New Parents

iguana

First proper visit with the mother in law about to happen and I'm dreading it. I could hear her on the phone telling my husband that he needed tough love in order to make him sleep at night. I will not react well if she says anything to me about showing tough love to my 20 day old baby!

seamus

iguana wrote: »

First proper visit with the mother in law about to happen and I'm dreading it. I could hear her on the phone telling my husband that he needed tough love in order to make him sleep at night. I will not react well if she says anything to me about showing tough love to my 20 day old baby!

This apparently was quite popular back in the day. The MIL told me that my wife was colicky and the advice she was given was to put the child in another room and ignore her for at least an hour till she stopped crying. :eek:

She said she did it once and realised how wrong it was. A newborn isn't capable of understanding "tough love" ffs.

Clareman

I'm sure there's plenty of things we're doing now that'll be considered madness when our grandkids come along, you child is a baby not a puppy, it doesn't need to be trained, it needs to be loved, the woman who used to mind me told me that and I liked it.

Neyite

It's strange the way its changed over time. My MIL told me she used to put rice in the bottles from 8 weeks :eek:

There just seems to be this obsession to get babies to sleep through the night as soon as possible by that generation. Its as if its the mark of a skilled mother or something. In my opinion a baby cries to tell you something.

meeeeh

And our children will be complaining about our parenting skills. Although my mother almost cried when the first one got some time out. She never cried when we needed to be punished.

Ms2011

Neyite wrote: »

It's strange the way its changed over time. My MIL told me she used to put rice in the bottles from 8 weeks.

My Dad used to put a shot of brandy in my bottle at night to 'help me sleep'!!!!

iguana

Visit went off without incident, though we have a longer one ahead of us tomorrow. I do have to do a fair bit of tongue biting when I get given advice about how babies are missing out developmentally now that they are no longer put to sleep on their tummies. Tbh, I'm actually surprised that my MIL was told to sleep her babies on their tummies in the late 70s as I thought that it was already known to be dangerous at that point and side-sleeping was recommended.
All we can do as parents is follow the best guidelines available at the time. Even now there is a lot of conflicting advice, swaddling for example, both increases and reduces SIDS risk depending on what you read. If by the time our children are parents there are definitive answers and it turns out we did things the riskier way we'll just have to accept that the newer information exists and be pleased that our children have access to better information than we do. It isn't a personal slight.

IvyTheTerrible

iguana wrote: »

Visit went off without incident, though we have a longer one ahead of us tomorrow. I do have to do a fair bit of tongue biting when I get given advice about how babies are missing out developmentally now that they are no longer put to sleep on their tummies. Tbh, I'm actually surprised that my MIL was told to sleep her babies on their tummies in the late 70s as I thought that it was already known to be dangerous at that point and side-sleeping was recommended.
All we can do as parents is follow the best guidelines available at the time. Even now there is a lot of conflicting advice, swaddling for example, both increases and reduces SIDS risk depending on what you read. If by the time our children are parents there are definitive answers and it turns out we did things the riskier way we'll just have to accept that the newer information exists and be pleased that our children have access to better information than we do. It isn't a personal slight.

Me and my sister were put to sleep on our tummies (we were born in 1980 and 1981) and my brothers were put to sleep on their backs (born 85 and 86). I don't think the back-sleeping thing had filtered down too quickly. I'm sure that when my baby is having his own children, things I am doing now will seem completely out there!

Clareman

Grand mothers seem to be the worst for giving their opinions, all this "you should" and "I raised x children" is starting to get to me

iguana

Aargh! I'm in the bedroom feeding Sam and can overhear my mother in law telling my husband that the cuddly lamb we got Sam for Christmas is silly and we should just have gotten him a bauble for the tree instead. I assume it's hormones but I'm actually fuming.

And now the conversation has moved on to the fear she has of our dogs eating Sam. So glad I decided to stay in here to feed him.

Clareman

Ahhh, mother in laws, they go up a stage in the annoyance stakes after a child don't they, bit like your girlfriend/fiance's sister is a completely different beast that your wife's sister, might be just the whole bridesmaid thing, but they improve when they are an aunt. Mother in laws though suddenly become experts on child raising as well as everything else, my mother in laws favourite things to say are "I don't know how I raised 5 without *insert something that makes life easier*", "I'm not telling you your business but.....", "you should......"

