OK, so maybe the CDC hasn’t picked up on this trend yet. But I can’t be the only parent who’s being driven to drink by an overly anxious mother-in-law/grandmother.
Here’s a little background: My MIL fears everything. One time when we showed up a little late for dinner, she told us she had assumed we were dead in a ditch somewhere (apparently, there must have been a rash of ditch-deaths when she was growing up in Italy). In our absence, she even put out calls to my husband’s brothers in Buffalo and D.C. to verify her conclusion.
So it may come as no surprise that for months now she’s been doling out advice on how to keep the swine flu out of our home. While infectious disease experts focused on things like proper hand-washing, my MIL had instructed me to drop off our 7-month-old son at her house instead of taking him out anywhere – and I mean ANYWHERE, including an open-air Christmas tree lot.
At a recent family gathering, she had the death grip on him, letting few others hold him. She practically had an aneurysm over the fact we brought him to a friend’s daughter’s first birthday party (she wanted us to call the little girl’s parents in advance to verify that all who were attending were in good health). And each time we dare leave our home, she always calls the next day to see if her grandson is flu-stricken.
All her constant worrying came to a peak recently when, after I asked her and my father-in-law to watch the wee one while my husband and I went to dinner, she wanted to know why we were going on a Friday. “Don’t go on a busy night,” she warned. “Restaurants don’t wash the dishes as well on busy nights.” The thought of carelessly washed dinner plates spreading virulent diseases has no doubt ruined her sleep for a few nights now.
I hoped the fact my son had received both his seasonal and swine flu vaccines would abate her fears. But then some stupid friend of hers blew my cover by telling her the vaccine can take up to two weeks to become effective. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop when some moron tells her about babies needing flu booster shots, which have been almost nonexistent at my son’s pediatrician’s office.
For now, I’m tolerating the insanity. But if my MIL manages to knit my son an impermeable bubble, all bets are off!
