To have divided the family over this??

[Wife2b]

We have a 6 month old baby. My grandmother who was my planned childcare (her request) when I go back to work when baby is 6 months, got Cancer. We are over the moon she is now in remission as we love her dearly. She will be picking up childcare when feeling well enough which is fab as baby adores her.

In the meantime, friends and family have offered to support to avoid baby going to nursery at such a young age which we are thankful for.

MIL agreed to look after her once per week for 3 months whilst Grandmother is getting treatment etc. Baby doesn’t see grandparents often as they live an hour away. When they have visited, she has become hysterical, pet lip, crying, inconsolable.

We have a 3.5 year old nephew, he is gorgeous and we love him to bits, BUT there are little by way of boundaries and discipline. At Christmas he was slapping his Mum who didn’t respond and throwing things at her, I was anxious as she was holding our then 4 month old baby. The last time grandparents visited with him, he was throwing things (narrowly missing baby), hitting Grandparents, and shouting in baby’s face which obviously frightened her. Grandparents did not react and it was up to me to ask nephew to give her some space. Honestly we felt on edge as baby has just settled to feeling comfortable when he started.

As baby seems to get overwhelmed easily, I asked MIL if she would come alone at first so she can get used to her. MIL said she wasn’t comfortable driving alone but would come with Grandad (fine by me). Fast forward to a couple of days ago, she said that SIL is coming with nephew. We said we weren’t comfortable with that and explained why (didn’t really want to have that conversation as not our place). We love nephew and of course want him to have a relationship with baby as he is her only cousin, BUT we’d like to present to make sure interactions are safe.

Well things have all blown up. Grandfather has said lots of hurtful things, including saying he’d do everything he can to stop MIL from visiting. SIL has also got the hump. I’m so worried my little girl has lost her family, we didn’t want to tear the family apart. We just wanted her to be given the opportunity to take things slowly at a pace comfortable for her. My little girl has such a small family, I don’t want her to miss out but feel we were right to say something as we can’t guarantee her well-being and safety if not present when nephew is if there are no boundaries and consequences in place. I’m pleased to say MIL has not listened to FIL and has come anyways, alone and had a brilliant day with baby (who was hesitant at first but slowly come round, lots of smiles by the end of the day).

Were we being unreasonable to bring attention to this? Part of me feels like we should have sucked it so baby can maintain family bonds, the other hand I feel like why should she feel intimidated and uncomfortable in her own home at 6 months old and it’s up to us as parents to protect her. I feel so sad at the thought of her not knowing her family though they can be a petty bunch, family is family. We haven’t got much of it.

Life is going to be hard and miserable for sil and nephew if his behaviour goes unchecked and sil just gets the hump… yes of course toddler tantrums happen- but you teach your child it’s not appropriate, or we end up with teens having much bigger tantrums…. Sil is being very very very unreasonable!

The 3 year old is probably acting up due to the attention the baby is getting. Especially as he doesn’t normally have the baby around (as he would be used to if it was a younger sibling).

I too think it was too much to expect someone in their late 70’s to care for a soon to be mobile baby 1 day a week, let alone 3. That’s even without recent cancer diagnosis and surgery!

Being alert and moving fast enough to care for a baby is much more tiring than being fit enough to look after yourself at that age.

She may well feel obligated to pay you back in kind for having her live with you OP.

If you didn’t want the baby in a nursery as you returned to work so early, and costs weren’t a factor, why didn’t you get a day nanny OP? You and your DH wfh so you’d be there to keep an eye and Granny could have helped the nanny and still spent time with the baby?

I think having a word with them was the right thing to do @Wife2b . There's too many 'hands off' parents about.
If no one can be trusted to ensure your babies safety then I would have done exactly the same.
Too many people make too many excuses for terribly behaved children. What happened to removing your child from a situation if they started misbehaving? Now the go to seems to be ignoring it.
I hope your Grandma feels better soon.

I think it's odd that SIL and nephew would come with MIL to babysit (doesn't SIL have a job?) but that's sort of the deal when you use family for childcare - you lost control.

It's one of the reasons why I was glad that MILs offer to us fell through (she got cancer but still wanted to do it) and we found a childminder. MIL did odd days here and there but yes SIL was always involved and round my house with her 3 destructive kids which was annoying but it came with the childcare. So I made sure only to use it when I had no other option.

No you aren't unreasonable. It's a very very difficult thing to do, confronting people, however you are your child's advocate and have done well to put her safety first. Fil sounds like a dick.

I did not have suitable family support and did not want mine in a nursery/child minder etc. So I gave up work and got a job working evenings. DH walked in, I walked out and we only had Sundays as a family. But that was our choice and I a proud we made it work.
You have difficult decisions to make. You cannot make the world revolve around your baby and your/your DH job.

Its not you causing the rift! You clearly said you want your MIL come without nephew and your SIL did not respect that. Its on her, not on you.

Its up to her to deal with her childs behaviour and you saw that she wasnt addressing it when you last saw her. She should be able to judge whether her child is dangerous to young babies. She should now that if she is not invited, she should not ignore that.

