My daughter stopped night feedings about 4-5 months old. With my husband being in the military, we had to move in with his mother while waiting for a house. She decided to become my daughters caregiver without my consent. She doesn’t ask what she likes, her habits, nothing. She completely has taken over. She was born a month premature, and has tried to give her 2%milk, toddler juice, which made her sick with Salmonella poisoning, biter biscuits and table food.So now everytime she wakes up, she feeds her when she shouldn’t be hungry. How can I let her know that what she’s doing is not the way I had things without my husband and her jumping on my case….Please Help!
Been there and it’s tricky. Let her know that you’re ever respectful of her help when you need it, that indeed she did raise a child (or more) successfully but that you have your own methods that you’re introducing. These methods include those based on YOUR upbringing in addition to his and a great deal of current information that sometimes is much better than information made available in our parents’ day. “As this child’s mother, I’d like to include you in the care of X but I’ll need your cooperation with our methods to make this possible.” My mother in law wanted to take our daughter at 2 mos. for a trip across town to visit a friend. I told her she needed her carseat and my mother in law said it’s in the car. It was but then she transferred into ANOTHER VEHICLE in the dead of frozen winter here in MT and didn’t bring the carseat, just strapped my 2 mo. old in a seatbelt on my MIL’s lap. I found out and had a s**t fit. I demanded she brought home immediately or I would come and get her (she was brought home). I explained that while children were allowed to run around in the backs of cars back in the day that it’s illegal to not have an infant in an infant carseat and that the reason why it’s illegal is because it’s DANGEROUS. I’ve learned to let silly things go: how she’s dressed (as long as it’s weather appropriate and clean, I’ll give into my MIL’s taste which makes her happy and costs me nothing) but dietary concerns are a huge deal. Your child was weaned once already and instead of making the transition for your daughter smooth, your mother in law put you right back at the beginning, causing you hardship and undoing what is a milestone of parenting! You will need to be the one to wake up with your daughter if you are to head this off at the pass. Tell your mother in law that it puts her son in a terrible bind when she does something that thwarts your role as the child’s mother, the child’s ONLY mother. It forces him to side either with the woman who raised him or with the woman he has chosen to be his future and the actual mother of his child. Tell her that her support for your agenda within your blessed little family of 3 is greatly needed but it’s needed according to the desires you have for your life, not for what worked in hers. It’s a tough conversation to have but it clears the air and doesn’t leave her out in the cold if she’s willing to accept the terms of who is and isn’t your daughter’s mommy. It’s hard when you feel beholden to her for living in her house but you are never beholden at the expense of the parent-child relationship and all it entails. Period.
I am a nurse for over 20 yrs
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wow! it is ur child and u need to put ur foot down. but in a polite calm way at first. let her kno, tell her!!
I am a nurse for over 20 yrs
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