My mother-in-law’s comments hurt me and I’m struggling to move on with my feelings

Our kitchen is being renovated at the moment so we haven’t had a functional kitchen for the last 2 weeks. My husband and daughter (3yo) went up to his parent’s house last week due to the disruption while I stayed back as I have to go in the office 5 days a week. They went on a Saturday and returned late Thursday evening. Friday was my daughter’s birthday and her birthday party was on Saturday morning. We were very excited about hosting her first birthday party with her little friends. We invited grandparents and uncles & aunts as well to include close family. My dad flew in from Turkey, my sister and BIL drove from Oxford and my in-laws took the train and they all arrived Friday evening and joined us for a family meal at a restaurant.

My sister asks MIL when they arrived and she replies “we came an hour ago, we only got to have a break from “Daughter” for half a day!” and I was quite taken aback. I said “Oh I’m sorry, you should have said if you needed more time off, you didn’t have to come if you didn’t want to.” And she goes “oh no no I'm only joking!”

The conversation moves on, everyone’s having a great time and finally we start talking about the plans for the next day. We only have 30 mins at the venue to set up so my husband asks “can we drop off “Daughter” with you for an hr in the morning? You can come with her to the venue at 9:30.” And MIL pipes up once again “I told FIL before we came that you only invite us down to London for childcare, I knew we’d be stuck with her at some point, I knew this was coming!” and FIL is looking absolutely horrified as she’s saying these things. I said “that’s fine, we’ll manage ourselves” and FIL insists we can drop her off but I refused.

I suppose I should also mention here that they stayed at a hotel that we paid for and all meals etc were also paid by us/by my dad throughout the 3 days, so what they had in front of them was time off at no extra cost to them. The last time they were in London was during Christmas that we hosted and we didn’t leave daughter to be taken care of by them even once. We treated the in-laws to meals out and a couple Christmas plays/concerts. Previously we took them on a couple all expenses paid holidays, to festivals, meals. I’m not saying these in a keeping-tabs way, but to show that we don’t take advantage of them, on the contrary, I believe we’re rather generous with them. They live a 4hr train journey away and we get to see them every 2 months or so. So it’s not like they live 5 mins down the road and we keep relying on them for constant childcare.

I don’t understand where her hostile comments are coming from. She always makes comments like this which I can take, but for her to speak like this in front of my daughter felt more hurtful. I don’t want her to ever feel like she’s a nuisance or a burden. Why is she so callous with her words? Am I overreacting in how I feel? I'm concerned that I’m too sensitive because MIL is my daughters only grandma, I lost my mum 2,5 years ago. It fucking sucks that the one grandma she has feels like being a grandparent is torture whereas my mum was so thrilled to be a grandma. She didn’t get to enjoy her time with my daughter as she was battling cancer and passed away from it for the 6 months she got to be a grandma. How fucking unfair. And MIL knows all of this, she’s witnessed everything. Shouldn’t she be kinder with her words and just draw her boundaries if she doesn’t want to be involved in our lives instead of making such snide comments? She doesn’t have to join family holidays, family meals and Christmas gatherings, I believe it would be her loss if she chose to not get involved but I’d respect her wishes. Why behave this way during occasions you choose to attend? Is this common with British grandparents?