AIBU to tell friend to report her OH's behaviour with their 4wk old baby?

[WilsonPoppy]

I've name changed for this. I don't have kids yet so I need help to judge this one.

My friend just had a baby 4 weeks ago and was struggling with recovery from caesarian at first but now she is settled and really happy although she has tendencies to be quite stressed and a bit low.

BUT she told me in conversation today that her OH can be quite rough with the baby and last night they were both sitting on the sofa with baby laying down in the bouncer in front of him. My friend couldn't pick baby up from that awkward angle because of her caesarian scar so she asked OH to pick her up and pass her over. She said he picked her up by the scruff of her neck (her baby grow) with one hand and handed her over to her like that across the sofa.

She said she went mad with him and he said he was busy with his other hand (doing something to his foot). I told her that he needs to know he can't handle a baby like that and she totally agreed it was ridiculous and said the baby should be a priority over his ankle.

She told me he is quite rough with the baby and shakes her around a bit too much sometimes when he is changing her/winding her. She then said that he walks around with her in one hand and she doesn't like it. She's told him to use two hands but she saw him with her tucked under his arm like a rugby ball and he went to the toilet and did the toilet with her like that a couple of times and she went mad with him.

After I took all this in I said 'You need to talk to him about this very seriously, he can't do that, it's really disrespectful, it's child abuse' and she said 'he won't do it again, i've told him'. She thinks he is just a bit naive about babies and it's early days and he has zero common sense. He is a big drinker but she tells me he has been behaving himself lately. When he drinks he gets so drunk he doesn't even know who she is or where he lives.

The day they came home from hospital he was swinging her very high up (above his head) quite fast and I thought 'that's too high, too fast' for a 4 day old baby'. I didn't say anything then and maybe i should have. Her neck was supported and she was tiny in his big hands.

I can't ignore it and I'm going to tell her to speak to her health visitor / GP / doctor about it.

AIBU to tell her she has got to tell her health visitor what her OH is doing?

I'm with AF on this. I've just been through child protection training and I'm certain that the advice here would be to report. Yes, it might be a confident father and an overanxious mother. But it might also be child abuse with the potential to lead to death.

Someone should be finding out which it is- someone who is trained to do so.

DH had only ever held one baby in his life before DS and he spent the first weeks picking him up and holding him as though he was an unexploded bomb - not just casually picking him up like a small animal, waving him around and shaking him.
However I did carry all 3 of mine one handed pretty much all the time, I think it just became a natural thing to do very quickly.
I would definitely phone the NSPCC for advice and go from there.

He thinks it's funny to rough handle a tiny baby in a way that could potentially damage them order to wind up his partner?
He's a cunt.

Idontseeanytimelords

I agree- my OH had never held a baby before our own, he picked him up as though he was the most fragile thing in the world. Like you I mastered the art of holding babies one handed, but doing that safely and comfortably takes experience.

OH MY GOD

He's not in the animal Kingdom, he's not feeding them with his own milk. He's got no fucking idea what he's doing and he's not listening to his partner. As said above, a new Dad's instinct should be to treat them like China not a filthy tea towel.

One of those, on a bad day might be excusable. But all of them, all the text, with no shame? The baby is only a month old he's pretty much just held together by skin at this age. All this trial-by-fire multiple Mum thing is just horse shit.

OP you should shout about this to the NSPCC definitely. At 4 weeks they still sleep a lot - imagine how rough it will get when teething and developmental leaps kick in?!

I don't think accusing posters who don't agree with a particular viewpoint of minimising and excusing things is helpful. In fact, it's shitty loud bullying behaviour. This isn't a black and white situation. The concerning portion of the OP is hearsay so no need to whip up the hysterics.

I'd be reporting it myself I'm afraid. I wouldn't even handle a dog like that.

I'm remembering back to when we had our first baby, a long long time ago, both of us only 18, neither of us used to babies at all, but both of us in awe of our precious little bundle. I can still picture my very young and proud DH and the way he held our baby, almost like she was a china doll, very besotted gentle and loving.He didn't know anything about babies but there's no way he would have done any of those things. If anything he was over cautious, he was that afraid of getting anything wrong.
I couldn't trust a man if he treated a baby this way.

I remember once my xh who had a drink problem getting drunk and lifting ds in the pram high up to move the pram over a coffee table. He was trying to be sensible as ds was asleep and only a few weeks old and the room was small and the table had glasses on. But ds wasn't strapped in and if he had tipped the pram he would have slid out and fallen at least a metre to the floor. He wasn't being deliberately reckless and he would never have done it had his judgement not been impaired by alcohol but it certainly gave me a fright. The description of this guy picking the baby up by his clothes reminds me of that. Is this guy drinking?nwhat does she mean by behaving himself? I doubt that means he's sober, probably more likely that he's not getting puking drunk regularly.

