AIBU? Advice needed on MIL!

[Nickname1234567]

Hello all.
Need some advice please!
On Saturday night OH made last minute plans to go out for the evening so i asked MIL to have my 1 year old. She had him over night. At 7.30pm OH had a fb message of her saying he was crying, and that she put him to bed & he was still crying, she sent mutiple other texts saying yes hes still crying does he allways do this? she eventually msged saying that she THINKS that he is asleep now!, then after OH msging back saying what do you mean think! and she said she checked and he was. This must have been 30-45 mins after she said she put him in there crying. The reason i am so pissed off is because, my son doesnt go to bed untill around 9.30pm at home, and he goes to bed when hes tired, he doesnt get put to bed to cry to sleep, ever. He had lots of naps that day so i know he wouldnt have been tired at that time and probably fell to sleep because of exhaustion of the constant crying. She text around 11pm saying he had woke up again, that would be because he went to bed to early when he napped most of the day due to him being grumpy and teething. She knew this btw!
She doesnt know i know what she did, but i seen the messages. Am i being unreasonable to be really annoyed and upset? All i can think about is my poor baby stuck in a dark room alone crying his eyes out whilst my MIL sat in the lounge. I dont want her having him over night anymore, she is my only means of babysitter but i would much rather not go out then to think my baby would be left in a room crying his eyes out to get him to sleep. I dont think she thinks that shes done wrong but i am mortified. I dont want her to have him over night anymore, but i also dont know whether to tell her why, because the messages were between her and OH. Advice please.

Sunflower, that is exactly why i am upset, as my son doesnt get left to cry alone, expecially before his bedtime. He usually gets tired around 9pm and we both go to bed and read a book or i will sing to him and he falls to sleep, he would have been very confused to have been placed in a dark room alone and thats probably why he was crying out. I feel bad now because of all of these comments, i feel as if i may have over reacted, but after all he is my little boy and the thought of him crying in an empty room without any comfort or atleast a check up makes me really sad :( i think sleep overs may be off the cards for a while now untill hes older.

YOU don't do CC. You don't allow him to CIO AT HOME.

So while that's YOUR parenting choices she chose different.
If her methods do not match yours then you don't leave him there.
But I agree with Pp. she was telling you loud and clear what was happening and you both chose to ignore it.

Take it as a lesson.

Well, her texting saying that he was still crying doesn’t mean that she just left him alone for the whole hour...she might have come back and forth and tried to settle him before messaging your dh again.

I think it’s extreme to come and get him, crying a little isn’t going to permanently damage him, though I would understand if she just left him alone for the whole hour.

sorry you sound like "hard work" either you drop him off and let her do things her way or you pick him up.
this faffing about makes my hair stand up on end.
go enjoy yourselves and leave her to it, the child is loved and was and will be fine.

What absolute shite! Leaving a child with a baby sitter does not give the baby sitter the right to decide whether to use the cry it out method or not.
OP has said several times that she doesn't do this at home and mil knows that.
The mil didn't try her best, she was lazy and left the child to cry itself to sleep for around an hour. Should they have gone home yes, or perhaps the dh should have just told his mother to take the baby back out of his bed and let him up to play for a while.
OP has also said they offered to go home and mil told them no, that she was well warned that the child wasn't in the best of moods but still wanted to look after him anyway. Love when people just chose to ignore parts of a thread so they can give the OP a good kicking.

so a child in a car seat on a long trip starts to cry, you know he's fine but need to soldier on. they cry.
tired babies in cribs can safely cry.
there is nothing wrong with crying, some say it's actually good for lung expansion and circulation.
pandering to every little whimper isn't great either.
dragonbait you've got the right idea.

Nos123, i am pretty sure that she did leave him the whole time, as my oh was messaging her a lot asking is he still crying, has he settled etc and she she said yes, he was still crying. And then eventually she said that she heard that he had stopped crying so she thinks hes now asleep. Oh said that he would collect him but she was insulted by it and they started arguing, i feel like she may have just not been up to having him, i just wish she would have said if this was the case. She insisted she still wanted him although i did say he was teething and it was ok if she didnt want to. Going out for that evening meal was not that important, but she has had him over night a lot before and ive never had any problems, she has allways said that they went to bed together and let me know if he had slept well.

