To be disappointed with SILs decision re new baby.

[ankara]

Respecting that all parents are quite within their rights to determine interaction between others and their babies, I am very disappointed and a bit 🙄 at SILs decision to put up a big sign at baby's cradle saying no touching , no lifting, no kissing.
There are no medical reasons for this. Baby is three weeks old.
None of the family have been allowed to do the above unless baby has been handed to family to give a bottle or r change baby.
I understand; that this is their first and is of course most precious but we are all a bit and also disappointed as we love babies and we're so looking forward to cuddles .
Brother just goes along with her.
Is this a new thing? My kids are nearly teens now and I've not seen this before .

Sign sounds rude and ridiculous to me. If she's so anxious and precious about it don't invite people around. Also, holding a newborn when offered doesn't seem to be a problem to me, but kissing them seems really unnecessary and more dangerous to the baby. I would probably mention that to visitors. She will freak out when the baby starts nursery

Several of my friends’ winter born babies ended up in hospital with RSV bronchiolitis. One of them was so ill that the family were told to say goodbye as he likely wasn’t going to make it. He recovered, but his mother and grandmother can’t talk about it to this day, 10 years later, without crying. His mother said it completely changed the way she parents, for the rest of her life. My 16 month old was in hospital in the High Dependency Unit this autumn with Rhinovirus bronchiolitis - yes, rhinovirus, so common cold. It was the most frightening experience of my entire life. Believe me, when you see your tiny child fighting for breath, completely terrified in a CPAP mask, and the medical team start talking to you about ventilation, you stop being so blasé about these things. He was also in hospital with an adenovirus at 5 weeks old, but that was thankfully more of a precaution. So - I’m with her.

Also, I really found the post about women making too much fuss during pregnancy and too many C Sections extremely distasteful. Pregnancy makes huge demands on the body and women shouldn’t have to just get on with it if they are struggling. Great for you if you felt well in your pregnancy, but many don’t.

As for C sections, I lost 2.9l of blood, had a third degree tear and lost the ability to use my bladder for a while after a vaginal birth. I will always fight tooth and nail for any woman’s right to have an ELCS for whatever reason - even if it’s just because she doesn’t fancy the risk of birth injuries!!

It’s quite amusing to see people declaring it so ridiculous and claiming it has zero medical basis while ignoring the fact that some people have been told when leaving UK hospitals to do it, and Ireland has basically told all parents of young babies to cocoon them because of the danger of RSV and high numbers of covid.

Oh to be so arrogant.

So many people on Mumsnet who think the placenta and breast milk provide immunity to all viruses and bacteria out there 🫣

Honestly are these the people visiting newborns with colds? Because the baby can’t catch it because of its immunity superpower? Maybe all newborns need signs! 😂 The world is more full of fuckwits than we thought.

And we’ve had a NICU nurse asserting newborns benefit from exposure to pathogens, although she hasn’t returned with any links to published research or medical advice to back that up, unlike the medical advice other posters have linked to that states the opposite. I really hope this “NICU nurse” is like my friend’s SIL who “used to be a nurse” and is a self proclaimed expert on all matters medical, except she wasn’t a nurse, she was a ward auxiliary for few months in the early ‘90s and has no medical training.

It’s quite amusing to see people declaring it so ridiculous and claiming it has zero medical basis while ignoring the fact that some people have been told when leaving UK hospitals to do it,

Has OP's SiL been told to do it?

You sound entitled and I totally understand why sil has done this.
It's rsv and cold time. Kissing - coldsores can kill newborns.
Back off, stop judging and support a new mum. It's a child not a toy for you and your family to pass around and play with.

Putting up a sign is over dramatic and rude. If she doesn't want anyone touching the baby, she should just say so. I think its a shame for all concerned though when a mother is so controlling and treats her baby as her possession to share out at her whim (and it is that, rather than caution, as its apparantly fine for relatives to hold the child to feed and change it for her!) but it does seem to be a popular bit of power for some these days.

It's a child not a toy for you and your family to pass around and play with.

Yes because holding a newborn is treating it like a ' toy '.

Or maybe she has told people and still don't listen...after all op might be one of those people since she is moaning about it.

Its her child she is allowed to decided what is right for her child not you or anyone else.

I don't think it's any coincidence that the rise of "my baby my rules" has totally coincided with the rise of "there's no more village/ community/ support" and it's sad that new parents don't realise that these things are linked. I have a sibling and their partner who were like this. As a consequence I had zero relationship with my now 4 year old niece, and so do my kids which was devastating (no holding/ touching/ kissing allowed until she was over 3 at which point it was too scary for her anyway).

I know people will say "oh that's their right" and sure, they exercised it, but now their child is incredibly shy and socially unconfident and inappropriate. Meanwhile the parents complain about being isolated etc.

I think when you're a new parent the protective instincts are so high- I have a number of very young kids so remember it well. But part of being a parent is learning to make judgment of when to rein in the paranoia so you don't infect your kids with it. Part of reining it in is making early efforts to build your children a community and network of trustworthy, loving adults around them. In modern parenting, that has been lost.

Good for her. Your feelings are not as important as how she feels about her baby's health. If you've ever had a baby with RSV you'd understand.

