My partners cousin is obsessed with my baby

Well done 👏

Reminds me of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle where the psycho main character breastfeeds the mother's child so the baby will start rejecting the mother's milk...

Def don't use her for childcare from now on. Her comments are beyond concerning.
Your husband needs to be firm and put her in her place and let her know how wildly inappropriate and upsetting her comments are.
No unsupervised contact from now.

Nor be chosen as a childminder, whilst mum has a break to see friends!

Anyone that is practically wishing the mother dead so that the infant can become hers does not deserve to be treated with kindness and respect!

In your opinion not mine.
It has suited the OP to use the cousin for childcare and now it doesn't, not a nice way to treat people in my opinion. The cousin is emotionally vulnerable, she is not some axe wielding manic, she has invested in the baby and been allowed to do so to suit the OP, she deserves to be treated with kindness, not vilified.

Seriously OP tell the lot of them to piss off.

Find your voice and use your words.

Only read the op

@Mummyme12345 start looking for new and better childcare. This is NOT healthy.

Run girl ....you better run with your baby. Don't listen to other people's opinions, you're the MOTHER. Protect your child because there's nothing harmless about this behaviour. Wish you luck my darling! 💕

Agreed. Let's say OP came on here saying she left baby with the cousin elven though she's doing all these crazy things. Everyone would tear her apart for leaving her baby with someone unstable,.

Nooooooooooo. I am not at all paranoid, don’t run to the doctor, don’t mollycoddle my children and don’t helicopter parent but this post is setting off serious alarm bells even for me.

The cousin has an unhealthy relationship with your daughter and while I’m sure your daughter is safe she has said very physically harmful things about you dying and that the baby would be hers.

I would worry about your safety. Seriously and I am not an over worrier.

Start pulling back from her and Tell the cousin in a public setting or by text that you are looking for childcare with more socialisation opportunities for your daughter. Please write down what she has said and specially tell her that kind of talk isn’t acceptable to you.

Minimising your feelings by citing hormones isn’t helpful. Not hormones, serious concerns.

I agree with what the others are saying but also be careful she doesn't just start turning up at your door unannounced. This has the potential of damaging your relationship with your partner too, if they don't speak up. They should be on your side in this. Children do get kidnapped and go missing at the hands of people who have been denied or can't experience motherhood. It does happen and is it be taken seriously.

I think it is extremely odd, and now I’ve read about the constant messaging even odder. I would talk seriously to the cousin, and perhaps her parents, and make it clear just how odd and unacceptable all this behaviour is. I would stop letting the cousin mind the baby on her own. What I wouldn't do is "go no contact", which is the thing I was originally reacting to. I don't like the penchant of some MNers for recommending frequently that people go no contact with members of their family.

Stop responding. It's not her business.

A lot of this is about changing your own habits.

(You have of course already ended the habit of using her for childcare by now?)

Your phone pings and you see it's a text from her.

Are you in the habit of reading it, answering it, giving her information / ammunition? Which she then uses to attack you?

Next change - Don't read or answer her texts.

Don't answer her calls - straight to voice mail.

Ignore them entirely or look only when it suits you.

Don't leap to answer any of them. You are not a puppet on strings.

And beware the flying monkeys - any other relative looking after her may secretly or casually include the cousin in the visit without your knowledge or permission.

Being your own family and friends back in.

Make your own plans re the godmother, childcare, nursery etc.

Just leave her out of the equation.

Mute her noise. Put her in the corner. She's meaningless.

Do you seriously not think the cousin's behaviour is odd? Really?

What I think is odd is the constant messaging.

All the recipients need to do is mute the bonkers cousin and not reply to her messages. They all seem overly enmeshed with each other.

…”when you die she will be my baby”

For this alone, she would not be left alone with my baby.

Your partner is spineless and needs to stop the nasty, bullying, gaslighting comments from his family.

It is not the hormones talking. Whoever said that should be immediately set straight.

Cease all childcare. She's deranged or extremely badly behaved. The whole family sound unpleasant.

As this is a 19 year old I think she is just immature and is experiencing emotions very strongly. As she doesn't have any adults around her actually teaching her differently but instead pamper her and able this behaviour, you need to deal with her and make her understand she has no right to demand anything. She needs to be told what your expectations are for her if you are to allow her to be around your child. If your partner isn't taking care of this (or throwing you under the bus when he is talking about it) then you need to do it. I wouldn't care what other relatives say about it, you need to stand up for yourself and your child. You are the parents and what you say goes.

This cousin is trying to oust OP as parent and make parental decisions ahead of the child's actual parents. She's trying to get overnights with the baby. Her family is supporting this, likely because with such intense focus on OP's baby, they don't have to deal with her or, giving them the benefit of the doubt, they don't realize how unhealthy this is for everyone involved

It's a form of parental alienation. Trying to mess with a parental bond is NOT good for the child in any way. It's harmful and in my country, PA is recognized as a form of child abuse.

It's not good for OP, her child, and to persist in supporting the delusion that cousin has any say in parental decisions regarding this child is very unhealthy for cousin too.

@Fruhstuck I also live in the real world. Unlike this cousin of OP’s partner. And in the real world we don’t think it’s good to feed delusion or let unstable, possessive people take our very young LO. In the real world we know that boundaries aren’t just important, they are necessary, and this cousin (who again, is only a young 19 year old girl. Basically still a child herself) needs to learn that she is crossing many and behaving inappropriately.

She's 19 and living with her parents.

If anything enforces she shouldn't be taking care of a tiny baby.

Is she able to have a child? Does her partner want one? Because I may be totally off base but my first instinct reading that was that she desperately wants a baby but for some reason can't so she is trying to convince herself that she doesn't want one anyway, that her baby cousin is like her baby.

I'd have my cousins kids if anything happened to her and she would take mine without a second thought so is she just meaning that your daughter would have a home with her if, god forbid, you died?

Her comments are weird though and I would have to address them. I'd be gentle but let her know she is making me uncomfortable. And don't eat or drink anything she gives you.

She sounds emotionally unstable and not in a fit place mentally to be alone with a baby.
I'd limit contact and keep it supervised from now on, this isn't sustainable longer term as the baby will start to understand things she's saying as she gets older, aside from potential risks already.
This sounds like worst case it could result in her kidnapping the baby if it escalates.

Do you go through life thinking like this and acting like this just in case the worst possible scenario comes true? What a terrible way to live.

(This is what I’m saying to you, not OP.)