I am 38 weeks pg with my 2nd. My DS is 16 months. He has a great relationship with my MIL, who lives much closer than my own parents. She comes over most weeks and plays with him, takes him out for walks, and occasionally looks after him by herself for a few hours at my house. He loves her and I get on well with her too. I always plan these times to make it easy, leaving dinner in the oven etc. She's never had him for more than a few hours and never overnight.
However the plan we have agreed for the birth of DC2 is for her to be looking after DS1, which she's really keen to do and has kept her diary clear for weeks and weeks specially. She's coming over a bit more often now, both to help me out with being mega pg with toddler, and also to get familiar with the whole of his routine.
The problem is that there are beginning to be incidents, minor mostly but getting worse. Yesterday she left the grill on. I was upstairs having a lie down and smelt acrid melting plastic. I came down and turned it off. I pointed it out and she said she would have noticed the smell, that it was ok, that she's brought up 2 children and they were fine. The smell was so bad that my DH noticed it when he came home 3 hours later. This was after she had burned 3 pieces of toast in a row at lunchtime, causing the fire alarm to go off.
This morning she made porridge and left the gas on and lit. She'd turned it low instead of off. I pointed it out and same conversation again, she's never burned a house down yet. I told her I was worried, could she please triple check everything. Her attitude is that we are over sensitive first time parents. She's very defensive and doesn't want to admit there could be a problem. She's blaming jet lag but has been home 3 weeks. Later this morning she didn't put DS car seat straps on properly, even though I'd just said, make sure they go over his shoulders. She doesn't really listen, just makes her own justifications in her own head.
I really don't want to upset her. In all likelihood she'll not have DS for long during the labour but obviously can't be sure. I could make other arrangements but it would be fairly nuclear, she'd be distraught. We've already decided that after the birth, we will make no more plans to leave her alone with them and just get her to be an extra pair of hands, and manage it that way.
So really it's just the birth. What would you do? Post it notes? Disconnect the gas? Phone her every 30 mins and make her check the gas? Or cancel the whole thing?