Or does DH just not care about risks....

[moonbebe]

Our daughter is 5 months old and born during lockdown.

Neither of our parents have held her.

My husband and I decided from the start we didn't want to take the risk, so people saw her from a distance.

Last month my husband returned to working from the office and has since developed a completely different attitude to the pandemic.

Whilst he's following the guidelines on social distancing, he keeps telling me it's 'not a scary place out there' and that I'm catastrophizing the risks.

He's now decided that it's time for us to allow our parents to hold and spend time "normally" with our daughter.

I however, don't!

I'm fed up of him telling me the risk to children is small!!
I just don't understand him.

I know numbers are low, but Covid is still there and I don't want to put out daughter at unnecessary risk for the sake of our parents wanting a cuddle.

We're in England and the guidance is still to social distance, even for babies, so if the risk was low to children they why not amend this (like Scotland)

My husband is 34 and I'm 33.
I have asthma (controlled) and inflammatory arthritis (not medicated with agreement of rheumatologist) and I'm
also concerned that if our daughter did catch it, that means I could, it worries me that I could be really ill and my biggest fear is been away from my daughter. 😔

I love our daughter so much and I just cannot tolerate the thought of absolutely anything happening to her.

Surely if I've got to make the decision to keep her safe, then allowing her grandparents to hold her (who all go to work every day and work around a lot more people than my husband does)
isn't a safe decision.

I don't know how me and DH are ever going to come to a decision on this because he thinks I'm being unreasonable and I think he is!!!

I’m with you OP (I have a nine month old daughter). Firstly, it is against the guidelines. Secondly - it is unfortunately looking increasingly like it’s airborne, but of course the closer you are, the greater the risk. Thirdly, and this is something that no one has given me a good answer to - what happens if one of you catches it, but not the other? It would be horrendous to have to isolate myself from my daughter because one of us had Covid. She wouldn’t understand and would be inconsolable. So, no thank you!

Perhaps you need to compromise and just let the mum's hold the baby after handwashing and wearing a mask.

Jesus, that's even worse.

The OP already makes no sense by going out enjoying herself in restaurants and coffee shops with her baby and husband.

It'd make even less sense to allow only half of each set of grandparents to hold the baby.

@Quartz2208 One attachment relationship as a minimum. I’m not minimising the importance of fathers and to suggest I am is quite tiresome. Of course fathers are important - but have you heard of single parent families?

The OP's baby doesn't live within a single parent family?

Could you find some middle ground like they wash their hands and wear a mask to hold her?

YABU.

Your wee baby is at more risk from RSV - it causes the death of around 30 babies a year in the UK. Or chicken pox - 5 deaths per year in UK. Or meningitis - 80 deaths. All of this in otherwise healthy children. The number of babies and children who had no underlying health conditions or risk factors who have passed away from COVID-19 : zero. I am not minimising the huge sadness from those children who have sadly passed away but the CMO has pointed out they all had health issues.

You're absolutely right to be careful about your baby, we were militant about handwashing for anyone who came near our ex-prem baby for the first year. But covid-19 is not the risk here.

moonbebe would you feel happier if they did a 'healthcare worker leaving hospital' routine?
They shower, hairwash, put on clean clothes and then come straight over for a snuggle? Provided no cough / fever / loss of taste or smell in last 14 days.

Imagine when your lovely wee dot has her own baby and she will only show her to you from 2 m away and not let you touch her for 5 months, when the risks of covid are much higher for you as the grandparent than the child. That feels like teasing to me.

I know you are trying to protect her and do the right thing, but you will need to bend a little at some point. Truly, it's way safer now than it was.

The guidelines are deliberately a blunt instrument that are designed to stop the spread of the disease in general to avoid overwhelming the health services. The risks have been repeated over and over to ensure compliance, it can only be done with the consent of the public so the media has terrified everyone.

As an individual, you need to make your own risk assessment. As pp have pointed out, statistically the risk is very low and there are other things more likely to happen that you just accept as an every day risk of living.

I live in another country where the approach is far more liberal, but the media has behaved differently and whilst people are sensible, nobody is terrified.

In any event, social distancing guidelines don’t apply to children and arguably by extension babies!

@WorraLiberty

Perhaps you need to compromise and just let the mum's hold the baby after handwashing and wearing a mask.

Jesus, that's even worse.

The OP already makes no sense by going out enjoying herself in restaurants and coffee shops with her baby and husband.

It'd make even less sense to allow only half of each set of grandparents to hold the baby.

Going to restaurants etc is within the rules. People outside her household having physical contact with her baby is AGAINST the rules!

You come across as incredibly anxious, OP.

I don't think your actions are rational or reasonable. You're happy to go out to cafes and restaurants, where seats etc. aren't wiped or sanitised in between customers, and where staff don't wear masks or social distance. But you're not happy to let your own mum hug your child?

