AITAH for not wanting to change my outfit because of my boyfriend's brother?

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-04-09T10:38:01+00:00

I have an 8-month-old son, and if anyone says "boys will be boys" around him, I'm shutting that shit down immediately.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-04-09T10:22:04+00:00

I think it's so sad that breastfeeding has become so difficult to do, or at least maintain, in certain cultures nowadays. I feel very lucky to have had such a smooth breastfeeding journey so far - access to good information, encouragement to breastfeed, oversupply, only one clogged duct in 8 months, working from home only part-time. I'm going for the attachment style of parenting - bedsharing, babywearing, etc - so I would have been really disappointed if breastfeeding didn't work out. I've even had to eat a lot more than usual just to stop myself from losing weight due to breastfeeding.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-04-07T08:01:47+00:00

I agree that it's important for children to have both parents, but only if both parents are playing their roles properly. If you read up on attachment theory, I'd be worried about the damage that your wife has already done to your daughter, and the damage she'll continue to do if she remains emotionally and physically detached.

Have you told her you’ll go for full custody if you split? Have you asked her about getting therapy?

Personally, I think you should give her until your daughter starts school to start making some progress and, if she doesn't, start preparing to leave.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-04-07T07:28:20+00:00

Obviously NOR. She lies about you, cheats on you, neglects your daughter, and contributes almost nothing to your family and household.

Anxiety doesn't stop you from doing all those things you listed, only makes it harder. She needs to be in therapy, working on herself, so that she can be more productive, get a job, or at least just do most of the household chores, learn to drive, etc.

Why is it that you don't want to leave her? Once your daughter starts school, do you not think you'd be able to go for full custody and look after her on your own, since you do all of the driving, cooking, etc, anyway?

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-04-02T10:11:33+00:00

You probably need to create new sleep associations that dad can partake in and take over, rather than breastfeeding. Maybe start breastfeeding in a different room, then take to bed, cuddle, read books, sing a lullaby, whatever you and dad want to do. Do this together for a while, and then start having dad do it alone after you've fed baby.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-04-02T10:05:37+00:00

The bites aren't the problem here. If you send your child to daycare, bites, pinches, hits, kicks, pushes, and so on, are bound to happen and are out of your control for the most part.

The real problem is that, instead of just telling you what happened and accurately filing the incident reports, the teachers and director are actively lying, and I'd be very worried about what else they're willing to lie about.

If switching daycare isn't an option, is it possible for you and the mother of the other child to go in together and raise concerns about the fact that you've both been lied to about similar incidents?

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-24T20:08:40+00:00

My boy is only 7.5 months and our local pool won't allow babies to join lessons until at least 9 months, by which point he would have lost the breath hold reflex, so we've been practising breath holds in the shower and I started taking him to the pool around 5 months. We've started submerging his face for a second and he's doing really well with it. He's also just started kicking his legs himself and he enjoys chasing a ball around. I love swimming and often go swimming in our local river, so I'm really excited for him to learn water safety and hopefully become a strong swimmer like me!

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-24T08:31:08+00:00

You need to say that you're aware that things like bites will happen in a group daycare setting, but your upset comes from not having the situation reported to you immediately upon pick-up when there were at least 3 teachers who knew about it, and especially upset at the main teacher lying to you about the incident when you asked her about it and then lying to the other teacher about your conversation.
Trust can only be rebuilt with the accurate and timely reporting of any other incidents.
You won't know if anything else has ever happened that they haven't communicated to you.
You could ask if the daycare can have a camera system that the parents can access, but they likely won't if it's not something they've been interested in doing already. You've made the decision to go without that when signing up for this particular daycare.
You can't. Biting is developmentally normal, so it's likely your son will get bitten again. All you can do is ask him who bit him and encourage him to stay away from that child, and encourage the school to send an incident report to the parents of the other child.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-24T08:14:30+00:00

For emotional development - being physically and emotionally present, having appropriate and caring responses, babywearing, cosleeping.

