There could be so many different reasons behind this choice, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Maybe what you really mean is you feel hurt to be left outRead more Leading questionsMy brother and sister-in-law have a new baby a few months old. My sister-in-law won’t let anyone hold the baby, although the grandparents on both sides of the family were allowed one-off holds. At family events, as soon as the baby makes the slightest cry, her mum whips her away to a room as far from everyone else as possible. Usually they leave shortly after that.
No one says anything to her, to avoid confrontation and the “new mum” factor, but only allowing the baby contact with her parents seems like it will build problems later on. It is already difficult in the moment for everyone else, my brother included. The natural inclination is to engage with a very small baby. It’s such a short time they are like that. Already everyone else has been left out – there’s a sense of ownership and that we are all out of bounds. Even in photos, she holds the baby twisted away from everyone else. It feels extreme. Is it? How can I be supportive without feeding that extremeness (if it is)?Eleanor says: There could be so many different reasons she’s made this choice. It could be about illness. A lot of parents limit visitors or cuddles in the first few it just takes one relative forgetting they have a cold or a cold sore. It could be about overstimulation. Maybe she doesn’t want to deal with the possible aftermath of the baby getting overwhelmed by multiple faces, noises, smells. It could be a maybe all-day-long parenting, books and her postpartum imagination remind her of everything that could go wrong. There could be medical things we don’t know, emotional things we don’t know. It could just be her preference. This decision could be completely neurotic, or completely rational. Continue reading...
Saturday 18 October 2025
theguardian - 2 days ago
My sister-in-law won’t let anyone hold her new baby. It feels extreme. Is it? | Leading questions
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