Xdancer

I have to admit my mother is great at being able to take a step back and be a grandmother than a mother to my baby. She is there for advice when I need her, but never pushes her way on me. She does mention how things were different, but not in a 'my way is better' kind of way.
When she had her first baby in the early 70s babies were put on their sides and that's tge way she kept doing it with us regardless of what the current way was when the rest of us were born.

My partner's mother knows better than to offer her opinion. We don't get on, and she's well aware of what I think of her parenting skills.

dublinlady

My own mother is worse than my mother in law.... Mother in law afraid she'll annoy me and so see her less - my own mother gives the impression to ppl she's extremely hands on when actually barely sees her every month.... Any routines etc I'm applying get mocked and apparently I fuss too much and should let her hit her head off things as she will learn it to do it again....
I've learnt that only my and my hubbies opinion count... The rest I just smile, nod and ignore!!

KGLady

Jumping in to say HI!

Our mini has just hit the 8wks mark so much of this thread is hitting close to home, in a rather lovely way... mostly! We're doing great with her so far, she's no3 and seems to be the most calm laid back baby I've encountered, 2 feeds a night (BF still) and a nice long wakey stretch in the mornings where we're really getting to see her reactions develop and the start of her wee personality. And she's a Pink Floyd baby Though we're working on getting her comfortable with going into the crib awake and falling asleep herself and have two albums of lullaby music on the ipod for her http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyEKWwaMaKs The older two still sleep to one of these and they're about to turn 4 & 5 yo.

For the babies that are struggling with wind, we had similar problems with no1 when we switched her to formula, there were times it seemed like she ingested more infacol than the food. We switched her from regular newbie formula to an easy digest 'Comfort' one and the difference was immediate (we used Cow & Gate Comfort) and though it was a little more expensive in the long run not paying out for infacol and having so much less clothes to keep washing as she puked so little in comparission, meant it was a saving in the long run - not to mention the relief she had and how it lowered stress levels for us all, and that is pure priceless!

KGLady

iguana wrote: »

Aargh! I'm in the bedroom feeding Sam and can overhear my mother in law telling my husband that the cuddly lamb we got Sam for Christmas is silly and we should just have gotten him a bauble for the tree instead. I assume it's hormones but I'm actually fuming.

Don't mind her at all, what use is a tree bauble to a baby? So it hangs on the tree for ~ 2 wks a year, useless to them for now! They might get a big of craic trying eat it in a few years, or enjoy hanging it themselves when older, but its mostly a nod to future nostalgia for us grownups. I've no doubt that the wee lamb will be on Sam's bed every night for years to come, probably carried about around the house and if it becomes the special favoured snuggle toy will be glued to the kid all day every day until school starts. (One of mine rushes home to see her snuggle bunny after pre-school) Tell the MIL she can have the 'honour' of getting a tree bauble for Sam instead

Clareman

We had a quote when we were getting married that we're using more and more now "Those that matter won't mind and those that mind don't matter", if someone annoys you just ignore them

mapaco

god i am FREAKING out about visitors-i get really tetchy when i'm tryin to learn & master something- combine that with hormones i'm terrified i'll lose the plot or burst into tears in front of someone. first grandchild on both sides, 24 aunts and uncles between us and none of them too far away....i feel sick.....
any brilliant lies to get rid of them or tips anyone?
i swear to god i'm gonna send myself into labour if i dont calm down!

Clareman

mapaco wrote: »

god i am FREAKING out about visitors-i get really tetchy when i'm tryin to learn & master something- combine that with hormones i'm terrified i'll lose the plot or burst into tears in front of someone. first grandchild on both sides, 24 aunts and uncles between us and none of them too far away....i feel sick.....
any brilliant lies to get rid of them or tips anyone?
i swear to god i'm gonna send myself into labour if i dont calm down!

Don't worry about how you'll cope, think about how they can help, if there are cooks in the family, get dinners, ironing/washing hand it over, any diy need doing, get them to do it. This will sound weird, but they aren't there checking on you, they are there to see your baby and support you, people will annoy you, you'll be mad when the door bell rings, but it's all part of it and you should milk it as much as possible, if you go too far just laugh about it and blame the hormones

emer_b

Mapaco, spread the word early, via parents/brothers/sisters that you want a week or two (or three!) before extended family start calling. And make sure no one even attempts to visit you in hospital unless you're ok with it.
And if anyone texts to ask you can they call over have no hesitation to say sorry baby is very unsettled at the moment, can you leave it until next week? I've had friends say that to me before and it was no problem.
However there'll always be a few that annoy you. One couple visited us and stayed for over 2hrs, never occurred to them that we might have to eat dinner! And being typical Irish we were too polite to say!