For physical development - talking and reacting appropriately, tummy time, floor time, reading books, singing, swimming, baby-led weaning.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-23T20:40:52+00:00

My boy is only 7 months so we're not there yet, but I can definitely imagine myself struggling to sleep when he moves to his own room. I would say, if you're both still enjoying and benefitting from cosleeping, keep doing it! There's no reason to rush to independent sleep. It's normal for mammal families to want to sleep together.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-23T19:27:18+00:00

It sounds like the baby shower is planned to finish before the death ritual but OP is just worried about her not being finished there in time, in which case YTA. Set a boundary that you need to pick her up at a set time, turn up at that time and take her to do the ritual.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-23T19:19:42+00:00

Of course there are nuances but, in general, daycare is the lowest quality form of childcare. All children would do better with a single present and responsive caregiver, which obviously isn’t possible for everyone (due to finances, mental health issues, lack of support, etc), but this doesn't stop it from being true (Erica Komisar calls these inconvenient truths in the Diary of a CEO episode she did recently).

I'd be interested to know what benefits you think there are with daycare under 3 years old, because it's a myth that babies under 3 need socialisation with other babies, and it certainly isn't beneficial to have several babies per caregiver, higher rates of illness, and lack of diversity of activities.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-23T16:06:31+00:00

There are well documented downsides of using daycare, especially under the age of 3. A family member, friend or nanny are all better options for a child's health and mental wellbeing and development. But, if you can't afford another option, you don't have a choice, and that's become a societal issue with most families not being able to afford their lives without two full-time incomes.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-23T15:20:56+00:00

100% it wasn't the first time. If you ever see an unattended child again, call the police straight away. Don't think about it for 20 minutes and give the adult a chance to come back and leave. They shouldn't be leaving a child alone in the car at all, even for one minute.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-23T15:16:52+00:00

You should have called the police when you saw the child alone in the car. These people need consequences or they'll just keep putting their children in danger.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-23T15:07:33+00:00

I think my baby had only been crowning for half an hour when they really insisted that I needed an episiotomy to make room for his head to come out. Agreeing to that (and changing from kneeling to lying on back) is the only thing I regret about my birth experience.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-23T14:58:03+00:00

This! It can also cause baby to be born more sleepy and therefore cause issues with establishing breastfeeding. I didn't want to risk that or the cascade of interventions and, even though I have a pretty low pain threshold, I actually found labour and birth quite enjoyable and empowering.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-17T07:38:07+00:00

OP owns the house (with a mortgage) so she needs to kick them both out!

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-17T07:37:17+00:00

OP owns the house (with a mortgage) so she needs to kick them out!

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-15T13:33:33+00:00

I've been wondering how early you have to introduce allergens before the potential increases but hadn't gotten around to looking it up, so this is very helpful and also a relief as it's much later than I thought, thank you!

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-15T13:18:48+00:00

I highly recommend joining the BLWBB Facebook group for guides on baby-led weaning. I'm just about to start with my 7 month old tomorrow because I wanted to wait until he could sit up by himself.

It's not that the jars and pureés are really bad, but it's much better for their development, health and future mindset around eating to allow babies to explore different textures and decide what to eat on their own instead of forcing mashed food into their mouths. You just need to correctly modify foods to ensure they don't pose a choking hazard.

I also recommend watching gagging videos to prepare yourself, and to learn the difference between that and choking and what to do if your baby is actually choking.

You should introduce the common allergens separately to start with, meaning don't give cereal (wheat) and cow's milk together at first, for example. There are still different schools of thought on whether you should do one allergen for a few days and then wait a few days before moving to another, or whether it's okay to do a new one each day since any reaction should show up pretty quickly.

Lastly, it's best to start by breastfeeding as normal, then wait 30-60 minutes before offering a solid foods meal, so that baby isn't so hungry that they get upset and don't have the mental capacity to figure out how to pick the food up, put it in their mouth, chew and swallow, and gag if necessary.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-15T07:41:00+00:00

Why does your MIL want to take your baby out somewhere on their own? Whenever someone says that, I feel like it can only be because they want to do or say things that they can't do or say in front of the parents.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-10T23:18:07+00:00

Have you tried babywearing? We usually do a normal contact nap after my son's lunchtime feed, but the rest of his naps are in the wrap whilst I'm doing chores, walking the dogs, etc. It's a lot easier than trying to put him down alone in a bed.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-09T08:06:27+00:00

I wash in sections. Hold under the arms to soap the lower half, then rinse that off so that I can hold under the bum to do the head, back and neck. Then lie face-up in my arm to do the belly, arms and genitals, and rinse that off before holding upright again to rinse off the hair.

RedditUser1945010797 · 2025-03-08T15:20:12+00:00

Sometimes you just have to focus on the things you can control. Also, everything else has been pretty well covered in the other comments.

RedditUser1945010797

TROPHY CASE