The players:
My brother (brother)
My sister-in-law (sis-in-law)
My mom (mom)
Sis-in-law’s mom (mom-in-law)
Baby of brother and sis-in-law (baby)
The scenario:
Mom-in-law is coming to visit! However, mom-in-law has never watched baby alone. It isn’t a ‘we don’t trust you’ situation, it’s a ‘you’ve never been left alone with any of your grandkids and you might not taking care of an infant’ situation. So brother and sis-in-law had the brilliant idea of asking mom to come over to help babysit while they go out.
That’s right.
Both grandmas are taking care of the one baby.
Mom takes a casual approach and does what brother and sis-in-law ask. She’s babysat many, many times as she lives in the same city.
Mom-in-law is very opinionated and a former nurse who has her feelings on raising babies set in stone from 30 years ago when she was raising babies. The nurse part comes in because she feels what she knew from nursing back in the day always applies now.
My mom will just let anything that happens slide off her shoulders and capitulate to keep the peace, but mom-in-law? She’ll get pushy.
I foresee mom taking the diaper changes and cranky parts while mom-in-law watches sports, and mom-in-law taking the feedings because that just entails holding the baby and sticking the bottle in there.
This is a baby still being bottle fed?
What ideas from 30 years ago are going to come into play that would upset people?
I’m pretty sure burping them was done 30 years ago.
The important thing is being willing to do whatever the parents have decided to do. Nothing is going to cause more issues than willfully doing the opposite of what your child has told you to do with their child. This particularly applies to anything related to a schedule, eating, sleeping and/or holding. Oh and a fun one - giving a pacifier when the parents don’t want you to.
Moms in-law have experience with babies almost by definition as noted. The worst that can happen is that the baby passes out cold from the little bit of whiskey mixed in with its bottle to help it sleep better in case it gets fussy. Junior is probably going to smell like Vick’s Vapor rub as well but that is just to help it breath during the night.
If the child is showing signs of left-handedness, tell her it is not acceptable to bind the left hand to force use of the right one. Also, serious medical emergencies should be directed to 911 and not just summoned by picking up the receiver and telling Thelma to patch her into a doctor on duty that makes house calls. Tell her that polio, scarlet fever, rubella, the German Measles, consumption, and the mumps have mostly been eradicated and she doesn’t have to watch for signs of them as closely as before. Modern parents focus on things like the fat content of packaged foods, flammability labels on clothing and kidnappers.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of. Mom-in-law disrupting the routine and causing a ruckus. I like her, but she inspires fear in me and I just tread lightly around her because most of what I say will be critiqued roughly.
And this isn’t an entirely serious thread, y’all. An epic battle waged over which onesie to put on baby next would be hilarious. Plus I’m sure you’ve all got stories like something out of the Focker movies.
Grandmas’ mom instincts still work. Passive Grandma will be able to stand up to Nurse Grandma if that’s what’s best for the baby (and stop her from, for example, rubbing bourbon on the little nipper’s teething gums)
Also, you don’t say how old the baby is, but if mom has babysat often, and mom-in-law is a less known quantity the baby might not settle down for mom-in-law, who may quickly lose interest and let your mom do most of the baby stuff.
Also, since you say “while they go out” and not “while they vacation” it seems like an amount of time short enough that everyone will get through it pretty easily.
Nothing much interesting happened, except when it wasn’t smooth sailing mom-in-law kind gave up and mom took over. Baby is the kind of baby who falls asleep being carried around and fusses a lot if put down, so once the easy stuff like bottle feeding was out so was mom-in-law. Mom thought mom-in-law couldn’t have done it on her own because she just doesn’t deal with the hard stuff well.