To not let my MIL and FIL look after our son again?

[PeachMelba78]

My wife gave birth to our son - he is almost 8 months old. She has gone back to work for a period of 2 days a week for 4 weeks only in a contract.
I, along with my Mum, and now her Mum and Dad, have been covering the 2 days per week that she is working for, from 10-5.30pm.

We have started a new routine during the day with our son has responded really well too, he has been sleeping loads more and is not overtired during the day, and has generally been a lot happier.
My wife left strict written instructions for her Mum re. the new routine, exactly what time to feed him, put him to bed for a nap etc.
She totally disregarded the bed times, got him overtired and herself worked up, and then was calling me at my work, on and off for over 1 1/2 hours (I had to apologise to my boss!), and basically my son missed 2 nap times and was in a right state by the time I got home.

I asked her many times over the phone to put him down in the cot, and if that wasn't working to take him out for a long walk. My wife is generally not meant to take any personal calls at work but she also got dragged into the situation and was saying the same as me.
My MIL refused to put him down after agreeing to it and then refused to take him out, again after agreeing to it, he slept for less than an hour and projectile vomited later (who knows why but I suspect he was overtired still).

We are so cross that she did not follow the instructions, both written and then on the phone, she talked over us on the phone and then told us that evening that she 'doesn't do routine' WTF! My wife said 'with X (our son) you do!'
We have both said to each other - not yet to her - that we don't want her and my FIL to look after him again but I am not sure if we are being too harsh? My FIL said he was calm and detatched whist my MIL was 'clearly in a state' - his words - so I asked him why he didn't help his wife and be more proactive - he got v defensive but she agreed that would have helped her.

They were meant to be looking after him again today so I sent my sis round for the day (she is on mat leave so took her daughter) but I am annoyed that we needed to do this, we trusted them and I feel like they let my son down.

AIBU? They are really good at playing with him but my MIL gets so flustered with even simple things like getting him in and out of his high chair or pram so we are reluctant to ever let them take sole charge again - which makes us feel really sad.

Diddl me neither, DH and I never really had a routine with our 2, more just wing it types . Although we do like the DD's to be in bed by 7.30 ish, although DD1 is currently sat on the sofa eating a raw carrot reading a book watching the tv as DH is at karate tonight and DD and I like our Tuesday evenings together.

You gave squeaky a strap on! :o

I agree with Squeakytoy and CurrySpice. You sound very pompous to me - as though you're planning to sack poor PIL for misconduct!

Speaking as a childminder, I'd say your DS was ill and that's why he was so difficult all day and why he was sick. If you were one of my clients, I'd have expected you to come out and collect him. I think you owe your MIL an apology - what a charming way to be repaid for doing you a favour, I don't think!

hi peach.

i totally agree that ur mil should have taken on board ur instructions....end of the day she is just a grandma, and just because "shes been there and done it all" doesnt mean anything, a routine is very important to a child and his/her mother, its how they learn, my dd is 3 now and still has a routine.

i get fed up with my mother being the big i am jus because shes had 2 children and done it all on her own, my dd is lactose intorlerant, so im forever telling my mother not to give her anything with milk in it, otherwise she ends up grumpy and constipated but then i get well its only a little treat.

atleast ur wife has taken her first steps into gettin back to work, which i admit is very hard to do, so therefore any hand is a big help, unless like u say, they dont take on board the childs needs, its also not very good if the child is in a stressed out enviroment, jus make it clear: its not about u, its about the child!!

she is just a grandma

Nice. I hope my kids grow up to respect me a lot more than you do your mother.

Oh dear, I do think you're being unreasonable. I think also that none of us unless we're older grandparents know what it's like for them. My mother-in-law stayed with us when my baby was 3 months old and I had a 2 year old. She would leave 3 month old on floor and iron saying ,' I can't do anything with him!' when i walked into room to see what was going on. We never iron in our house so although she thought she was being helpful she wasn't. She stayed with us for a month and took the baby out for a walk once so I could get some work done. She was home in 10 minutes saying the baby is bellowing so I've brought him back.
I realised though that she had no confidence in her ability to look after a baby. She had- of course- forgotten how to do anything with a baby and this is not surprising. I can imagine your mother in law tried to follow the routine but when it didn't seem to be working she paniced.
I once looked after my 10 month old and a friend's for a afternoon. Her baby cried so much and seemed so distraught I ended up phoning my friend cos I thought something must be wrong with the baby!
Take some deep breaths, tell your mother in law to just do her best and try not to dwell on it so much.
I also had my babies on routines but they don't work for everyone. Yes it's your baby but your mother in law will have her own way of doing things.

gosh, you're being pfb.

Dont sweat the small stuff, parenting's going to get a lot tougher than this before it gets better.

I don't think you're being completely unreasonable. A bit of leeway in a routine is fine so maybe you were being a bit PFB there, but if she calls you at work and asks you what to do, you tell her, and then she disregards it, well...she is the one BU in that case.

I think what would have annoyed me was the calling for advice and then ignoring it.

