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[quote=Anonymous]I am having some anxiety about how MIL is around the baby.  She is almost 70 years old and in poor health - bad arthritis, walks very slowly, cannot stand up from a sitting position without pulling up on something.  When she holds the baby she basically balances her in between her arms while holding her own wrists and not really grasping the actual baby.  Baby slips down and/or lops over, and MIL has to basically toss the baby to readjust.  I know I'm not describing this well but trust me, it is harrowing to watch and I have shown pictures of this to many people to make sure I'm not being an overreactive new mom.  DH agrees with me as well, and neither of us is comfortable leaving the baby with MIL unsupervised.

The problem is that MIL is in complete denial about her physical limitations.  She is ALWAYS trying to contrive situations where she is alone with the baby, offers to babysit even in situations where it would be strange (e.g., we come in for only a day trip, and presumably we would want to spend it all together as a family), tries to shoo everybody out of the room.  She is also crazy defensive about everything.  Like if we hand her the baby and say "you got her?" (which is something DH and I would say to each other when passing each other the baby), she will snap at us and say "of course I have her!" or if we are reluctant about leaving the room in one of the aforementioned shooing situations she will be like, "I'm not going to hurt the baby!"  And if we ever try to take the baby back for any reason she will bark at us and insist that she can handle it - e.g. when we wanted to put her in a bumbo while we all ate lunch instead of letting MIL eat a giant sandwich while awkwardly balancing the baby in the other hand.  On the other hand, the second the baby cries, she shoves her at the closest person.  Has no interest in trying to comfort the baby.

We really want the baby to have a close relationship with her but the way she's behaving I am just really anxious around her.  And we thought maybe once she gets older and doesn't need to be carried everywhere MIL can babysit... but I feel like she repeatedly exhibits poor judgment and hasn't indicated she can take care of the baby... so as it stands right now, I am not real keen on ever leaving her alone with my kid.  Which makes me sad.

Anyone deal with this situation?  [/quote]

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