Am I overthinking leaving my baby with my MIL?

Sooo I’ll try to keep this short.

A few months ago we had a situation with my MIL where she put baby rice in my son’s bottle when he was about 3 or 4 months old. Can’t quite remember how his age but definitely too young. That’s just what she was taught to do when she had babies. We talked about it, she apologised, understood why we don’t do that anymore and we moved on. All good but it did knock my trust a wee bit.

She’s watched both him and my older daughter a few times since then and it’s mostly been absolutely fine. She’s a really lovely grandma. She’s so much fun with the kids, absolutely dotes on them, spoils them rotten and she accepted my daughter as her own granddaughter from day one even though they’re not biologically related which means a lot to me. Shes always been on my side too, like when her son was messing up.

We also had a chat about all the things that have changed since she had kids: safe sleep, not putting babies on pillows, all that sort of thing and she’s been really receptive. I genuinely don’t think she’d ever knowingly do anything unsafe.

There have just been a few little things that we hadn’t really talked about beforehand that happened and I don’t know what to do now:

- My 7 month old got sunburn on his arm because she forgot to reapply his sunscreen before they went into the garden. We’d put it on before dropping him off and packed the sunscreen in his bag. She did remember his sun hat, just forgot the sunscreen.

- They watched about 3 hours of tv together. I’m not massively bothered because my 7 year old was there too but they were watching K-pop demon hunters which like isn’t the best for a baby?? Apparently my son looked up a few times and got a fright and I was just thinking maybe not the best choice for a baby, why didn’t you put something else on if my daughter wanted to watch tv?

- He’s only been weaning for about a month. I’m not super strict about food and he’s even had a little bit of ice cream before but I’m trying to keep sugar fairly limited while he’s so little. She’d baked a cake and he somehow managed to eat a whole slice with squirty cream and he’d also had McDonald’s chips that day. It just felt a bit much. Like if she gave him a piece to try, fine. But the whole slice?!

- He’s a huge baby but he’s also crawling and pulling himself up already. The other day he pulled a chair over in her house and it nearly landed on him. Her house obviously isn’t baby-proofed like ours and while I know she’s watching him, you can’t have your eyes on them every second. It made me worry about the other furniture. My boyfriend has since gone round and fixed the heavier furniture to the walls, so that’s helped.

The thing is none of these things individually feel like a massive deal. Every time I’ve mentioned something she’s been really understanding and has said she’ll do it differently next time. It’s never been defensive or argumentative.
We’re honestly so lucky to have her. She loves the kids to bits and they’re obsessed with her but I’m a bit hesitant sometimes now about more long hours for childcare.

We’ve got a wedding coming up and she’d be watching him for around 10 hours as the wedding is child free. My daughter will go to my best friends house in that time but she can’t watch the baby as she has an autistic son who she’s not sure if he’d be aggressive towards my son.
I think I’d be more worried if he was with someone else but I still have this little voice in the back of my head wondering if I’m being too relaxed because she’s family, or whether I’m overthinking it because of those few incidents??

Posted Jul 11, 2026, 1:37 PM UTC

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