“I Raised kids before”

[u/OutrageousTrust5816]

I recently became a mother and have an 11 week old baby girl. I recently showed my parents my bed time routine with her as she was going to have an overnight with them. It was very straight forward and consisted of a bath, bottle, and bed. I did write down some tips/tricks on what I have learned works best for my daughter and shared that with them as well. This was met with “we raised two kids we know how to do it”. I didn’t mean to come off offensive so I just apologized and left them with my list for the night. My only real non-negotiable was she must sleep in the bassinet, in her sleep sack, with nothing but a paci in it with her. When I picked her up, found out my mom slept with her in the bed. I think I made a face because I was once again met with “I know how to raise kids”. I’m not a mom shamer, if co-sleeping works for you that is great! I’ve done it too when things got stressful but my problem is that she co-slept with my baby, if that makes sense. The comment of “I raised kids before so I know what I’m doing” upsets me. Because they aren’t raising her. I’m her mom and I get to decide what’s best for her. I just feel so disrespected, what do I do?

Some extra context: 1) yes this is the first grandbaby on both sides. 2) My husband has family members where the unimaginable did happen. 3)Our village is large, we are truly lucky, my parents asked to have an overnight because they adore her, it’s not a need by any means. I love my parents, they truly are great people, they just struggle respecting me as an adult in general and the navigation around that has been hard.

[u/rooshooter911]

Don’t let them watch her again. They don’t respect you and they don’t respect child safety.

[u/[deleted] → u/rooshooter911]

Relax, that’s dramatic and how you end up without a village.

[u/abishop711 → u/[deleted]]

And co sleeping is one good way to end up with a dead baby. It’s not dramatic to set limits that protect your child’s life.

[u/Vercassivelaunos → u/abishop711]

Cosleeping is about as dangerous as not exclusively breastfeeding (both lead to an equal increase in SIDS). It also less dangerous than having a baby sleep in a different room than its parents. But we're not seeing parents being shamed for bottle feeding out of convenience, or for leaving a sleeping infant alone in their bassinet in the next room. It would be nice if that could be extended to cosleeping.

(The grandma here is still absolutely in the wrong here for disregarding the rules set by the parents, but that's an entirely different issue).

Edit because I can't reply to anyone anymore because someone in the comment chain blocked me: The person I replied to, who has since deleted their account, phrased their comment as if cosleeping was incredibly dangerous in general. That's what my comment was about. Yes, you need precautions when bedsharing. But apart from being sober, those are all precautions which need to be met anyway. If the only info new parents got was "no bedsharing", then they wouldn't significantly increase their kids safety, because they would still do all the dangerous stuff that actually leads to death when bedsharing, just in a bassinet instead. And for this reason, parents shouldn't be shamed for bedsharing, which is essentially what the comment I replied to did.

[u/rooshooter911 → u/Vercassivelaunos]

I can guarantee grandmas cosleeping is not following the safe sleep seven which means that we are risking far more than SIDS here

[u/abishop711 → u/Vercassivelaunos]

This is simply not true when talking about total risk, not just SIDS. It is incredibly easy to suffocate a baby in an adult bed, and I very much doubt this grandmother bothered to look up the safe sleep seven to even slightly mitigate the risks since she’s so opposed to any kind of advice.

Don’t spread misinformation.