My partner won’t let my mother look after our baby

In My Humble Opinion
21

Here’s the blurb from a local hospital:

Things I would cover if I were teaching:

SIDS prevention: Back to Sleep, no smoking, breast is best, etc.

Feeding: again, breastfeeding and why it’s not icky, no cereal in the bottle, proper storage and preparation of expressed breastmilk or formula, the different types of formula and why or why not to buy them for your grandchild, current recommended positions for bottle feeding and burping (ie, upright or semi upright, not laying flat like in yesteryear), older infant and toddler nutrition and current recommended feeding strategies (ie, we don’t recommend “clean your plate” anymore, deserts should be fruit most of the time, juice = pop, etc.),

Equipment safety: As mentioned, no heirloom cribs, no used car seats, how to operate most common baby gates, high chairs and car seats, hip dysplasia and walking delay risks from walkers, bouncers, and activity rings.

Child Development: aka, when to keep your mouth shut if Little Darling isn’t sitting yet, and when to speak up. A grandparent who doesn’t see the kid everyday can be of great service in noticing milestones or the lack of them; parents who are around the kid day in and day out can sometimes be too close to notice.

Discipline: current techniques like Time Outs and Natural Consequences, discussion of corporal punishment and its perils and perks.

Grandparenting vs. parenting: How to be a supportive grandparent without undermining or causing conflict with your child and their partner.

You’re a parent - what else would you add?

22

Daddy is being ridiculous.

23

Stupid question, from a non-parent:

Why would you put cereal in the bottle in the first place?

24

Yes, he’s overreacting.

Is there a course for fathers? He is new to the baby business–so he really needs one. (The Grandparent Course sounds useful–but it’s more of a refresher course.)

25

I guess everybody is different, as in your place I would have gone to the matresses. Your mother, quite aside from her experience and education, is the sort of person of whom you would say “If she told me she would do it, then she would do it” and he is *still *insisting that one of you supervise her care of the child? If he keeps to this vein for very long, you two will look around and find that no one will willingly spend any time with your child unless they are paid to do it. In the long run, people who are overcontrolling WRT their young children soon find that they have all the control they ever could desire as no one else wants to put up with that kind of crap. A couple of months tolerance is usually extended for a first child, since everybody’s first child is the Only Child Ever Born fro a time, but the grace period doesn’t last long.

It would disturb me quite a lot that he made free to issue this kind of pronouncement without talking to me first, finding out how I feel about it, nor even troubling himself to find out why she did not attend or whether she planned to attend in future. I do ont know what I would do if I discovered this late that my partner had different boundaries than I did and was apparently blissfully unaware that I might want some input into this matter also. In fact, I think I would probably have my mother over to help me out immediately after the Blessed Event and then nominate him the one to supervise her while I took a nice nap. There is always the possibility he might learn something from your mother about the care and feeding of babies.

It is my most fervent hope that this is merely nerves on his part and passes quickly.

26

Yes there is a course for fathers, and he did do it. He found it quite useful.

27

People put a spoonful of dry rice cereal in a bottle of formula because they believed it would either help baby sleep longer or settle the stomachs of babies with colic (people will do almost anything to stop colic which in most cases translates to “baby crying for no discernible reason”). Current advice is to give no solids of any kind before four months of age at the earliest.

Most babies suffer no ill consequences from getting rice cereal in a bottle. Some babies have poorly developed sucking/swallowing in the early weeks and can inhale the formila which leads to lung problems. Whether inhaling pure formula is better for the lungs is unclear to me, but this is the reason mostly given for not doing it.

28

The new father of a two-month old adorable baby girl checking in. Her hobbies are smiling and screaming.

Sure, he’s over reacting, but what new-parent-to-be doesn’t?

My advice. Don’t worry. New fathers don’t know shit until the baby is there. Once he’s gotten used to being up at 3 to 5 am trying to get her/him to sleep again, Daddy will welcome a little relief, even from an uneducated grandmother.

29

Father to be is seriously over reacting. My mum would have laughed in my face if I’d asked her to take grandparenting classes. It’s not like anything much has changed in the last few thousand years.

Anyway - give him a couple of months of fatherhood and the idea of your mum coming over to take care of babes for a couple of hours will seem like heaven to him.

30

Moglet, I agree that your husband overreacted, but I’d cut him some slack on this, especially since your mom is being so gracious about it. My husband and I are expecting our first baby in a month and, as I’m sure you can empathize, we both have moments of “Holy crap—I don’t want to fuck this up!” Because he’s so new to this, he may be projecting his own feelings of insecurity onto your mom. (Again, not fair to your mom, but very human.)

It also occurs to me that this might be more about his own parents than your mom. If he’s concerned about his folks not taking proper care of a baby, due to his own childhood experiences, he may be projecting those anxieties onto your mother as well.

And being a medical professional doesn’t always mean you’ll make the smartest moves as a grandparent. My father-in-law is GP who has his own family practice. My sister-in-law walked in to find him feeding his 4-month-old grandson chocolate ice cream. Will that kill a kid? No, but it’s not a great idea either. (I’m not implying your mom would do this! My father-in-law can be his own special kind of clueless at times.)

31

Discussions we’ve had (off the top of my head):

Put baby to sleep with feet at the bottom of the crib, I know that looks funny to you but she’ll sleep just fine like that, and that’s how the SIDS people recommend doing it.

Do not use metho on the umbilical cord! Yes, I know that’s what they told you to do 32 years ago when I was born but not anymore.

Yes, you can make custard for an eight month old, but please use formula instead of cow’s milk.

Do not put any sort of solids in the bottle, ever. Bottles are for drinking, not eating.