She obviously flapped, my MIL did this as well. Went in too deep the first time.

Since it isn't a regular arrangement the issue of them not having him again is non-existent IMO. I would arrange for them to take him out for 2/3 hours here and there and slowly build them up. Make sure he's fed and then pack them off (somewhere like a walk to the park where he can drop off to sleep). As he gets older it will be a lot easier for them (and you).

If you're stuck for childcare as stressful as it might be a day being overtired is not going to overturn everything. these days will happen even with you looking after him (illness, teething, random changes and routine then suddenly not working anymore). I do remember that stage where missed naps felt so important, but honestly you will look back and realise that everyone over reacted here and we're only at 15months.

Maybe MIL didn´t ignore the advice-but couldn´t get it to work?

It is quite simple. You can't control things when you are not there. If you get relatives to do free childcare you can give them reams of instructions -but you can't make them follow. If routine and 'your way' is more important then pay for childcare that suits you.

Could it be your son picked that day to not want to do his "usual" routine (if there is such a thing at 8 months!) then would n't settle as expected so got worked up no matter what ? Maybe for him the chopping and changing of childcare is too much just yet or he wasn't feeling 100% (especially if he has encountered a bug at nursery). Even if they had shadowed before they won't have picked up the more subtle cues for tired, hungry, wet etc that your wife has over the course fo 8 months. Overtiredness happens, it's a pain but not damaging long term.

MIL obviously got upset and anxious becasue she flet she could do nothing right, but you say she doesn't need to look after him alone again for a while. Let them do so, perhaps in a month or so, for a shorter period so he can't get so worked up and rebuild everyone's confidence. tbh you really don't want to be saying never again just yet, he wasn't endangered after all.

You are overthinking this. Your mil was overwhelmed by the new situation and responsibility and could not cope. She should possibly not look after the baby again for a day, not to "punish" her, but to recognize that this is not working out. She had her best intentions, and tried to help. If your baby is already in a nursery once a week, why could she not arrange for the nursery to look after him?

If you have a childminder, your ds will almost certainly have to fit round the needs of the other children too; so your regimented routine list may quietly have to go out of the window; she won't be able to not pick up another child from school or playschool just because it happens to be the time for your ds' nap. I found this very good for my dcs, as it helped them to become more flexible.

YANBU to arrange different childcare when it turned out your MIL couldn't cope.

YABU to get upset about it.

Your MIL thought she would be able to handle looking after your DS - and clearly wanted to help you. You initially thought she'd be up to it too. Then it turned out she just wasn't able to cope.

Grandparents often say that it's really scary the first time they have full responsibility for their grandchildren - way scarier than looking after your own children, when you know that there's really no alternative so you just have to get on with it and figure it out. Your wife is their child, and hugely important to them, and your DS is her child - and they fully understand what he means to her. The fear of something going wrong and the child being harmed, and everything that would mean, just doesn't bear thinking about. It's probably also the first time they've looked after a baby in a long time, and your DS is still very young.

Don't give them a hard time about it, they probably already feel pretty bad. You've got a lot of years when you're going to need help with childcare ahead! Once he's a few years older, she'll know him better, feel more confident, and of course he'll be more self-reliant and not so difficult to care for. Then, she may well turn out to be a huge support and help to you - and hopefully build a great relationship with your DS which will be a source of joy to them both.

I think normally new parents can be a bit over the top about routines (me included) but shouldn't worry too much when they are with other people.

In your case though it sounds like your baby really needs the routine and gets into a state without it. That would be fine if your MIL could handle the baby getting into a state but she obviously can't! I dont understand why she kept phoning for advice and refused to take it, weird!

I would say give her another chance but explain how unhappy the baby was (and she was) and that she needs to stick to it. If she doesn't and the baby is really that bad after being with her then I don't think you can leave the baby their again.

I suppose you need to look at it objectively, was it really that bad? I have a friend who is uptight about routine and thinks it's terrible if her baby takes an extra 10 mins to settle at night because of it but IMO that's over the top.

I agree with those saying that the upset wasn't necessarily caused by a change to routine.

My 8mth-old has a routine that she fell into along the way and is generally a happy little soul. A couple of days ago she had the day from hell with lots of shrieking and refusing to sleep. If she hadn't been mine I might well have been panicky too and phoning the parents. She's my 4th child so it wasn't a lack of experience or forgetting what to do. There was no obvious sign of illness and she was back to her usual self the next day.

Sometimes these things just happen.

Perhaps she can just have baby for an hour or so here & there?

But I think it´s just unfortunate that she was so insecure she wanted "instructions" & then couldn´t get them to work.

Mine are teenagers & tbh I can barely remember what I did at 8months.

yeah well backwardpossom if u had to put up with the things like i did with my mother ud see why.

i dont have any respect for my mum coz shes never had it for me simple as, iv jus been a burdern in her life for 25 yrs, a product of some one who used to beat her, a little reminder of wat my so called father did to her.

i have more respect for my own grandparents than i do her

That;s very sad to hear rachy :( but not really relevant to the OP's issues here