Control Freak Warning - reluctant to have DS babysat

[AussieSim]

DS is nearly 9.5mths and so far I haven't been apart from him for more than a few hours. I don't mind leaving him with my PIL for a couple of hours in the afternoon to go to my language lesson or with my DH while I get some shopping done, but I now have offers from the PIL and the SIL to sit with him at night to let me and DH go to the pictures or whatever but I still don't feel that great about taking them up on it. (As some of you know my DH is only home weekends, so I am usually on my own with DS 5/7 days a week)

My SIL has no baby experience (although she is now in early stages of pregnancy) and I consider my PIL to be a bit rusty and not all that confident or respectful of my parenting preferences.

My FIL won tickets to a UEFA Soccer game and I've never been to a European soccer game and I knocked them back even though a voice in my head was telling me I should just bite it and go and let MIL mind him. In the last 12mths I have been to the pictures once, when I used to go once a week when I lived Downunder.

DS usually sleeps through from 7pm to 7am, but will occasionally have a little cry but settle back himself or very occasionally may need to be resettled with the very discreet introduction of those little homeopathic camomile balls that just remind him to suck his thumb. I worry that at the first peep they will pick him up and I'll come home and he will have been up for hours and then I'd have to bfeed him back to sleep and then it would take a couple of days to get him back in his lovely GF routine.

I guess I also worry about the stress on the sitters if this happens and that they will think I lie about my lovely boy.

I guess I'm just a control freak who thinks she is irreplaceable. How did you guys get over reluctance to leave baby?

i dont see it as that much of a problem i just worry that i'm not teaching her to fall asleep alone.....

Oh I said I'd go away and now look, here I am again. Has anyone else found that school is a lot more demanding than nursery? The thing is I was hoping it would be, but the other parents I know whose kids were at DD's nursery are saying the opposite. Our nursery was running them ragged it seems? 8-5 or 6 was more tiring that 9 till 3 for lots of them. Should have started another thread for this I suppose. Sorry again. Stream of consiousness writing

I'm a working Mum Fairymum but I don't equate being a work with adults as going out with my mates - I need both.

Angeliz I can actually answer this one with something useful (unusual for me - I usually do everything wrong). I started leaving DD to sleep by herself by moving the chair a bit further away from her bed each night for a week or so, and then I started saying things like "Daddy just needs me to help him lock the door/cook the tea/whatever, and I'll be back in a minute". Then lengthening the time I took to come back. Took two weeks, but eventually I could say "I'll come back and check that you're asleep later" and half an hour or so later she would be - all by herself.

thanks for that janinlondon, i will try the distarction thing as she is really easy to distract.i can imagine dd still sitting waiting for me hours later! No not really as she does get very tired!

Aussiesim,

I might be wrong, but couldit be that your PILs are trying to persuade you go out, because your dh wants to take you out alone for once? Or maybe he wants his wife back, rather than this person who is just the mother of his child?

Think about it, you need to have a life as well as a child. What will happen as your child grows up? Please don't become a clingy parent.

Fairymum I can definitely see that you treasure your time with your children because it is limited. I went through a phase of this when I went back to work but maybe not so strongly because I only work 3 days.

And Beetroot what is so unselfish about wandering across the road to drink neighbour's wine (OK not too much before you all think I'm an irresponsible babysitter), eat Christmas goodies and watch TV with sleeping toddler upstairs rather than staying at home with sleeping toddler upstairs, DH channel surfing and the ironing? Especially if it buys me a meal in a nice restaurant with attentive DH.

And Angeliz - nurse her to sleep and THEN go out....

oh Bozza i do.i don't have a problem with going out, she sleeps like a good'un I just sort of posed a different issue on same thread!iyswim

jan, i can easily believe that school is less demanding than the nursery in question! one more thing to worry about...

Bossykate - so ARE we at the same nursery??? I wondered back in July but never got an answer. Oh how scary. Do I know you? Do you know me? Eeek!

beetroot - we only did it once. Just thought it might be solution for Zerub. It is nice to have useful neighbour though with all family being min. of one hour away. She had DS when I had a filling, for nursery parents evening etc. And I had her DS while she had her GTT.

Yes, have managed to swap babysitting with a friend on a couple of occasions. Just that most of my friends with kids have parents living near by, or don't want to go out much - I'm always nagging them to go out and let me babysit! Will have to make some more friends

And actually, I love babysitting! Its an evening sitting on a sofa with my book / a video, with no jobs to do. If I look around and see something that needs doing, its not my problem! Lovely.

Wish I'd discovered babysitting as a teenager and got paid for sitting watching telly.

Can I just sound completely defensive and say ...