Julo12

Don't let ppl call over after 5 or 6 for a while. I found baby v unsettled at that time and having visitors made it worse esp as baby just wanted to feed and I didn't feel as comfortable doing that in front of ppl. Tbh them being nearby is better as it doesn't have to be a long visit as they haven't travelled far and can come back another day. My family camp out for 6 hours when they come - v tiring...
And try see the funny side when ppl say 'you should be resting when baby is' while they're sitting there watching baby sleep supping the tea you had to make them while they wait for baby to wake up before they will go!!

Clareman

Sorry for bumping this thread, but just over 2 months in and we're into a fairly decent routine, Christmas has been a bit tough with both families wanting a piece of us and a particular aunt wanting to be involved way too much (suits her at the moment), in fact I had to tell her to f**k off out of the Santa photo the other day.

We've Santa all setup under the tree, we can't wait till tomorrow morning, we're more like kids than she is We've been lucky this week, we've been working on getting her into a routine, she's sleeping now from 11 till 7, last night she went till 7.32, we've stopped the night feed. She has started teething though, just when we thought we had the winding and spewing under control (Infacol is wonderful btw), we've given her a soother now and it's bringing her some relief, we know people say not to give a soother but it gives her relief so we're all for it.

Clareman

Hi again all,

What a difference a child makes to Christmas, in the past it would have been a case of getting out as much as possible, eating too much and drinking too much, this time it was staying at home happy out with our princess, Christmas morning the 2 of us were awake at 6 waiting for her to wake, we even had the discussion as to whether we should wake her or not, we didn't of course.

Update on herself, she has now gone almost 3 weeks sleeping through the night, normally it's from ~10 till 7, some nights she'll fall asleep earlier others later, but 7 seems to be her wake up time, we got into a bit of a bad habbit of giving her a bottle in the room in the morning and going back to sleep, this is going to change from tomorrow when we're going to get up at that stage and try to get into some kind of routine. She's really doing great and we're noticing huge changes in her already, she's a lot more alert, the smilies are fantastic. I measured her the other day and she's 61cm long, she's going to be a tall one

As for dealing with the families over the holidays, we had the sister in law every day for a while, she even came to Santa with us, I had a bit of a freak when she wanted to get into the picture with us. My in laws were up from Kerry as well, they have 2 kids (4 and 2) and make everything out to be a major hassle when it comes to kids, it doesn't help that the 4 year old is a brat and the 2 year old gets into fits and passes out if he gets upset, they decided to pick at everything we're doing cause the "are sick of hearing about that perfect child they aren't raising it right at all", apparently Infacol is the Devil's work, having a child sleep through the night is terrible, bottle fed babies are slower to develop and giving a soother to a baby is the worst thing in the world to do, everything seems to be a competition with them and that annoys me, but different strokes for different folks (their 2 year old is 64cm btw).

The latest "drama" is the Christening, we would love to have our friends and families there, but with just brothers, sisters, parents and nieces & nephews we've 24 people coming, if we start to invite more people it turns into a wedding, but that doesn't stop both sets of parents saying "you have to invite.....", but we've set them straight. We also have 2 grandmothers fighing over which Christening gown to wear, both "have to have her in mine cause you were Christened in it", so I've said it's a girl so she can wear her mother's mother gown, the deal is if she minds her after the Christening we wear hers, otherwise it's my mothers (and she can mind her).

We've been out for nights out twice now, my mother takes her to her house for the night and we collect her the next day, it's tough leaving her but it's good to get her used to sleeping in other places with other people and not over-dependant on us, it's also great for us to get out.

Anyway, sorry about the rambling, happy New Year everyone, I hope ye had a good 1.

dublinlady

I'm sorry but ur stories about the in laws made me laugh so much!!!:D
Families are hilarious - it's impossible to find one who doesn't have something to b&tch about!!

Blueskye

Lovely to hear how you're getting on Clareman as its all ahead of us in May except with twins. Sounds like ye are doing great.

I really don't fancy a lot of visitors while I'm trying to figure out breast feeding and looking after 2 babies but aware they are going to cause huge excitement and everyone will want to visit.

Clareman

dublinlady wrote: »

I'm sorry but ur stories about the in laws made me laugh so much!!!:D
Families are hilarious - it's impossible to find one who doesn't have something to b&tch about!!

