At What Age Have You Left Baby for 8+ Hours with a Grandparent/Sitter…

[Pourmeagingin]

DH has brought us tickets to see a concert at the o2 in a couple of weeks time. My DD will be just over 21 weeks/ just under 5 1/2 months old. If we go it’ll be circa 9hrs away from her with the travel etc… is this too young an age to leave her for that period of time?! She’s bottle fed I should add, but I’m stressing already at the thought of leaving her for the first time ever, and with my MIL (who I’m not close to personally which doesn’t help ease my worries!) for that prolonged period of time. I have concerns too about it messing up her routine having someone different do it, and equally missing 2 of her feeds and them not doing it exactly as I do. In an ideal world I probably wouldn’t go, but equally feel guilty considering cancelling on him… so would love to know if I’m being ridiculous or just?!
What’s the earliest you’ve left your babies with a grandparent/sitter and for how long?!

I breastfed so not for quite a bit longer than that.

Surely the whole point of bottle feeding is that you CAN go away and enjoy yourself?

Dd was at full time nursery at 9 months old and she wasn’t the youngest. Your DD will be with family who love her, they may not do everything exactly the same way you do but if you believe that they love and care for her, and the fact they are willingly looking after her for the day for you would suggest that is the case, then you know they will be acting in her best interests and with the best of intentions for her.

Well my DD was EBF, and she’s also almost 7 years old and not been left with a grandparent or sitter yet as had no need. But in terms of relevance to your post, I think it’s absolutely fine to leave them at that age if bottle fed, but equally fine to not feel ready.

It’s a very individual thing, and I do think you need to be absolutely comfortable with the person doing the childcare and to start with a local outing would be preferable to one that involved travel. It would also be better to get the MIL to do a few feeds when you are there too.

I wouldn’t have done it myself I don’t think, not before DD was in childcare which was at almost 14 months. But I BF to 26 months and didn’t use bottles so it wouldn’t have been a priority for me.

Only you know how you feel, you don’t need an excuse.

Very recently left our 4 month old with my in-laws for around 8 hours. It's the first time we've left him and I was quite worried before doing it but they sent us updates and he was absolutely fine. We were only about half an hour away and knowing that we could go and get him if he wasn't happy was the biggest factor in us leaving him, so I'd say it depends on your travel time.
I know what you mean about not going in an ideal world but feeling like you have to. We only went because they'd given us a voucher to something and we felt like we needed to use it, but actually it was good to have that push to have to do it.

The main point of bottle feeding is to get nutrition into your child.
Sometimes it has benefits that the mother can be apart from their child.
But to suggest that people who bottle feed are just doing it to get time away is deeply insulting to those of us who tried so hard to breastfeed and had to swap to bottle feeding for any number of reasons.

About 5 months

Not to "get time away" but to better share the workload. All my friends who formula feed have actively chosen this because they absolutely hated being the sole source of nutrition. Every single post on mumsnet from exhausted mums of newborns gets 100 replies with "go to bed early and let DH give a bottle ". I'm sorry you struggled but my point is that when you formula feed, you CAN go away, for an hour or 8.