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Cuddling babies

11 replies

EnglishDreamer · 14/07/2020 22:51

My first baby has just turned 5 months old - born about 6 weeks before lockdown, and a month early but perfectly healthy. DH and I have been very very careful throughout this whole situation, and still aren't going to any shops etc at all. It has been upsetting as my family are extremely close. My sister, parents, grandparents and even aunt and uncle all meet up every weekend in usual times and I've missed them all terribly. Now that things have eased up, we've allowed my parents to cuddle baby because they have been as careful as we have and the risk seems tiny. Although we are not visiting public places yet, we have started seeing other family members in each others homes and gardens (social distancing). But they are not as "safe" as my parents - they've been visiting cafes or in public facing jobs for example. So nobody else has held baby. But basically this is as good as it's going to get until there's a vaccine, isn't it? So what are other people with young babies doing? I so badly want to share this joy with my family, but DH isn't so keen. Interested to hear what others are doing / would do.

OP posts:
123456kent · 14/07/2020 22:55

My baby was born in April, my parents held her when she was about 6 weeks old (they are very cautious) and in last few weeks other people have also been holding her. Some may say this is irresponsible...
My eldest is back at nursery today so she will be exposing us all in theory.
I went through a lot of corona stress pre birth and so post birth I’ve been elated at how much better I feel, it makes me relaxed.
I’m now also taking my baby to the shops

alexdgr8 · 14/07/2020 23:06

i wouldn't be taking a baby to the shops.
they can't wear face masks.
what if someone sneezes coughs over her.
it's an unnecessary risk.

DidSheReallySayThat20 · 14/07/2020 23:44

My baby is 6m and I've allowed family and friends to hold for a while now. My other kids have a great bond with family and friends and I want the same for the young one. There have been a miniscule amount of cases here and I felt the risk was low.

89redballoons · 14/07/2020 23:47

I have a 7 month old - I'm now back at work but WFH. DH is on shared parental leave.

When the government introduced support bubbles we bubbled up with my mum, who lives alone and is being extremely careful - really hasn't left her house apart from walks by herself and to see us. So she has cuddles with her grandson now.

MIL lives with her partner so couldn't have been in a support bubble anyway, but we kept on with letting my mum have cuddles but only seeing MIL at a distance in the garden for a few weeks. It seemed really unfair and MIL and her partner are also being careful about distancing otherwise, so now we let her cuddle DS too. I guess we are all in a bubble together which everyone knows about and is happy with.

No one else has cuddled him, but we have seen other people at a distance in the garden.

CM0TD · 14/07/2020 23:49

More or less the same approach as 123456kent, with similar age baby. I agree that the stress around restrictions pre birth was much worse from my POV. My toddler doesn’t yet have a place back at nursery but my husband is a secondary school teacher who is back in school full time. No one so far has sneezed or coughed on any of us in a shop (but no one has ever done that to me ever even before coronavirus)

Chessie678 · 15/07/2020 00:39

I’m letting close family cuddle my baby. If your concern is risk to the baby from coronavirus my understanding is that only 5 children in the UK have so far died with coronavirus and in most of those cases coronavirus was a secondary cause of death. Also the risk will be lower now than it was when those deaths occurred because there are so few cases in the population at the moment. There are about 16 child deaths a year from influenza. I wouldn’t prevent my family cuddling my baby or not take my baby to the shops because flu is circulating in the population so can’t really see why coronavirus should be any different unless the concern is transmission to others (I’m not trying to say that coronavirus is the same as influenza but think influenza is the more dangerous illness for children).

My personal view is that it’s important for my baby to start to build relationships with family, see lots of different faces and have different experiences and I think the importance of those things outweighs the very small risk. It has been lovely watching my family with him.

EnglishDreamer · 15/07/2020 07:06

Thanks everyone.

My personal view is that it’s important for my baby to start to build relationships with family, see lots of different faces and have different experiences and I think the importance of those things outweighs the very small risk. It has been lovely watching my family with him.

I totally agree with this ^
I feel so sad about what has already been missed. I really need to work on DH Sad

OP posts:
FrugiFan · 15/07/2020 07:56

I agree with everything Chessie678 says. Covid risk to babies is minuscule. As long as the adults involved are all happy with it I have allowed close family members to hold the baby. This includes my parents, my husbands parents, my grandparent and great nan.

A friend of mine's grandma passed away in a nursing home recently (non covid) and my friend is really sad that the grandmother didnt get to see her young grandchildren for the last 4 months of her life. My grandparents would rather take the risk and get the chance to hug their great granddaughter- and it is their choice.

CM0TD · 15/07/2020 07:58

The baby itself is a much greater risk to the older relatives than the other way round as far as I can tell. We have been to medical centres for jabs etc, and I have a toddler too

FusionChefGeoff · 15/07/2020 08:05

Latest ONS Data from 9 July shows that estimated 1 in 3,900 people have the virus. It's likely to be less than that now.

Might that help reassure your husband that the chance of you even being near someone with the virus is tiny - the chances on them passing the virus to you / baby is even smaller and the chance of your baby getting seriously ill is practically non existent.

user1493413286 · 15/07/2020 08:07

I have a 4 month old and while we’re seeing people only grandparents and my sister are holding and cuddling the baby. I’m not a big fan of the whole pass the baby around thing that people seem to expect; people can talk to and make my baby laugh without needing to hold him. I don’t feel my baby is losing out by not being held although I appreciate that family members may find it hard. I would be cautious of trying to convince your DH to do something he isn’t comfortable with as if it was you feeling uncomfortable and him trying to convince you it’s ok it’d feel pretty rubbish. Throughout all this my DH has been more relaxed than I have about the risk to our DC but he’s respected that I need to be comfortable with anything we do.

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