Probably it’s the mother’s annoyance at everyone treating the baby like a toy to be played with. I’ve had this with mine over Christmas. Not allowing my baby to nap or feed as they want to instead play with her which makes her angry when she is over tired. But that’s ok isn’t it, because “nana snuggles” are all that a baby needs, not sleep or food. No kissing is an obvious one but most family think their kisses are much more important than a baby’s health.

Having a sign seems a bit extreme, but maybe she's had trouble with people disregarding her requests.

When I was a kid (in the 70s), we knew a younger child, who had spent the first year of his life in hospital, much of it in an oxygen tent, much of it with a tracheotomy due to catching an infection in his first week, which led to severe pneumonia. He hadn't been expected to live. Well, he was one of the lucky ones. He did survive. He did not suffer brain damage from oxygen deprivation. He did not have long-term speech impairment from the tracheotomy. He did not even have obvious mental health problems from his traumatic first year (not so sure about his parents). But it was hardly what one wants for a baby!

I am not sure what infection he had, and it may well be one of those for which babies are now vaccinated. But newborns cannot be simply assumed to be robust and invulnerable.

I wish I had the balls to get that sign 😂

I agree with the comments here about balancing risk. In fairness, though, the baby is still very, very tiny and the risk of infection during cold season could easily be said to be more pertinent at this age when the baby is not yet recognising anyone except mum ( by smell mostly) and can’t actually even see properly yet. It was also an occasion with quite a number of people by the sound of it. I can see why the SIL might have felt the better balance in this instance was protection. In six months time, or even now but with just grandparents visiting for exposure etc, the balance could easily fall elsewhere. For now I don’t think limiting handling by lots of people was so unreasonable. Let’s be honest about how much social development a newborn really gets from a baffling array of strange handlers they can’t really see and won’t see again for ages. Social development , like charity, begins at home and with primary caregivers in the early months.

Perhaps the baby has been born with some genetic condition which the parents don't want to discuss. Quite right too. Why should newborns have their health and piracy compromised because people are curious?

After covid, it is not that surprising. Flu is very real risk at this time of year, and if the mother isn't breast feeding, the baby has very little immunity until it's first vaccines. Puppies and kittens are not allowed out in public before they are vaccinated, yet no one comments on that.

With such a nasty vindictive attitude, you might well not get invited to the baby's first birthday anyway!

I think the sign itself was an off-putting way to go about an otherwise understandable concern.

Oops sorry didn’t mean to append to you Ilizzie!

Exactly. RSV made my newborn’s heart stop and put her in intensive care on a ventilator, heart monitor and affected her brain.

So what if the SIL wants to protect her baby? The nasty fuckers on here should save their scorn for parents who abuse and torment their children, not those trying to protect them.

Well, its her baby so it’s her choice - a bit weird to put a sign up but takes all sorts.
However, this fad of not allowing anyone anywhere near a baby is just storing up a load of trouble for the future. The most effective way of ensuring babies / children / adults can fight off exposures to bacteria / viruses is to be exposed to lots of different ones from an early age. They then develop resistance. New born babies come with ready made resistance from their mother anyway.

We we can hardly be surprised by the selfishness of adults who really should know better. You would think covid was enough to teach peolle but no. We are back to grown adults ina more flexible work world where they still insist on getting on public transport whilst being really ill and coughing openly or coughing in their hand and using that hand to then hold onto the hand rails I mean ffs did noone learn anything

Such is the disregard for anyone else so unsurprising you get those same people who think nothing less of babies. Ots not like the baby is a few mo the old and been vaccinated.

I mean, the sign sounds a bit extreme but I completely understand SIL wanting to make her boundaries clear. As a fairly new mother to my first child (4 month old DD), I understand the overwhelming anxiety that you feel when you have a baby (first ever) as I would have thought you would too.

You might be disappointed but you are not entitled to hold the baby. The baby does not benefit at all at that tender age and only needs close interaction with their parents/primary caregivers. It may not have been this way 15 odd years ago but times have changed. As always, further research has happened since then and also we are living in a post COVID world now.

The only person who will benefit from that interaction is you. Don’t make it about yourself at this early stage. SIL is probably anxious and knackered and in need of support and understanding at this time. It already feels like a lifetime ago for me, albeit it only a few months, but that first month is exhausting. Truly exhausting. Nobody can ever make you understand what it feels like to first become a parent, you only know when you become one (again, as you must well know) and Jesus christ, I’ve only recently gotten over the exhaustion of it all myself. I feel for her.

I think it's sensible especially for a bottle-fed baby. There are so many bugs that are potentially deadly to a newborn and I think people are more aware of what can be passed in a simple kiss.

My grandma put her knuckle into my babies mouth when he was 4 weeks old?! And MIL used to constantly touch my daughters face with unclean hands. Some people are just so weird when it comes to newborns, they think it's OK to kiss their mouths/faces, touch their faces, pass them around, hold them when they are ill etc. There is a lot more info out there these days about RSV and how dangerous it can be for babies. I think she has every right to put boundaries in place, the sign might be a little over the top, but maybe she doesn't want to repeat herself or have to justify her reasons.