Is this normal behaviour from PIL

[PeachShark]

I’m really struggling with how my PIL (mainly MIL, but more recently FIL also) are around my DS (11 months)

My MIL has become fixated on the idea that she wants to be able to rock him to sleep, rather than let me feed him.
I breastfeed and cosleep so he is still very much being fed to sleep, I am fine with this and I’m taking things at his pace.

We visit them once a week. He usually has one nap during the visit. He is essentially whisked away the moment we walk through the door. This is fine, I let them get on with it, they want to play with him, feed him, fine. My issue is when he starts fussing and it becomes clear he wants a milk feed and is getting tired but they seem to do everything in their power to comfort him themselves. Then I politely interject and say “ah I think he needs a milk feed”… MIL usually ignores me and will continue to try rock him until I physically take him off her and recently FIL has actually started responding with “oh I think he just wants a cuddle” or “oh let MIL rock him off” - the cuddle comment was when he was holding DS who was pushing him away crying, so yeah definitely wasn’t looking for a cuddle.

Yesterday he was crawling to me starting to cry, clearly coming to find me as he wanted milk/comfort/mummy/getting tired, and they were physically stopping him and pulling him away, to which I stepped in and said “I’ll feed him” and then FIL said, “MIL can rock him” and I said “I’d rather respond to his needs”.

I could tell MIL was not happy, there was a really tense atmosphere in the room and nobody spoke for ages afterwards.

I can’t stand how I feel judged and am challenged when I just want to respond to what my baby needs/wants. It’s exhausting that they seem to turn it into a strange competition of who can comfort DS best, and it’s just really getting to me.

Is this typical behaviour for grandparents? Curious to know what the dynamic is like for others. There are honestly a million other things in addition to this that are just getting on my nerves and I don’t know if it’s me or them that’s the issue! One example of every time we visit FIL take loads of photos of MIL with DS and posts them in our WhatsApp group. It just feels unnecessary and over the top. We see them weekly if not twice a week and every time we get an influx of these photos. I’m actually considering speaking to a therapist about it because it’s all getting to me so much.

Your sanctimonious tone is really quite ironic on a thread about a woman policing another woman’s child rearing. And it may come as a surprise to you, but in science there’s more than one study on any given topic, and those will often produce opposite findings.

As I said, our excellent dentist told us that milk before bed and after teeth brushing (breast or cow) was neutral in terms of dental health. As soon as she started eating we brushed her teeth, and then she’d have a last feed. The best teeth of all my kids.

And, that self soothing at 5-7 months stuff you quoted in your next post is highly contested. At the time I was doing a last feed at age 3 I was working, studying and had two other young children to care for too. I was very busy and very tired indeed and it will shock you to know given your little self soothing lecture, that a cuddle and BF before bed was the quickest and easiest way to get her to sleep and a lovely bonding time for us both.

Get stuffed with your ‘rod for your own back’. You’re one of those MILs in the making!

@BananaPeanutToast seeing as you are the one who told me to fuck off in your first reply to my (neutral!) post that only suggested the OP brush her babies teeth before bed, i am not the one being disrespectful here. Research is not based on 1 persons experience ,I am not expecting you to be able to evaluate research papers but brushing teeth is a blatantly obvious thing to do for your child. Self settling is an important skill for a babies - your kids may be angels and you may be an earth mother but many other parents and their kids struggle with sleep which is crucial both for a child's development and maternal mental health. But i know full well not to argue with the type of mum who tells another mum to fuck off. I hope you are teaching your kids more respect.

I think historically we have learned parenting from our mother's and grandmother's in a close knit family group (maybe it's programmed far back in our brains) mothers want to help their offspring and we are always our mother's children no matter how old. Unless we do research all we know is what we did and were told so we pass that on it's not meant in a harmful nasty way.
In the 50s we were told to leave children to cry, to put them outside in prams (even at 2 plus) all weathers for 2 hours a day, babies were often fed sat on a potty as soon as they could sit. In the 60s bottles liberated women and we were told bottle was best easier convenient and gave baby everything.in the 70s we had to work and be domestic goddesses babies needed to be put down we would spoil them and fail our husbands. Baby care had gone through trends over the decades largely based on our needs as adults to work etc....in the 2000 it touched on mummy needs me time and self care and now it's between that and the other side of strap baby to you, isolate away for the first weeks don't dare put them down or hand them to others.... Individual views and ideas seem based on when you were born and what you choose to read up on probably the first time in history when our mother's and grandmother's have been dismissed as a source of knowledge and support for parenting where their ideas are taken as mean, hurtful, selfish or mad. They haven't changed it's us and how we no longer need them as the internet, influences, adverts etc are seen as more knowledgeable. When we are grandmothers it will all be determined by AI and we will have no role