Help- grandparent issues

[Rtruth]

Ok, firstly I'm the dad of our little one and we both need advice.

My father and my wife's mother both seem to have same problem and not sure how to address it.

Both seem to want to just play with our three month old and that's even when they are fast asleep. My father will randomly turn up, notice baby in cot, tap her and if she moves pick her up to tell her it's playtime! Or as she had reflux will want a cuddle when just asleep on us, and if we pass across if she opens a sleepy eye, it's bang, sit her up and start making faces at her. Now of course this is fun for 5 minutes then all hell breaks loose! And suddenly it's ignore the crying or tap her back rather than comfort her as we suggest!

My wife doesn't want to have ago, but only once has he listen to our advice on if she tired, wants to play etc and she was perfect, the other tenor fifteen times has ended in us having to forcefully take her off him to deal with the tears. Now we know he means well but how can we get him to listen?? We did once refuse to hand her over when she was asleep and he got offended, but I'm struggling to find away to explain both the fact she needs sleep plus to not throw her around when playing as this causes more reflux problems!

My wife's mother is the same, she gets bored with getting the lo to sleep so sits down seeing if she will cry herself off!

Anyone with advice, I'd love some!!!

That sounds dreadful. They're treating dd like she's a toy! I think you need to explain to them that's it's not appropriate. Sorry I can't offer any further advice but this should bump your thread for someone else to come along. .

What a nightmare situation. I had confrontation so I understand how you both must feel.

I think you need to be quite firm in telling them that she needs her sleep so they either come back when she is awake or they sit quietly until she wakes.

Maybe you could also tell a little white lie in that the doctor has asked you to limit playtime to try and help with the reflux and that it would be best to not throw her around until the reflux has improved.

DGPs are very tricky. On one hand, they've done it all before so have experience to back up why they think they're right, on the other, that experience was a long time ago and change, plus it's a different baby.

DS was a difficult refluxy baby and I'd have been ready to murder anyone who woke him when I'd finally settled him (once in blue moon!).

You need to sit down with your DF and your wife with her DM at a time wen an incident Han just occurred and explain that the waking her up/leaving to cry etc is asking you feel v upset. That you understand they have different approaches but this is the approach you're taking (or say the approach the HV or GP suggested) and you'd really appreciate their help. Give them ground rules, such as not waking the baby and ak them to do things like taking her out in the pram for half an hour to give you a break.

They're just excited about it all, but let this drift at your peril. IME GPs will always think they now better (and sometimes do) but you need to make it clear, nicely, that choices about childcare are yours and DWs alone.

Sorry, that's when an incident hasn't just occurred...

Really should proof read!

Haha this brings back memories. Exactly the same thing with my first baby. I remember that the grandparents would get ds into such a wound up state that he wouldn't go to sleep for hours. The worse was staying up until 5am, I kid you not

In the end, we had to offend them. They're obviously over excited however they didn't have to deal with the aftermath. So they were not allowed to wake baby if asleep and had to be gentle in play. I'd take baby back after a while and straight away if asleep. They calmed down after DH (they were his parents) had a few stern words.

Agree with having to risk offence - though I think that it would be unreasonable for them to be truly offended. We've had something similar these past 2wks visiting GP.s and great GP.s, with a refluxy baby, who caught a virus so had D&V, big eczema flare, as well as teething We just had to pick him up, cuddle, rock, put to sleep etc as we saw fit as poor DS was just screaming. We were polite - "oh he's tired, don't worry I'll take care of him" etc - but just got straight to it as we couldn't leave it any longer.

When he was a newborn we learned all about this when we were left with a very vomity baby because other people wanted to feed him and we let them despite the reflux issues affecting his feeding. Never again!

So. Tell it to them straight. And politely. If they're offended then it's their problem, but they should come around - all of our relatives have and are very happy to play with him when it's appropriate