-in-law’s boyfriend. She realized this because, in the report, the details about items in her garbage can (even though the claims included false details about tons of diapers, mold, and rust) and boxes in her house were details only her in-laws knew.

Since she and her husband are introverts and don’t like snoopy neighbors, they don’t often invite people over. The most recent time anyone was at their house was when her in-laws came over in the middle of her deep cleaning. After the social worker left, she reached out to her brother-in-law and asked if he reported her to CPS. He claimed that he hadn’t, and when she questioned whether her mother-in-law had done so, he said she hadn’t, either.

“My husband said that if it was his mother (she’s threatened us with CPS before because our son had a fever, and we were making him ‘suffer’), then she is no longer allowed to see our son. His brother said, ‘If you keep Mom from seeing him, we’re disowning you,'” she explained.

Later, she and her husband learned that the police followed up with whoever called them and asked for a wellness check (and they suspect it was her mother-in-law). In their view, after the cops informed the person who asked for the wellness check that their son was fine, they were upset that the police didn’t take action and escalated the situation by contacting CPS.

After the visit from CPS, her husband told her he was debating cutting contact with his entire family because of how they’ve treated them. His family has already caused issues over the years, and there’s always been tension, but the false claims his mother reported to CPS crossed the line.

She and her husband predicted that if they cut contact with his family, they would twist the situation when they discussed the drama with other family members.

Unfortunately, her mother-in-law has never been kind to her. Her husband’s mom despised her and called her a “‘fat white brat'” and accused her of “‘corrupting her sweet baby boy.'” Over the years, her mother-in-law attempted to break her and her husband up.

His mom wanted her to move back to her home state. Plus, her mother-in-law badmouthed her to the whole family and has a history of making false accusations against her and calling the police on her.

A year after she moved in with her husband, his mom called the police with claims that she and her husband were intoxicated, which wasn’t true. During one incident, when a police officer showed up, her husband had a meltdown and yelled at his mother.

The cop empathized with him and acknowledged that the accusation wasn’t true. Not long into her pregnancy, her mother-in-law came to her doctor’s appointment without her permission to verify that she was truly pregnant.

“She called my sister-in-law (my brother-in-law’s wife) and told her that I shouldn’t have kids and that she wishes it was her instead. When I was in labor, she sat outside the hospital, calling and demanding they let her in the delivery room. Once my son was born, he was medevacked to another part of the state, and she got a plane ticket and went,” she shared.

Because her mother-in-law flew to the hospital where her son was flown, she was able to kiss, hug, and hold him before she and her husband got the chance to. The hospital where she gave birth didn’t allow her to leave to go see her son until 24 hours later.

Once she arrived at the hospital to visit her son, she saw that a different name was listed on her son’s board than the name she’d picked out. Her mother-in-law’s name was listed as the mother. Understandably, she was furious.

In her view, her husband’s mom acted like she was on vacation. Her mother-in-law guilt-tripped her because, during her first week after her son’s birth, she didn’t want to be away from him.

At the time, her husband’s mom lived two hours away and earned $6,000 per month at her job. But when she and her husband arrived home with their son, her mother-in-law suddenly resigned from her job and moved in with them. She told them she wanted to be able to spend unlimited amounts of time with her grandson, and she didn’t pay rent.

Since she was drained from giving birth, traveling to the second hospital that her son was flown to, and sleep deprivation. She hadn’t slept for the entire week since her son’s birth. All she and her husband requested was his mother help them around the house so they could rest sometimes.

Two days after her mother-in-law moved in with them, she moved everything around in their home. His mom even moved things around in their bedroom, and they told her not to do this.

They kept their son in their bedroom, but her mother-in-law moved her bed into the room they designated as their son’s room. According to her husband’s mom, she wanted to sleep in the same room as their son.

Later, her mother-in-law gave her son water, which is dangerous for babies. By this point, she and her husband couldn’t deal with his mom’s antics anymore.

Finally, her husband kindly told his mother to comply with their house rules, and she lost it. He was holding their son at the time, and his mother was yelling at him and getting in his face. Her husband was so overwhelmed with his mom’s behavior that he was shaking. When his mother didn’t calm down, he kicked her out of their house.

After she left, she texted them with threats to report them to CPS. She claimed they forced her to do all the childcare and called them “‘lazy, neglectful parents.'” But in reality, all her mother-in-law did while she stayed with them was change their son’s diaper twice and feed him at 3 a.m. each night to give her a break (her husband was usually at work in the early morning hours).

For a while after this drama, she and her husband didn’t speak to his mother. But eventually, her brother-in-law persuaded them to allow her back into their lives, and they gave in.

Unfortunately, her brother-in-law and his wife caused issues, too. Her sister-in-law struggled for years to get pregnant, so pregnancy was a touchy subject for her brother-in-law and his wife.

When she got pregnant, her brother-in-law told her and her husband that they should allow him and his wife to adopt their baby. While she was still pregnant, her brother-in-law called and badgered them all the time about how they needed to help her mother-in-law with different things.

During the second trimester of her pregnancy, her sister-in-law got pregnant and moved from out of state to stay in their house for a month. Her brother-in-law and his wife accused them of taking advantage of her mother-in-law while she briefly lived with them after their son’s birth, even though she didn’t pay rent or help much.

Because she’d moved from a different state years ago to live with her now-husband, she doesn’t have any family in the area. The only family she and her husband have when they need help is his family. Luckily, some of his other family members are kind and supportive.

When she called her father to update him on the drama with her in-laws, he booked a flight to come visit her. He also told her he’d help her find a lawyer to file charges against her mother-in-law. Her dad added that she could sue for “emotional damage.”

She clarified that she isn’t interested in receiving money, but any money won in a case would be given to their son. While she’s devastated that her son won’t have a close bond with her husband’s family, she acknowledged that you can’t change people.

They have to be willing to change. Throughout the course of her relationship with her husband, they’ve given her in-laws a lot of grace. When she informed her husband’s aunts and uncles about her mother-in-law’s behavior, they told her they wanted to cut off communication, too.

What would you have done if you were in her shoes?

You can read the original post on Reddit here.