to want MIL to wash hands?

[archiesmummy]

Hiya all, I'm back on MN after quite a long absense. For you who don't remember me I have a DS who is now 15 montsh old (wow, where did all that time go?).

I was in te room next to the bathroom recently when MIL used the toilet and she never washed her hands and now I've become paranoid about it.

We are hardly ever there, becuase they smoke in the house, but sometimes (rarely though as I must admit to not trusting v many ppl with ds) mil comes here to sit ds and now I don't want her to touch him at all. Surely the bacteria will spread to my ds and can be dangerous?

She also wiped DS face with a tissue she spat on to get it wet before I had a chance to get a flannel.
And she let DS steal a spoon from a coffee shop because it kept him quiet and when I confronted her about this she said "They have so many spoons" (doh)

I think because of her lack of basic hygiene and morals she shouldn't spend too much time with DS but DH thinks I'm overreacting.

Am I being unreasonable? What would you do about this?

I'm sorry but you all seem to have let MB get away with "Biologically speaking, probably best to keep arse licking metaphorical. But I suppose chacun a son gout , and there are ways to do it safely
"

without insisting she explain the last part of the sentence

tongue condoms?

These germs are good for teh child but not all parents think like that.
When my sister was very emotional and tired etc with new twins on her own she said my mother could not hold the babies unless she covered her clothes completely (as my mother smokes although not in any our houses on visits). My sister didn't want it transferred from clothes to baby which of course in some studies has been found to be damaging. My view as that hurting my mother's feelings was worse than the tiny risk of harm to the babies but my sister was insistent.
I called my mother to talk about it and we went along the lines of X had babies, you get a bit fussy and hormonal, isn't she silly but let's humour her and I think on that basis they worked it out okay and my mother wore the necessary robe.

On the other hand the more germs babies are exposed to hte better they'll survive to adulthood and dirt particularly from floors does them huge good. If they don't get enough dirt they get asthma.

I have heard people tell of cling film twig. Not that I would know on a personal basis!

"we are great big Polos really, with a hole that runs right through us. "

I'm not a feckin' polo thank you very much .. I might be a fine gastronomic wafer-thin mint though

Ponce-tastic twig!!!

Xenia I always had my hands in dirt as a child and I have asthma so how does that work? There's dirt and theres filth.

Does that mean you are full of 'it' then twiggy?

I use a Tesco carrier bag - if you tell them you've recycled them thusly at the checkout you get double Clubcard points. Bonus!

is that before or after you pee in it????

Tesco's?

Well, of course - they don't do double Clubcard points in Waitrose (especially not for carrier bags you've used to rim your DH with - ponces).

Completely irrelevant, but I thought there was more nasty bacteria around sinks and drains........although not sure about washing your hands after using the sink!

Where would you wash them?

Perhaps in the tiolet

Message withdrawn

Hm. health professionals will tell you that the best way to avoid getting colds is to wash your hands a lot and don't touch your mucous membranes. Since I started doing that I stopped getting colds. I am happy to stand with the clean freaks and made my husband tell his parents to wash their hands when they came into our flat, before holding my baby. The Japanese are all clean freaks and I don't think they're significantly more pus-y and snotty, or ridden with deadly diseases, than dirty people I see out and about, who always seem to have some kind of weeping sore or plooky spot thing on their faces, or are coughing. Even if we clean people are nutters, we have nicer fingernails and the faint, charming scent of detergent perfume.

to my mind this is the real one we need to do something about.

'coughs and sneezes spread diseases, trap them in your hankerchief'

I don't think anyone is arging that you shouldn't wash your hands. Just that the individual risk to a chlid from her gran isn't that great.

The smoking in the house is a far greater issue

MB I AM FRIGGING FREEZIN

Turn the heat on... pleaaaaaaaaaseeeeeeeeeeeee

37 degrees ladies....near perfect for incubating those leg bacteria!

Just had a very therapeutic soak with the kids and dh.

Hunker will be pleased to notethat it is well disinfected!

Agree with macneil re. the handwashing thing - when the OH had no immune system following his radiation therapy, I had to wash my hands in a specifically thorough way that took a good 5 minutes, before I was even allowed to touch him, for fear of cross-infection.

Have to say I still do it, because it keeps my fingernails nice & clean (for some reason my fingernails are dirt magnets if left to their own devices...)

I'm surprised everyone's been so blase about the spoon issue, though. Theft is theft. It doesn't matter if the cafe had loads of spoons or not, it all adds up and someone has to pay for them, whether the staff get their wages stopped (this has happened in pubs where I've worked when things keep getting lifted) or prices go up for Joe Public to account for having to keep on buying new spoons! No such thing as a victimless crime...

I'd be rather sniffy about my MIL if she thought that was acceptable behaviour.

As to the spit on a tissue issue, I swore when she was born that I'd never do that to my dd, as I have traumatic memories of being scrubbed at with mummy spit in my dim n' distant youth. But oh yes, I've been there and done that...

Lovecat, you can't compare a person with a normal and healthy immunesystem with one that has a suppressed Immunesystem! There is worls between that!

And just realised I read the cooffeespoon thing in the OP wrong, lol...

I think spit is another issue. I think if you chew food and give it to your baby there are proven studies that that is actually good for the child, some kind of immunities get passed on but that presumably only works between mother and new baby.

3bunnies, I was making the point that you do carry germs on your hands, and you do need to wash them properly, why else would the doctors at Barts have made such a big deal of things! Not washing after going to the loo is disgusting, imho...

But the point that we are making is that with a functional immune system, we don't have to worry too much about them.

You dh didn't have an immune system. That is the difference.

We actually need the bacteria on the surface of our skin.

to put this into perspective, for every single cell of 'you' that makes up your body, there are 10 bacteria!

There is one estimate that a human consists of 50 million million cells. A human will have 500 million million bacteria on them and in them !