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 .

I hope she's on here and sees you mocking her and then never invites you again tbh

The sign is OTT and I'd honestly just back off. Hopefully, some people will still show interest when baby is a toddler and she's desperate for a break.

I can appreciate your SIL point but I do think it a bit OTT and more likely to create a lack of interest in the child.

Is it so hard to imagine that not everyone is the same as you? She may be feeling very anxious and protective over her brand new baby and need to do this for herself. You were different. So what?

Pregnancy is hard and the generational difference is that women today don’t want to have their needs ignored and just suck it up for appearances, while giving themselves long term health issues from the stress. So good on them if they need signing off early and prioritise their needs over being a good economically productive worker. However all the women I know work to 38 weeks and the stress of it is a massive factor on birth and the first few weeks.

there are more C sections becuase modern birth is, for lack of a better word, an over medicalised shit show. Which more often that not seems to end in lasting trauma for the new mum. This is all over the news, midwifery is underfunded and under supported and women are bearing the consequences. But yes imply that women are fat and lazy as the cause 🙄

And women are called selfish and unable to hack it by older generations who had more support, provisions, governmental budget etc. and feel entitled to hold our babies and say we’re being OTT when we say no. Cool.

HVs do come out with some absolute tripe, don’t they? Glad you ignored them.

Putting a sign up is ridiculous.
It does seem to be a relatively new 'thing' in certain Western cultures, yes, with people listing their requirements for visitors meeting a baby and posting them on the gram and tiktok.

I know I'm not sure why it's thar difficult to imagine!

😂
I think we can all agree mortality rates have gone down over the past 200 years.
But I assume this is mainly due to advances in medicine, living conditions and antenatal care maybe?
If you can point me to statistics that show mortality has gone down appreciably in the past 10/20 years due to parents limiting contact to their newborn I might think you are not being ridiculous

Brother just goes along with her

This part of your OP gives you away also. Your brother is a grown man and a father and also has say in what happens to his new baby. You don't like the fact that he and is wife presumably agree on this so you choose to infantalise him and pretend that it's all her 'fault'.

You just don't like your SIL.

Your SIL is putting her boundaries in place. She's saying that if you want to deal with her child, you go through her.
She comes across as an arse but that's not a bad thing, but sometimes that's what is needed. The alternative is being a people pleaser.

If she's so woreies about germs, stay at home. Don't invite people over. It's simple.

It is a new thing, op, I cant help but wonder about all these babies who are growing up with very reduced contact with family and friends. No one should just be scooping a slumbering baby out of it's cot and smothering it with kisses. However, only allowing very controlled access to cuddles, love and affection comes with problems too. It's difficult yo bond with a child when the parents have strict rules. You become afraid of doing the wrong thing and eventually stop doing anything. It's a natural instinct, for many, to want to hold and comfort a baby, to help the parents etc. If we are ignoring this instinct are we just creating children who don't know how to interact and bond?

And before anyone comes with the whole 'boundaries' thing, yes, it's important. Yes, we should respect them. They should be taught to the child as they grow, and adults should always ask. As another poster says though, the parents should also consider if they are imposing these boundaries for rhe beatbinterest of the baby, or just because they can.

She’s clearly got a sign because she’s exhausted and cannot be bothered to discuss her very reasonable boundaries with every family member if she has to verbally explain them. And then listen to them challenge her and moan about how it was never like that in their day and everyone lived (except the ones who didn’t obviously)

Her requests are reasonable and I am genuinely aghast at adults who think that their desire for a cuddle outweighs the risk of infection to a tiny baby at a time of year when bugs are rife. It’s not about rejecting ‘the village’, it’s about a reasonable assessment of risk. Will you be the one taking a newborn to A&E at 3am with RSV? Or staying with them when they’re admitted because they’re so unwell? No, you won’t will you? The baby’s parents will be and it’s totally reasonable. The baby is not a toy. It’s also not about bonding either if you aren’t going to see the baby again for some time.

OP your latest post is very odd, clearly modern mothers are just inferior to the workhorse mothers of the past.

You see a few threads on here from SILs point of view and there are always a small group of people who support this type of behaviour

I think that the SIL and the supporter types are batshit crazy PFB types and nutters, one and all.