Do not put malt on the baby’s dummy. I know my brother had it all the time and turned out fine but don’t do it.

How to use the microwave sterilizer

How to use the pram (aka: This buckle is seriously complicated!)

It really is possible to have a meal without meat, I promise you. She’ll be fine with just the veggies.

You don’t use safety pins on nappies (diapers) anymore. The disposables work thusly, and the cloth ones like so. See! No pins.

I know there have been many, many more. Mum can’t get her head around how much things have changed in the 29 years since she last had a baby and spends a lot of time marvelling about it. Sometimes it’s ok - some things she’s pleased about because she thinks they’re an improvement, others she gets rebellious about because she thinks it’s nonsense (“You all had/did that and you were ok!”). Some things she’s plain forgotten. Still, she didn’t do a grandparent’s class and I wouldn’t have asked her to do one.

32

Wow, he is seriously overreacting, and is way old enough to know better. If he were my husband I’d be seriously wondering what kind of decisions he’d be making for our child that I wouldn’t have any say so about if he’s that trigger happy about such a silly thing.

33

Explain that to him…

“Look, I know you feel strongly that my mother take this course, but I am going to need her. I’m going to be exhausted. I’m going to have a toddler to chase around at 40. I’m going to be picking up after kids - and while I’m sure that you will be right there with me, there are going to be times raising kids where we need someone else - and my Mom is a really good someone else. There will be times when our kid’s caregivers do something that we don’t like - my mother, teachers, coaches…I’m sure there will be times I do things you don’t like with respect to the kids - but we are going to have to let go of the little stuff or we will drive ourselves - and our kid - off the edge. I think we have to show my mother we respect her and her experiences - because I can’t afford to have her be too afraid of disappointing us to help out.”

Mine are eight and nine - and I’ll roll my eyes over some of the stuff my mother does - or my mother in law - AND my husband. And I know there are things I do that drive him nuts as well. But raising kids is a LOT of work - and expecting to micromanage every moment of it is going to be unrealistic.

34

Good. Now see if he can find one on manners.

35

He may be overreacting, but at the same time, I kind of understand how he might be feeling.

We’re expecting our first in Feb.

My inlaws raised three. I love them dearly. They’ll be fantastic carers. I also know that they aren’t necessarily up to date on the latest info AND that drilling OUR wishes and boundaries into my MIL’s head is going to be a challenge. This is their first grandchild. Remember that a lot of grandparents have that “well, in our day… we did things THIS way and you all survived!” thing going on. It’s worse if they’re in a health-related profession and still stuck with their old ways on a personal level… AND if they have trouble with boundaries, too.

Don’t pounce on the son-in-law quite so harshly. It’s his kid. He wants to be sure MIL knows there will be rules and boundaries. If you don’t establish those early, you can get totally overrun…

36

Stupid question: Why do you have to inform your mother? Your husband’s 46 years old. If he’s mature enough to require that your mother take a grand-parenting class, then he’s mature enough to tell her she’s not allowed to take care of her grandchild.

37

My daughter had twin boys a couple (four!) years ago and they were born a month premature. She and her husband asked that her dad and I take an infant CPR course before caring for the children alone, which we gladly did. But it was not the basic care of an infant, which we might have felt differently about. But her husband, who used to be very tightly wound, has relaxed considerably after four years of raising twin boys! Things just never seemed to go according to plan any more!

Moglet, I didn’t see his parents mentioned. Is he requiring his own mother to take the course and preparing an argument, e.g. “Moglet’s mother did it and she’s a nurse!”?

Anyway, kudos to your mom for being understanding. She sounds like a gem. And I agree with Whynot. You are not likely to be leaving your less-than-month-old baby with anybody, so why worry about it until January at the earliest?

Is he also planning to require ALL your future babysitters to take that course?

38

The advice has changed even since Eldest was an infant just 9 years ago. It will change again. Every time it changes, the practices of everybody before the Latest Advice gets lumped in with What They Used to Do as though it were one homogeneous mass in the past. Which is far from true, heck, my grandmother cloth diapered made her own baby food and did extended nursing and didn’t use a pacifier and coslept. I bet a lot of people’s grandmothers did, lol.

In any event, it is my hope that speaking the truth with love to the members of my extended family rather than laying down the boundaries and making sure they “know their place” (bwah) will build up enough karma that my kids will extend me the same courtesy vis a vis my grandchildren, as the advice will have changed again by then when it is the Very Last Word again for the billionth time.

39

Marienee said exactly what I was thinking, only in far nicer terms than I would have. Yes, your partner is overreacting. Frankly, he’s being ridiculous. It’s a credit to your mother that she even agreed to take the class. Your partner had better figure out that he shouldn’t burn his bridges with your mother, more for your child’s sake than anyone else’s. To have a close bond with a grandparent is, in my opinion, one of the greatest gifts a child can have.

I would be thrilled if my mother lived closer to me and could spend more time with my children. Count your blessings.

40

And yet, somehow my kids survived despite being born nine and ten years ago in the dark ages when the advice was different.

Expecting parents have little to do but sit around and convince themselves that if they take all the advice, things will work out for the best.

Most of us figure out we have to let go really fast. They need to be kept relatively safe - but you can’t remove all risk from life - your kid will decide to ride a skateboard or a bike or parachute out of a plane at some point in life. You need to feed them healthy foods - but it probably isn’t realistic to expect that they’ll never eat something that isn’t corn syrup and red dye with no nutritional value. A day at grandmas where they eat too much junk, watch too much tv and don’t go to bed until and hour and a half past their bedtime probably won’t scar them for life - and is good preparation for when they are ten and are going off to slumber parties where they stay up too late, eat too much junk and play video games.