Stop touching my baby

[emwi]

DD aged 7 months is extremely cute with lovely fat legs and cheeks. She is quite sociable and loves people talking to her but then they start pinching her legs and asking to have a hold. I don't think she really likes this and, after being flattered when she was very little, I now don't like it either. Does anyone else feel the same - and how do you stop them without making them feel bad about their obvious good intentions?

I have the same problem emwi, especially with strangers. My DD has never liked being passed around and people never seem to listen when I say "Shall I have her so you can have a drink/something to eat/etc?". Perhaps I should be more forceful with them but I don't like causing offence either. I wish I knew how to get the message across clearly without causing an upset.

I don't know what the answer is, apart from trying to avoid the situations where it happens. (Do you mean this happens with family or with strangers, btw? It's easier to warn off strangers, of course.) People here in Indonesia have no inhibitions about touching and like to touch my dd. Really, we were powerless to do anything as we don't speak the language well enough. DD learned to accept the attention, in the end, and now quite likes it. But a friend starting pinching people back when they were touching her dd constantly. The message soon got through!

I remember telling people permantently that DD was teething, suffering with colic, tired...well you get the idea. After a while people just stopped asking.

Its horrid how people (usually those you don't know well) thinking that from the moment you get pregnant they can touch your belly, then just take your baby from you, or when complete strangers stop you in the street and poke the poor babe in their pram...ARRRRRGGGGHHHH

I have already decided to be more militant this time round as I just felt too intimidated when DD was small, even though she probably had less of a problem then I did

Failing that I am fully prepared to hang a chemical hazard sign round the new babies neck and dressing myself up in a bio-hazard suit. That should scare a few people away.

I have to say, I do think that it is a good thing in principle that people like babies so much and feel caring towards babies that aren't our own. On the whole I think this is a very desirable state of affairs and should be encouraged. Babies need to be protected in this world. I have never tried to stop people talking to ds and making faces at him etc, but I can understand it is a little annoying if they want to pick your dd up all the time if she shows signs of not liking it. I suppose the only answer is to tell people how much she likes being talked to and played with but she's going through a phase where she's a bit sensitive about being picked up and touched by people she doesn't know well. I think if they get upset by that it's not your fault.

id loved all the attention my children got as babies theyve turned out to be very sociable children and i especially didnt mind people picking up my dd as she was a very clingy baby and i was glad to let others take her, she soon got used to it and made my life easier as i couldnt even walk out of a room without her crying,if you really dont like it say that shes just had a feed and she tends to vomit if she`s hold

worst thing that happened to me was when DS was about 3 months and a shop keeper came from behind the till and said "are you teething" as he was crying then proceded to stick her fingers in his mouth after she had been handling money!!! I was taken a back but asked her to remove them quick sharp - I didn't even know her!

It's strangers doing it that bothers me - I'm happy for anyone to talk to her and it's nice when they hold out a finger for her to touch if she feels like it. We were in Spain for a holiday recently and she got lots of attention which I didn't mind but then there was a rather creepy guy who couldn't keep his hands away from her and was asking to hold her - we said no but some friends of ours saw him going up to other families with children and acting the same way. DH says this is just fear-mongering btw.

Sympathise with the finger in the mouth thing - her grandfather does this just after doing something with oily lawnmowers and can't understand why I recoil in horror.

Message withdrawn

i love the fact that dd2 gets loads of attention, she has chubby little legs, rosy cheeks and a mop of curly brown hair. almost every time i go out with her, some stops and coo's at her. its a big change from when dd1 was born, as most people looked in the pram and sort of recoiled in horror. she had severe ezcema all over her face, and looked like 'a burns victim' as one lad once said. it made me sad that no-one could see past her skin, tho now her facial ezcema has cleared up, and most people comment on what a lovely cheeky 3yr old she is.
i dont like strangers asking if they can hold my baby tho, i dont think she's like it either, she usually screams if someone other than family holds her.