Does She Ever Realize What She's Saying?

My mother-in-law is causing me pain, but I'm sure she'd say that it's not intentionally.

She has made several comments since we've moved in about wanting more grandchildren (here's a hint on how to help, leave us alone for more than 3 or 4 hours a week and stop pushing us to reproduce). In addition to that, she's made several comments that allude to the idea that I may not be capable of getting pregnant. I'm biting my tongue, sometimes almost literally, to keep from commenting that her comments are just hurtful.

It's bad enough my own mind is telling me that something may not be quite right. I can't do anything to find out right now, we have neither the money nor the insurance. All I can do is try to time things right and hope that Ace's sperm and my egg are willing to cooperate. It's semi-stressful enough trying to figure all this out with only our internal pressure on the situation. Add all the extra stress that we've had come pouring down lately (the past month has pretty much been fixing one problem after another, I'm ready for a day off of fixing problems).

I know that to my mother-in-law everything she's said is just commentary on life or her way of encouraging us. I know that she doesn't mean to say things that go right to my heart and rip into my tender emotional state. But she does, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't even know that she's just making me hurt. That she's saying things that echo some of my worst thoughts. That all these comments could end up really doing some major emotional damage if there is something wrong. That this situation has already caused me to wonder if Ace chose the wrong woman to try to create a family with, because what if there is something wrong with me?

The few comments she's made about adoption haven't helped either. She wants to point out the negatives, I'm guessing in an effort to prepare me for what she thinks could happen (although the negatives are still just potential problems for an adoption we haven't even tried to start yet).

To a degree, it's like she is cutting into the part of me that's a mother and criticizing it already. It's like I've failed as a parent before I've even had a chance to start, something that I don't know that I'd ever have felt if it hadn't been for her comments. I don't like it, but I don't know how to stop it. So for now, I hurt and hold my tongue and try to wait it out.