Hmm I understand. Maybe try and sugar coat why you came to collect him...say maybe you thought he was poorly as he cried for the best part of an hour which is unlike him- just to keep the peace. And then don’t bother with overnight stays until he’s a little older. By the time he’s 2 this wo be an issue x

Yabu, next time stay in and look after your baby instead of bitching about your Mil who did you both a favour!

Scarletbitch, it is very rare i go out, and i went for a meal with my dh is that such a crime???!!! She wanted to have him aswell. I obviously did not know that this was going to happen as she has never done it before.. Good bye.

Also, like i said above there wont be a next time as she will only baby sit during the day time from now on. Im sure if your mil sat downstairs in the lounge flicking through fb whilst your child was screaming upstairs because hes been plonked in bed hours before his bedtime, you wouldnt be so happy either.

You asked for advice and we gave it. You moaned about her ignoring your baby for an hour, yet your DH was messaging her constantly, then you started texting her, whilst she was trying to settle your son.

Your Mil has had her own children, yet you think she is unable to cope with your baby?

Baby's cry, not the end of the world, but what is unreasonable is to bitch about your MIL on here, complain about how she looked after your baby, but you and your DH still had your meal!!

Yes you are entitled to a night out, but get a grip and take responsibility for your actions instead of blaming your mil who had to put up with you both questioning her constantly whilst nursing your son, whilst you both enjoyed your meal!

As you were.

YABU

YANBU to be annoyed st her using the cry it out method if she knows you are against it.

I think it's interesting that people who use the cry it out method are normally flamed but on this occasion it seems fine

However I really think you need to speak to her and I wouldn't stop him from staying there all together until I'd at least had a conversation about it

“Lots of naps” and bedtime at 9:30 are very unusual in a 1yo - perhaps if you cut the naps down to the normal 1 or 2, bedtime would be earlier and easier? Are you perhaps being extra defensive about your MIL doing things differently to you because in your heart of hearts you suspect your way isn’t really working? It sounds like a LOT of faff - loads of naps, not going to bed until 9 and then you have to lie with them the entire time. I don’t leave my DS to cry ever, but I also wouldn’t expect a babysitter to lose their entire evening to an awake baby then have to lie down with him and stay there for the rest of it, so I don’t think I would be leaving my DS with somebody else until I had got him into a better sleeping pattern TBH.

ScarletBitch

Are you the mil?

You've made up quite a story there. At what point were they qymuestioning the mil?

Just because someone has had 4 kids doesn't mean they are any good at looking after children. HTH

Maybe just chill a bit. She didn’t do stuff as you wanted, but I don’t think it was overly risky and unlikely to impact child in long term. Maybe a way of phrasing it to her so as not to offend is: he’s v clingy at the moment and he just seems to want me to help him go to sleep. OR we just want to get him into a better sleep pattern. Maybe you can have him for sleepovers when he is more settled.

she is my only means of babysitter

No, unless you live on a deserted island she really is not. Next time pay for a babysitter (offer to pick them up and bring back home if you live rurally). Paid help tends to do as you say.

ScarletBitch

Oh and she wasn't trying to settle the OPs son, she stuck him in a cot in another room until he stopped screaming from exhaustion. Again HTH.

My mum would always try to put the kids to bed early despite me saying 8pm was normal for us - thankfully because we lived many time zones away their routine was always shot anyway! That said she stepped in and babysat at short notice so cut her some slack. 9.30 seems very late for a lot of people, we often had ours up but because we were rubbish at getting a decent routine and they never went to sleep alone until school age (big mistake!!!)

I would feel the same as you, op

My MIL also approves of the cry it out method. That's why I've never been apart from 2 year old dd where naps or sleeping is concerned. It's the sacrifice you have to make. Either accept that other people will parent differently and enjoy your time away from child, or never get a day off but know that your child is being parented the way you want. Can't have it both ways I'm afraid as you can't control other adults' actions.

I think when you look after a child you abide by their parents rules. I also think you need to trust the person to tell you honestly if your child is upset/OK.

However in your shoes I would have collected him (and have done in the past for less). I don't think you can say you're very upset and it's heart breaking thinking of your DS alone crying when you took no action to remove him from the situation (sorry that isnt meant as harsh as it sounds). You could have just said your OH said your DS was upset and it's unusual so you wanted to collect him.

I would ask your MIL why she sent two different messages, I also don't understand why you didn't send a message saying 'is everything OK OH said DS is upset?' - it's normal for partners to discuss messages they had, particularly when it relates to your child.