OP hopefully SIL gets over the PFB stage soon.

My comments make perfect sense.
yes parental responsibility give parents power, but only the power to act to care for baby in the baby’s best interests. It’s got nothing to do with parents having “top dog” status, control over baby, or anything to do with their “rights over the baby”. Babies are not possessions and they are not under the ownership of their parents. So the important question is - what is in the baby’s best interests?

I wish I had her balls! She has EVERY right to do so. Flu/covid and norovirus are spreading like crazy. Also not to mention we are told for no one to kiss the baby by midwives now due to RSV and cold sores.

She is going to be a great mum and is setting some really good boundaries.

Is Sil having difficulty picking up baby for feeds, changes etc post birth? Is that why she asks for someone to find her husband 1st?

Just putting it out there to all those saying babies need to be held by others so that they develop an immune system…that’s a load of rubbish.

My eldest was born during covid, he wasn’t held by anyone other than myself and my husband for the first 4 months….other than the occasional nursery induced cough and cold, he has had a vomiting bug twice and no other illnesses. My youngest is 10 months old, was held by relatives from being a few days old (although we said no kissing and to wash hands first)….he has a constant cold (hasn’t started nursery yet), has had hand, foot and mouth and spent most of the summer with a viral wheeze. Seems like being held by relatives didn’t really help his immune system 🤷‍♀️

Seriously? That’s for the parents to decide.

You don’t get to override the wishes of the baby’s parents no matter how entitled you feel it pick it up.

Given the attitude of this post, I don't blame the SIL. It sounds like her in laws love to boundary stomp. Perhaps her own family too.

It's December - it seems the whole world and his dog have some sort of bug ATM.

Her baby is only 3 weeks old and so she is actually correct to enforce boundaries. I wouldn't want people changing my baby's nappy but certainly if I found out my SIL created a post online mocking me during my first 3 weeks of being a parent, then good luck ever seeing me or the baby ever again.

I was fortunate in that everybody respected my boundaries and deliberately stayed away the first two weeks of DD's life - I actually would have been happy for them too, so contrary to PP comments, the "isolation" is hardly all down to the new parents.

You're contradicting yourself again.
It is up to the parents to decide what they feelis best for their baby and they don't have to justify it to you or anyone else.

(As already discussed exceptional scenarios aside).

The sign is really weird imo. I understand people not just grabbing baby and I would be keen on the kissing bit unless it’s a goodbye kiss. Maybe someone has ignored sil recently or maybe she is going pfb loopy. Either way I’d just respect it but I think it would ne nervous about holding the baby.

We have a photo album filled with photos of our son’s first week. We had several visitors a day and took a photo of every single one of them holding him.

Such a lovely time. The idea of being so uppity that we’d forbid anyone holding him or to go so far as a bloody sign is absolutely ludicrous.

"See now, as far as I'm aware new babies have been passed around for inspection/cuddles since forever. Most seem to weather 'big germs' ok. I don't think they ARE that fragile are they?"

@pictoosh germs are actually "that big".

I had a baby in September and I'm in a group chat with about 30 other ladies who had babies at the same time. Over the last 12 weeks about 11 of these new babies have come down with RSV, a couple of them had to be hospitalised and put on oxygen. And this was WITH most of the mothers putting some kind of boundaries in place re people holding/kissing baby.

No one is entitled to newborn cuddles. It's maddening the amount of people who put their own 'need for a cuddle' ahead of parents wishes and the health of a baby. I can't stand the entitlement. Especially from the older generation as they simply seem to ignore this instruction and simultaneously make some kind of passive aggressive comment to the mother about being over sensitive or not the first to have a baby. Ridiculous.

A family friend some years ago had a baby and a priest, yes a PRIEST kissed her baby despite being told by the mother not to. Unfortunately he had a cold sore at the time and passed on the herpes virus. The baby became VERY sick over the next 2 years and spent approximately 18 months in Great Ormond Street Hospital. She lost all her hair and had to be flown to America for treatment as the virus attacked all her organs.

She's older now but all her organs are damaged and she cannot have children. Her hair has not grown back. She's in her 20s.

Don't kiss new babies. EVER.

Anyone kisses mine after I've told them not to and I'll be swinging.

You forgot to add 'to me' at the end of your last sentence.