Holding a baby by the stuff of their neck is concerning.
However, loads of people hold a baby with one arm. My stepdad only has one arm and he's got 3 kids.
Ultimately it's up to your friend. She was confiding in you.speak to nspcc for advice maybe

The baby might be fine.
But the concern is that if he treats the baby this casually despite being a very new father, that he will simply get rougher with time.
But I have always found the NSPCC to be very sensible. So please ring them.

So, to summarise: he's an alcoholic cunt, so resentful of being forced to stop drinking (although he hasn't, and won't) that he is deliberately shaking and handling his baby dangerously in order to punish/wind up his partner, who is scared and should probably leave him. And report him. Anyone who thinks otherwise is minimising the situation and making excuses for child abuse. For FUCKSAKE!!!!!!

Or, the OP saw him swinging the baby above his head, once (with the neck supported, unless that was a typo). And has had a conversation with the mother, who thinks he is a bit naive with babies, but has spoken to him about it and reckons he will pick his own up more carefully in the future - although honestly, she was really pissed off with him at the time. Maybe it would be helpful if a health visitor could advise both parents in this early, often fraught stage of parenting.

A 4 week old baby has no voice.
It's either up to you op to report your concerns or the mother.
I don't get why people are so frightened to report things, what if something happened to the baby and no one had intervened?
How would you feel?
I'm sure you'd feel worse for not doing something. If all is ok then great.

The mention of shaking alone is enough for me to say report.

It takes terrifyingly little shaking to do lifetime long damage/kill a baby.

QuietLife - When babies or children are killed, it is very rare for neighbours or friends not to know something was wrong. And yet they hadn't reported it. People seem afraid of reporting anything that isn't extreme abuse. And yet, normally what goes on behind closed doors is worse than what you see in public.

People need to stop saying it's fine to hold baby with one hand because lots of us do that. Not in this case it's not fine....because of all the other disturbing things he does, so there's no point in saying it. Holding baby in one hand, along with shaking her, swinging her high and picking her up by the scruff of the neck is sickening and abusive and something should be done and quick.

I agree colley

I would suggest she book herself and her partner onto a baby first aid course loads of new parents do it and red cross often offer them for a small donation this way she can inadvertently show him how to care for his child without saying you are a bad parent, sounds like he is a muppet.

Failing that get the health visitor to show them 'both' a few handling techniques for new babies this way he won't feel like he is being judged.

I think she needs a good friend and going in telling her what to do may mean she will push you away and really you should be there to support her if it worsens and you don't want her to keep things from you, if it does get worse and you suspect the child is at risk then you can report it as a safeguarding issue but right now I would hold back and support her while she deals with it x x

I would report these concerns to the NSPCC or SS immediately.

Your OP made me gasp. I'd have freaked out if DH had done that to DS when he was little. If he won't listen and change his behaviour, I'd call SS.

From what you've said OP, the first thing that came to mind for me is 'He's resentful of the baby'. Apparently it can be a very common thing. A couple of years ago there was a spate of articles in the press where men congratulated themselves on admitting that they either had no feelings for their babies, or were downright irritated and annoyed by them, and fantasised about throwing them out of windows.

And if that's the case, he'll survive. You can't say that for sure about the newborn though. Do some people just close their eyes to statements like 'he picked her up by the scruff of the neck with one hand'? That is physically abusive. We didn't need to be there and see it to know that.

Please do report it. This guy doesn't need baby holding lessons, he needs to be monitored.

The family could benefit from support that could come from reporting.

Yes there are safe ways to hold a baby single handed, but the description of his other handling of the baby doesn't imply that he is carefully and gently supporting the baby. Even stronger babies with earlier head control still have very weak necks to support a heavy head. That's why the car seats are focused on reducing movement of the head for that age group.

Sometimes people have accidental moments with babies. 3 or 4 days post EMCS with other complications, I dropped Ds head first into the crib as my strength gave out leaning over the bedrails, and I felt dreadful. But what the OP is describing is not an accident from a caring parent, it is indifferent and neglectful and likely to cause long term harm to the baby, worse, that harm is not necessarily easy to notice. The mother herself is concerned and needs that support.

I think having a word with HV is a good idea. If it is just inexperience she will speak to your friend and her partner and explain about how to handle such a new baby. If it's more malign on partners part HV will keep a closer eye on them.

Or, Multivac you could stop projecting your own holding techniques on to this bloke.

You are not the only twin mum in the mumsnet village, and I know for a fact that no-one ever came close to worrying about the way I picked up my two, because they were obviously safe.

My holds, as yours, were adaptations to the situation and thus SAFETY was paramount. And safe mine were, even though they were very delicate. His clearly stem from being, at the very least, a careless, thoughtless twonk. Or worse.

They're not comparable.

It doesn't sound like the Dh is being deliberately rough and trying to hurt the baby. The suggestion that it's child abuse is ridiculous.