Baby’s Time with Grandparents

That's a lot more than DD's grandparents spend with her (and they live 20 mins away from us)...although they are both busy with their own lives/working etc. They are DH's parents, though, if it was my mum living close by I'm sure we'd see her every second day!

Edited by Febgirl

Both mine and DH's parents work full time but..

Daniel regularly spends a night (usually sat) at one of their places. For example the weekend just been he spent friday night, came back sat with the inlaws and not this coming weekend but the weekend after hes going to my parents. Its fantastic. If I ever need a babysitter I always ask them first.

Because of the types of jobs everyone has we don't see them during the week usually at all. On the odd ocassion my mum and dad will pop by but thats once a month type thing (they live 20 mins away).

In total daniel has probably spent about 6-8 nights with my parents and almost 20 with the inlaws

My parents both work fulltime, but come around at every opportunity they get (they live about 20 mins away), although they try not to do it too often on weeknights as Isabelle wants to go home with them.

They also take Isabelle every Saturday avo and bring her back Sunday night.

In saying that .. my Father has waited (impatiently) for grandchildren for 12 years so they were bound to dote on grandkids when they eventuated.

Elias is still too young for them to look after overnight, so they tend to spend time with him on Sunday when they bring Issy home.

My Mum comes to our house and looks after our Daughter every Wednesday for a half day and every Friday all day and she stays the night so that DH and I can have date night. I work on Fridays and just have time out on Wednesday mornings.
DH's parents have her anytime we ask. I know that they love having her and always say yes when we ask. I think they don't offer as such, as they don't want to step on our toes (not that it would!). Jaymie would stay overnight at the inlaws at least about 8 times a year and they would babysit her probably once every two - three weeks.
In September DH and I went to Brazil, Argentina and Uraquay for 12 nights and Jaymie spent half the time with the inlaws and half with my Mum.
So, we are very lucky with how much contact Jaymie has with her Grandies, but to be fair I don't think that I would be offended if it wasn't 'offered'. I am a believer in asking if required, but not being upset if they can't do it.

My parents had Jake every Thursday afternoon and overnight then dropped him and picked him up from daycare on fridays and brought him home friday evenings. They'd also see heaps of him over the weekend.
They don't do that anymore though and frankly I'm super-happy about it. Its good to have extended family around but depending on what your parents/PIL are like you can end up feeling completely smothered. I started having a problem when I'd say that Jake was ok or not ok with something and my mum would disagree with me and then do what she thought was best she'd also take him off me to put him to bed when they were visiting and stuff like that. We still see alot of my parents but have had to put our foot down about some things and take control back.
We're missing our date nights so we'll be asking them to come out to our place and babysit a couple of evenings a month but yeah thats a slightly different perspective on grandparents involvement...

We are in an odd situation where DP's daughter (currently 5) has her maternal grandmother living with her and her mum.

She did so for the first year of her life and continuously after DP's marriage broke up. As such the grandmother does a lot of the child-rearing stuff like picking her up and dropping her off from school and infact spends a few days at school with the kiddo including hand feeding the child lunch on occasion. The grandmother also sleeps in the same bed as DP's daughter.

TBH DP is more than a little weirded out by it all and thinks that the kiddo needs some time apart from the grandmother in order to develop her own idenitity.

Edited by lemongirl

Sam's dad's parents come once a month (they live over an hour away) and take him for the day, usually 10AM till 5PM or so. They usually just take him visiting family or out somewhere to the zoo and give him lunch.   His father takes him for one week out of every five and spends that time at his parents house so they see him for that week too although they both work fulltime.

My mum comes over both days on the weekends usually or at least for one of the days and spends time with us but she also works fulltime and will drop everything to spend time with her boyfriend and will often come over only to leave half an hour later because he is free to do something with her.   It bugs me as she doesn't really see Sam as often as she could and she doesn't really offer to have him overnight on the weekends as that is her 'time' to spend relaxing and doing things with her boyfriend.    

My dad comes over once every couple of months IF I text him or call him, otherwise I would never see him.

We see my parents all the time! We go out to their place every Sun almost without fail, we have missed it once because we were both exhausted even when DD was only 5days old we were at their place lol well actually day 2.3.4.and5 were at mum and dads.

Mum and SIL looked after DD when she was 3weeks old so that DP and I could go to Cirque and she hasn't looked after her for very long without me there mainly because we are still bfing and I can't be bothered carrying milk and I don't really have anywhere to go lol. But if we asked because we wanted to go to the movies then mum would take her without thinking.

One of the reason we don't ask too often is mum is such a social butterfly she has a better social life then me! We don't expect dad to be able to look after her as he is quite sick, krohns, colitis, blah blah blah so he isn't actually able to really. He doesn't hold DD very often because of being sick and in pain.

We don't see DP's parents as they live in Brisbane so no go there!

I do like going to mum and dads as mum will change her for me lol, one less nappy for me to change and when she wakes up from a nap she goes to get her.

me personally i wouldnt want my 9 mth old son to stay overnight anywhere, even grandparents.
I could probably count on one hand the amount of times my MIL has had the boys on their own. i dont think she is ready to have the girl yet tho. I think we expect too much from grandparents sometimes though, seeing their grandkids should be a pleasure and something they do cause they want to, not cause the parents need a babysitter. but then again maybe they are waiting for you to ask as opposed to offering (they might not want to get rejected and be unsure that when is too soon for him to have overnighters or away visits).

well we have very involved parents (my side) - we go out there for tea every Sunday (have since Jack was 6 days old) and he goes to bed there for a couple of hours (the kids have their own room there).

Dad usually calls in twice a week because his physio is just down the road so he comes in for a cuppa and a kid fix. Mum then gets jealous so often pops round once in the week on the way home from work. If DH is away, she comes over every 2nd night to help out, or give me a break. She also rings everyday to see how they're going.

Mum and Dad offer to take the kids once a month for some us-time, it's not that we're getting out of our responsibilities as parents, but the fact that unless we did that, we could sometimes go months without having any alone time as DH is always away. So for us, its very much the village raising the children scenario, and it has to be because of our way of life.

MIL is moving from her home of 20 years to just down the road (eek) so she can be around for the kids. Shes going to look after them twice a week next year while I'm working, and will babysit them if asked. She's been pretty hands-off and I doubt she'll be as willing to look after the kids as my parents because she has very different views.

FIL is out of the picture.

My grandma even looks after the kids if need be, she pops in once a week to see them usually too. She did shifts in hospital when I had scans (Jack in hospital, pg with Ava).

So I count myself very, very lucky. I honestly don't know how I'd cope without that support though, our lives are too disruptive otherwise and they are one of the only constants Jack has (other than me).