Ask Amy: Grandma doesn't believe infant care best practices have changed since 1983, mad about it

[lemonsharks]

DEAR AMY: I’m 36 years old and have recently had my first and (most likely) only baby.

My baby means the world to me. For now, we’ve opted to have his daddy take a year off of work to take care of our little dude.

My mother-in-law is complaining that my husband isn’t “sharing” our son with her. She seems to think she can send us away from our own son so that she can have her alone time with him, but several times when we’ve actually needed someone to watch the little man, she hasn’t been available.

She even went so far as to say she’d forward us her schedule each week so we can coordinate, based on what’s convenient for her. Amy, she’s retired!

We don’t need someone to watch him routinely; after all, my husband is home with him.

When we do have her watch him, she refuses to put him on his back alone in a crib to sleep, and the in-laws have a lot of inappropriate ideas about feeding. They seem to completely ignore the fact that I’m breast-feeding him. Due to my career in health care, safety is a top concern of mine.

I can’t have her babysit him if she refuses to be safe. We tried politely asking her not to hold him while he naps, and she hasn’t spoken to us since.

I don’t want to keep my son away from his grandmother, but she refuses to respect our wishes. Plus, she won’t take him when we need her to, nor does she include us as a family in her otherwise busy plans. I’m hurt that she only wants my son and doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with us.

DEAR MAMA: Your letter reminds me of the old joke about a restaurant: “The food was terrible, and in such small portions!”

My point is that when it comes to unpaid babysitting, you take it (more or less) under the conditions it is offered, or you don’t take it.

Conversely, if your in-laws don’t respect your non-negotiables, they won’t be babysitting your child. Your standards seem on the rigid side (to me), but it is your right to establish them and expect them to be respected.

However, you don’t get to cast your mother-in-law as disrespectful and/or incompetent — and then complain that she is not available on your schedule. (Retired people have lives too, by the way.)

It seems that you and she are locked in a power struggle. If your mother-in-law wants access to your child, she will have to adjust to your parenting style. One of your gripes is that you want to be included (as a family) in her life, but you don’t seem to have invited and included her, or provided much of an incentive for her to want to spend time with the adults.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/08/01/ask-amy-new-parents-are-locked-in-power-struggle-with-in-laws/

Comments

[euphrosyna]

I have lots of sympathy with this because my MIL is the same way. She wants to help, and keeps offering it. But she’s unwilling to provide the help that we need, and is never free when we need it. She wants us to go out and leave the baby with her, which I’m not comfortable to do for safety reasons. But sometimes it would be helpful to have an extra pair of hands (eg I’m pregnant again and was very sick, and asked her could she help feed my 18 month old because looking at food was hard for me, or when he was little and I was stuck under him breastfeeding I wanted just some company or someone to make me a cuppa) but she’s never available for that. Even if I say along the lines of “if you’re free at any point this week at toddler’s dinner / lunch time”. I get that she’s got her own life too and I’m delighted she has but I do feel like she wants to help in the specific way she wants and not in the ways that would actually be helpful. I dunno am I putting too much of my own experience on the LW but I can see how it can be tough.

[lemonsharks]

That was exactly the read I got on the letter, which was why I posted it.