My DH is not in the least distressed by us not going out nights. He is away the whole week in Madrid, working long hours eating crap room service or Tapas in a pub and loves to just be home with us and eat home cooked food. We have people over and can go the neighbours with our baby telephone.

The PIL didn't offer to baby sit at night until we asked SIL last weekend and she couldn't do it - and I guess she told them.

I'm not much of a party-animal anyway - those days were a while ago for me. Before I fell pregnant I was working 70 hours a week and travelling all around Asia and ANZ with my job and we just ate out a lot or went to the pictures or theatre.

I'm still at the stage where I get a complete thrill from DS sleeping so well and being able to put him down and make dinner and watch some telly or talk to my DH without interruption. I'm not obsessive. I do really enjoy being a SAHM and take my job seriously. I am thinking about having another, but I am also thinking about going back to work first.

It is not that I am unadventurous or unwilling to take risks. Afterall at 9mth old DS has been to Hamburg, Madrid x 2, Trier, Luxembourg and Turkey and we are going home to Sydney for Christmas. The last trip to Madrid I even made alone with him - which was a real challenge.

Janinlondon, please don't worry about me having started this thread. It sounds like you could do with some support to break the cycle that you are in with your DD. I would recommend some short term pain for some long term gain and if you don't want to go through the crying and headbanging you might get some ideas from the No Cry Sleep Solution book, but I think that your DD could become a 10 hour or longer sleeper with the right training - smack me if I shoudln't say that given that my DS is much younger.

Fairymum, work life is no substitute for a social life!

I mean, I don't happen to work with my closest friends and I NEED to see them.

Dp doesnt really bother though so I spose everyone is different.

I've actually got a cot for my mum's house and she doesn't want it but I'm determined she's going to have it and that ds will stay overnight with her!! We have left him overnight twice - both for birthday nights away. Utter, utter bliss. Didn't miss him at all, even though I love him to to point of obsession. He loves his 'grannyma' and is totally happy with her and she worships him. I don't trust anyone except my mum or his old nanny to put him to bed but we have a couple of other people who babysit as he almost never wakes up. BTW I was a teenage babysitter and I never had any trouble. I did notice that on rare occasions a baby would wake to the sound of a familiar car on the drive and the parents WOULD NOT be convinced that the baby hadn't been up all night. I was perfectly happy to either encourage babies back to sleep or to play with them in front of the telly. I wish I'd been as confident and energetic with my own ds 20 years on!! I did notice that people got jealous of the babysitter though. Sometimes the children would be incredibly pleased to see me and I just knew I'd never be asked again because a few parents don't like it if their children are happy with anyone else. And despite having my own children now (well, one's a step) I don't think I would make a better babysitter now than I did then. Worse if anything!!

This thread makes me think that we have a pretty good deal. We swap babysitting with friends round the corner every week (ie, get to go out once a fortnight), have PIL a few miles away who will always sit if asked, & my mum comes down to stay at least once a month & we go out in the evening. We've been away for one weekend since ds was born (he's 21 months) - mum came to stay with him for the weekend, & it was fab. And that's just going out as a couple; dp & I probably both go out with our own friends once a week. Maybe I should stop thinking I'm hard done by....

Oh, yes, I go out with my friends reasonably regularly. But often dh and I turn down babysitting offers not because we're paranoid, but because we're tired/it's raining/Property Ladder is on. Yes, we are old and boring.

I think you've hit the nail on the head Aloha. If I was actually that interested in going out - I would! Now I have a family I'm much happier staying in.

Enid, I wasn't suggesting that work is a substitue for a social life. But I do think that if you spend all day with other adults as opposed to a baby or small child, then you are more in need of a non-baby out. At least this is true for me.
I should make more of an effort to go out with my DH though. I will turn over a new leaf from today

Ah Batters.....nice to hear from you. I was going to ask what it was you were doing when DH and I visited the school a couple of weeks ago and we saw you - was it reading practice? Seemed to be one on one? I do like that school, but I just don't think we have a chance of getting in there. I do hope you're right about school taking it out of her a bit more. I think Bossykate has taken fright now that I've cottoned on to her! Aussiesim - thanks for the advice. We've done controlled crying and sleep programmes pretty regularly over the last four years. It usually takes us about twice as long as the books predict to get her sorted, but it is worth it for a while. They work for a couple of months and then it all goes to pot and we have to do it again. I am guessing we do a week of hell for about seven weeks of peace. On balance I decided we could just live with the sleepless child. I am an insomniac (Now!) as well, so I do understand how hard it is for her to stay in her room all night when she's wide awake. Having said that, we are going through quite a good patch at the moment - 10pm-6am with only one wake up in the night, during which she goes to the toilet by herself and then goes back in her room. I do feel a bit wicked though, knowing I'm lying awake in my room and she's lying awake in hers.(!)