Woman asks if she's wrong for threatening to call police on sister who left baby.
A women admitted she has no idea how to take care of a baby. But her sister really needed a break and insisted watch the baby for a while. A while turned into a longer while, and the girl ended up overwhelmed and over her head.
Did she handle this well? Is she being an overly dramaitc AH? Or did her sister put her in a terrible situation, and she was right to threaten her?
We'll let you, and the commentors, be the judges.
This younger sister took to Reddit's 'Am I The A**hole' subreddit to ask if she handled things the right way. Should she have threatened the police, or was the AH for not just sucking it up and figuring it out?
I, 18f have a sister 24f who just gave birth to my nephew who’s about 3 months old. To preface the situation, I do not know how to properly care for a baby, the formula ratios, how to change and clean them, nothing. I have no experience with children at all. To the story:
She's 18 with no experience, and being asked to watch a 3 month old. That seems pretty tricky.
My sister comes to my moms house (where I live) to ask my mom to watch the baby for a while so she can go get some groceries. I tell her that my mom isn’t home and won’t be until late since she was part of a friends wedding party.
My sister then asks me to watch the baby, and I tell her that while I can keep a physical eye on the baby, I’m ill equipped to actually take care of him. I ask my sister if he’s been fed and changed and she says yes, so I agree to watch the baby for an hour while she goes to the store.
She says she'll literally 'watch' the baby, but nothing else, and her older sister agrees to those terms.
I reiterated before she left that I would not be feeding, changing, wiping or otherwise tending to the baby, only to watching him while he laid in his car seat. This way, my sister would be back before he needed anything.
My sister was gone for 2 hours, and the baby started to get fussy so I called her. She asked me to watch him for another 3 hours while she got her nails done, and I reminded her that I have no idea WTF I’m doing and I can’t get him to stop crying.
Things start to get out of control, and now the younger sister is really overwhelmed, with the baby crying, needing a diaper change, and wanting food.
At this point the baby is screaming and I’ve tried everything I know how, even a sloppy attempt at a diaper change. So I tell my sister that I’d be calling the police for neglect, as she expected me to take care of a baby and I’ve barely even held kids in my life.
The threat of the police did the trick, but her mom and her sister think she was an AH.
My sister rushes to my moms house and calls me an AH for not taking care of the baby, says I’m lazy and if I was a decent aunt, I’d be trying to learn how to help. I kind of feel bad, because I know new moms don’t get enough time to themselves and my sisters husband works a lot to support them both…but I genuinely don’t know what I’m doing with a baby. AITA here?
She had some responses to common questions about the car seat being safe, changing diapers, and knowing how to hold a child.
I see a lot of people saying the car seat isn’t safe for sleeping, and I’m not sure but it’s one of those stroller thingies that turns into a car seat that turns into a sleeping thingy? It was fixed to be safe for sleep before I took the baby, according to my sister.
Also, he wasn’t left in there for hours, because after about 45 minutes he woke up and started to fuss, at which point I rocked him and he fell back asleep on me. At hour and 30 minute mark was when he started getting really upset, and I called my sister 15 mins after because he wouldn’t stop.
Also, changing a diaper seemed simple enough, and I would’ve been successful if I had a normal diaper, but my sister has some crazy new tech cloth diaper with like 4 straps…I had never seen it before and thus would not know how to put it on.
Yes, I know how to hold a baby and about the neck. Give me more credit jeez 😂
She also went on YouTube. Is that what you'd do when you were over your head with a screaming infant?
Also I DID GO ON YOUTUBE!! Do you think I wanted the baby to be screaming in my ear? I actually DID go online and try to look up how to do formula properly but I didn’t have anything to mix it with and according to the internet the bubbles give them stomach issues when you shake the bottle.
And you can’t leave clumps and if your water isn’t filtered it’s bad, and I don’t have a water filter in my house…and then I saw all the warnings on the back of the formula can and I was like you know what….idk wtf I’m doing.
I’m more than willing to learn - I have no issue with babies. My sister knows this.
Here's what commentors had to say:
_mmiggs_ writes:
NTA. Well, you suck a bit for saying that you will 'watch' the baby while he laid in a car seat as though he was a piece of abandoned luggage. He's a person - pick him up and hold him. But your sister really sucks. She left her baby in your care when she knew that you had no clue what to do with a baby, and weren't interested in learning anything about babies.
JesterYorrick writes:
NTA -- Your sister sounds incredibly entitled, even if you had the skills to look after a baby bumping a 1 hour visit up to 5 hours is just an awful move.
meraldBlueZen says:
THIS RIGHT HERE. Sis behavior is shocking. Wanting to leave the baby for 5 hours with OP, who has no experience? And what about milk? I thought babies that young need to be fed every couple of hours or so and the poor baby was already screaming. NTA at all
Infamous-Wasabi-9007 says:
Look at it this way. Your sister was more concerned with getting her nails done than caring for her child. You made it clear that you did not know how to care for a child.
You: NTA. Your sister: Major AH
There you have it. Do you agree with the comments? Was younger sis doing her best, and older sis taking advantage (bordering on child-neglect), or should younger sister have stepped up and been more of a team player?