I can't imagine being in a situation where I think that's okay, and I suspect your DH's parent have spoken to him, which is why he's speaking up now. How long are you planning for this to continue? Six months? A year? Two years?

What will you do when DD is crawling and crawls over to grandma? Or if you pop to the toilet and she's toddling along about to hurt herself - would it be okay for granddad to swoop in and stop her? When does it become okay for them to touch their grandchildren again?

I think it’s up to you OP.

I have been reading the responses in amazement tbh in relation to how obsessive mnetters are about the roolz.

I suspect if you posted the opposite and you were MIL wanting to hold baby you would get your arse handed to you on a plate 🤷🏻‍♀️

Going to restaurants etc is within the rules. People outside her household having physical contact with her baby is AGAINST the rules!

Not in most areas of England it isn't.

Grandparents are allowed to see their grandchildren, although hugging is 'discouraged', it's not against the rules.

The main reason children still have to social distance in England and not in Scotland and Wales is because they’ve opened up loads of businesses and activities sooner...not because they’ve taken a different stance on whether it’s dangerous to children or not.

If everything is open and children aren’t social distancing then it’ll raise the rates too high. The U.K. government chose not to prioritise young children mixing with different families.

I’m in Scotland and I’m still not able to open my business fully as it means too many people in a room, but, children can hug... it’s a pay off to keep the rates down as much as possible, not an individual risk assessment.

@Spied

Your child- your rules. You aren't going to feel comfortable standing watching the grandparents holding DC so why on Earth consider allowing it just to appease others? You aren't ready yet and that's that.

Umm ... she's also the OP's DH's child too or does he not count?

OP, what are you going to do in a couple of months if social distancing is still in place and your daughter starts crawling? If her grandparents are there and she crawls up to them, what do you expect them to do - walk away from her?

At what point, exactly, do you see someone else touching your baby? What has to happen for you to feel that it is safe? What if there is never a vaccine? We know covid won't go away.

Plus, it has been shown very clearly now, that children are at far lower risk of even contracting covid. And those that died (absolutely awful) had serious life limiting co-morbidities.

But yes, I would be keen to know the answer to my first point

Yes as @EDSGFC stated it is recognised as an airborne disease. It's has been on the news.

Do you sanitise everything that your guests touch when they visit? The seats and cushions, the carpet? The door handles?

I assume not, then there is little more risk to to dc by having her held.

You clearly feel strongly about it, so you just have to find a compromise with your dh.

I think you are massively overreacting. Of course you are correct you are officially following the guidelines, because this government is completely ridiculous. But how can you possibly be okay with going to restaurants, lots of indoor time and many more people passing through, touching tables, door handles, toilet doors ect but not allowing grandparents to touch the baby. The risk to small children is very small. Building up immunity and interacting with close relatives is important.

This thread is properly bonkers! I don't think I have ever seen a thread with quite so many posters who seem incapable of reading the OP.

You may disagree with the OP, but accusing her of extreme anxiety and paranoia is ridiculous! All she is doing is following the normal rules that everybody else is supposed to be following too fgs! Going out, seeing friends and family, but avoiding close contact between the people in their household and everybody outside it. There's no exemption based on age!

All the people quoting figures about Covid cases in children- are you implying that people should be ignoring the social distancing rules and just making their own judgments about whether to hug people based on how high a risk category they are in?

Agree, proper bonkers thread!

I don’t think either of you are really being unreasonable, you just have a different perspective. The bigger risk seems to be to you rather than your daughter. She’s likely to be absolutely fine if she gets it.

It’s a bit of a stalemate because ultimately she’s his baby as much as yours and if he wants to let his parents hold her I’m not sure you can do much to stop him. Maybe ask him to get them to wear a mask and do it outside if they are going to

YABU...sorry!

OP like many others have said, it really just depends on your decision based on risk. Some people are more risk averse than others. I do think you need to take your husbands point of view into account though. Some people will view the risk of Covid as less than the risk of months/years of no social interaction for our children. Personally I am in the latter group. I have let family and friends hold DS (6 months). DD (3yrs) is in nursery so he's probably being exposed to toddler germs anyway. The risk of contracting the virus is currently very low. The risk to children is tiny. We "followed the rules" for four months and now i think common sense has to prevail. Nobody in our circle is high risk or shielding so I am comfortable with some social interaction between us.

YABU

The risk is so very minimal.

Tiny. Minuscule.

Wow, YABVU. The risk to your daughter and you is practically zero. IMO you are causing her more damage by keeping her isolated - her development will be massively behind other children.

Do you work? If so what’s your childcare plan?
YABU. Think a vote on this would have demonstrated that