MIL anxiety

[raaraayou]

Didn't know where to put this, sorry!

Just wondering if this is normal behaviour from a MIL.

MIL seems extremely worried that there is something wrong with my 1 year old Daughter. She looks after her 2 days a week while I work & has the occasional sleepover.

Every single time we collect her, MIL had a list of things that are wrong. Most of the time it's "she has a rash. Can you keep an eye on it", and it's a tiny bit of nappy rash. A few times she has said she has a rash on her tummy, but we have never seen it. She always thinks she has a tummy ache, bad wind (she hasn't had wind since about 7 months old), a headache, her teeth hurt (to be fair, they do), her wee is hot and does she have a urine infection. She was squirming about, so is she itchy or could it be a urine infection. Not sure why she's so keen on the urine infection. Quite often she will say how hot she is (it's just teething, red cheeks etc).

Just feels like she can't look after her without thinking she has some sort of ailment. Her partner passed away from Cancer a few years ago, and they didn't catch the cancer until far too late, so I suspect this has a lot to do with it. But I just find it really weird that she seems to actively look for things wrong with her when she's a totally healthy, happy baby.

Is this normal?!

This is literally my Mother. She is an extremely anxious person overall (probably stemmed from something in childhood I believe), and so it comes out heavily when she is looking after my child.

If you know your MIL is an anxious person especially due to a life experience and aside from that she is kind, loving and supportive, I would just nod your head and let it go in one ear and out of the other. It's like when people have health anxiety about themselves except she's doing it with your daughter instead. Just be sure she doesn't push her own anxieties onto your daughter.

Could it be that she's trying to find reasons why your daughter isn't happy all the time and often cries?

Many new grandparents forget how much babies cry and how hard work they are. It's similar to the way some new mums struggle with the realities of babies when they were expecting idyllic, peaceful days with a content babe-in-arms.

It's not unusual, when faces with such a disparity between expectation and reality to start medicising issues, rather than accepting that babies/toddlers just are hard work to keep happy.