The comments calling you a cheapskate for wanting family to look after your child are beyond rude and patronising. You've already stated the reason you don't want to use a nursery and its nothing to do with finances. Also being poor is not a crime.

Only you know how fit your own grandmother is. Mine is 83 and had cancer twice and is fitter than my mother at 60. Give it a trial run and see how you get on and make work aware of the situation. Good luck, ignore the rude and stupid clueless comments.

My father is literally blind in one eye because of a sibling and their unruly behaviour.

Perhaps because some of us know what it feels like to be recovering from cancer.

Babies are resilient and will experience more noise and other sensory stimulation in a childcare setting and so this may help your daughter to become acclimatise to other childrens noise and behaviour..

Taking a gradual calm indroduction to toddler is a good idea.
You should visit toddler every two weeks for a short time to allow them to foster a bond. Regularly meeting your SIL in a play park that your toddler nephew enjoys is also good idea.

Being genuine about concern over your daughter's sensitivity and wanting the cousins to get along well is the way to proceed.

Accept child care from MIL if she is keen and lovely. She shouldn't be punished and, over time, MIL can assess when it is right to allow SIL and toddler to accompany her. FIL will settle, hopefully.

You should address all these things before your grandmother is to look after the baby. I would book your child into a nursery for half the time at least.

Id pay for childcare, you get 15 hours free childcare now as working parents this would be a help towards. Will mother in law get fed up of coming that way on her own on a regular basis if she's not just round the corner aswell, recipe for disaster relying on family an friends for childcare

Have you thought about a childminder rather than a nursery? I think at that age a childminder is better as it's a home from home and one on one care. The nephew is just young, it's not his fault but I wouldn't feel comfortable if he's throwing toys and stuff near my baby. I would just look into a childminder for now, grandmother might not be able to do full days straight away also so if you have a childminder in place you can see how grandmother is with one day at first and gradually increase as time goes on. If your MIL wants to do one day, let her however if she's soul childminder for your nephew there might be days when she has both. A lot of reassurance to nephew and even giving him little jobs like helping to hold the bottle or getting wipes, showing him how to touch baby gently and talking about how much fun he's going to have with his little cousin when she's older might work wonders for his behaviour. He's probably feeling left out as he isn't the baby anymore. I'd try and spend some time with him and baby before childcare starts to try and sort the behaviour out and include him as much as possible, he's a big cousin now and will probably find the little responsibilities fun with some encouragement and feel great about himself.

Hmm I think childcare is looking like a good option for everyone

What about half days at nursery? Your DGM sounds brilliant but a full day is hard work with a baby! You could drop baby off at nursery on the way to work and your DGM pick her up at lunchtime for the afternoons?

@Concannon88 My father is literally blind in one eye because of a sibling and their unruly behaviour

I’ve seen lots of injuries via work and it’s pretty hard to blind someone from mechanical means to be frank, even deliberately. Not saying it doesn’t happen but it’s not easy or common. I was talking about young children in a usual environment, for example when our kids were young there wouldn’t have been anything accessible they could have maimed their younger siblings with, anything they could have thrown at anyone would not have actually maimed the person no matter their age. I certainly wasn’t talking about letting them loose in a forest to gouge out a siblings eye with a stick🙄. Even a toddler giving a sibling a poke here and there in the eye occasionally will not hurt them. There’s a big difference from some exploratory pokes then getting bored than a toddler holding a baby down and gouging an eye out.

I am going to be completely honest. What shocked me the most out of this is that your grandmother? Who is recovering from cancer is going to look after a baby/soonish to be toddler?
How old is grandmother? How ill was she?

I lt would be better to let her have grandmother time of course but not be the sole childcare provider.
She will continue to be immune compromised too?

I have 5 kids. We had family help us out in the early days with eldest two. It was the best decision ever putting a stop to that and moving to paid. Family still enjoy their time with the kids and it isn't dictated by my rota/kids being sick etc.
When it's family it's hard to challenge them them on things you might not agree with and of the health of say your grandmother was to change again then you will have to resettle a baby/toddler again at a difficult age or come out of work.

I'm responding to fact you've basically said you've not heard or seen any child being hurt by a sibling. And I've given you a prefect example of an incident where a child has been hurt by one, and no it wasnt deliberate, doesn't negate the fact it happened. It was a preventable accident and I really don't see why you are arguing the toss when it comes to someone wanting to protect their child when they aren't around.

Babies are very perceptive. If the screaming happens when it's only two certain people together then those people have a lot of tension around each other. Their bodies are holding a lot of tension for some reason. The baby feels the tension and becomes fearful.

I know which situation I'd be more concerned about and it isn't the toddler. You are ignoring the very real possible (likely?) consequences of elderly cancer survivor granny watching your baby for so many hours but, in your grab for free childcare, you are wilfully refusing to acknowledge the risk. To your baby and to your ggrandmother 🤷‍♀️

You pretty much told your MIL that you don't trust her to look after your PFB so, of course, there is going to be some hurt/resentful feelings. Not sure how you come back from that.