They are special alright, my mother in law was a bit upset that on Christmas day there'd only be 1 daughter there, out of 5 kids only 1 of them home for Christmas dinner, 3 of the are married and were going to the inlaws (married 1,3 and 5 Christmas') and the other son decided to spend it with his girlfriend, the all said they'd be home for New Years and there'd be a lunch then, everyone was there, happy out, great fun, waiting for dinner (father cooks btw) and what does she do but decide to go for a walk, we were all supposed to wait 2 hours for her to come back, we didn't and had dinner without her

seamus

Ha, you're in my head Clareman. The difference that a baby makes to Xmas, incredible. No more drinking in the afternoon, no lazing around doing nothing but eating sweets and watching crap movies while you wait for your dinner. If the baby's not being changed, fed or entertained, then you're taking her sleeping time as a chance to run errands. I'm bloody exhausted after Xmas, I was glad to get back to a normal routine this week. I'm sure when she's a year old next year it'll be different again.

Bit of "drama" about the christening here too, but only because all of my family are atheist or at least former catholic and therefore non-religious, and the in-law's are catholic (though not holy joes). So there's question over how big a deal to make it - do we rent out a room in a pub and invite all our friends, or just take the two families out for lunch?

Herself is flying along. She started giggling this week (*I* felt my feckin ovaries tremble when she did ) and started rolling herself onto her back from her tummy yesterday. Not bad going for 11 weeks old. I have visions of having a 10-month-old fully walking toddler causing havoc in the house though...

She's sleeping great. Going down around midnightish, sleeping till 8 or 9am, getting a feed and then going back down till midday. We hardly know ourselves. I'm delighted with my 7 hours, but of course Mummy is delighted with her 8/9 hours and optional nap

Getting our first "night out" this weekend, boy do we need it. Breastfeeding is way tougher than we thought, on so many levels. Our store of expressed milk was obliterated over Xmas, so still don't really have the option of doing an all-night stayover, my wife's parents will be babysitting till we get home.

There's a lot said about the benefits of breastfeeding, fine, great, but at the same time they fail to mention how much pressure it puts on the mother and how insanely restrictive it makes life.

Neyite

What is this sleeping through the night of which you speak?

I'm 8 months in and had about 5 nights where he slept through, most recent was the night before last. But he is teething again so that isn't helping.

We are non practicing /lapsed but we decided to baptise because it would aid schools (he is automatically enrolled in the parish school now) and facilitate with secondary. I don't like it, but in a rural area where there are miles between schools we don't have much choice. As well as that, the grandparents were pleased we did. (not that they would have tried to influence it) we were easy so we went with it.

We had family and went to a restaurant afterwards. I know others who just got a local restaurant to provide a big pot of something hot and some sandwiches and just had family around to the house. I dont think there is a hard and fast rule for christenings.

Clareman

No hard and fast rule at all for Christenings I think its just the grandmothers getting used to not being the bosses, we're going to a local hotel for lunch and are going to invite our friends in for dinner after.

I'm typing this on a tablet while half time in the american football with my princess to my left and queen to the right, the little one wouldn't settle this evening, she's sound asleep now

emer_b

Great to hear how everyone is getting on. We had such a great Christmas with our little lady (14 weeks). My husband was off for two weeks and had an amazing time bonding with her. He's back to work in the morning and we're all sad about it! He managed to get her started on a daily nap routine which is going pretty well so far but I know I'll struggle a little bit this week on my own. I think she prefers him to me at this stage!

Sleeping 12 hrs with one feed around 5am so we're really lucky with that too.

We decided early on that we wouldn't be having any christening as neither of us are religious. However I've been avoiding the topic with the grandparents for the last 3 months. Need to pluck up the courage to talk about it soon. They haven't asked either so I think they know but will definitely be disappointed.

Seamus, I hear you on the breastfeeding. I was so not prepared for how physically tied I would be to the baby. If i need to go somewhere she will just about take a bottle from my husband, but my poor mother had to endure 2hrs of screaming the other night when we went for our first meal out together. No way would she take the bottle from her. She's not happy with anyone other than her mam or dad for last few weeks, which will make it even harder to leave her with anyone.

Starting baby massage course next week, really looking forward to it.

Clareman

Is it just me or are we all still worried about what our parents think? I guess that'll never change, I'm currently unemployed and my wife doesn't get maternity from her work so we'd much prefer ro wait a bit longer, but thems the breaks.

Oh yeah, 2 of my brother in laws were a bit peeved that they weren't asked to be godfather, 1 of them didn't even buy her a Christmas present.