to think that taking meow meow is totally inappropriate behaviour

[elportodelgato]

...for my DH to indulge in?

Background: we went to a festival a few weeks back. I am pg so in the evenings I was generally back at the tent looking after DD (who is 2yo) and getting an early night. Already I found this fairly frustrating but fair enough, I am pg, someone has to babysit, I am knackered anyway. DH was out every night til about 3am with his other mates who don't have kids. I assumed he was just (as he said) 'enjoying the festival' getting drunk etc, seeing bands which is completely fair enough, I don't begrudge him letting his hair down, I am just a bit jealous I don't get to do it as well at the moment.

Yesterday we were chatting and it turns out that he smoked a bit of weed at the festival which is no big deal IMO, we both have indulged occasionally and I'm not puritanical about it. Then he said 'oh yeah, and we did a bit of meow meow too'. I'm ashamed to say that I burst into tears and felt really sick all day. I still feel really sick and angry. He thinks I should chill out and it's not a big deal. I think that as a 34yo father this is not appropriate behaviour in any circumstances - I think it's reckless, dangerous, stupid - not to mention just horribly sad, I mean isn't meow meow something which bored teenagers do at the weekends?

I am extremely hormonal so please feel free to tell me that AIBU and should chill out about it. At the moment I just feel sick and tearful and really sad . The man I married would not do this, I just don't feel like I know him if he can do something like this.

I have been asking him to talk about it and saying I am not happy and feel like I can't trust him. He refuses to discuss it 'at the moment' which I think means he is formulating an excuse which will make it sound like he is reasonable and I am a crazy hormonal harpy. I asked him why he hadn't told me at the time and he said 'because I knew you'd react like this' Now my brain is in overdrive wondering what else he got up to til 3am at this festival. I feel really shocked - DH is a lovely man, a brilliant father, in most ways incredibly thoughtful and supportive and I love him enormously.

Hi Reality - it was all over the news a few months back see link here: www.nhs.uk/news/2010/03March/Pages/legal-high-drug-meow-mephedrone-death.aspx

It's illegal now

YANBU, I used to try a bit of this and that when I was younger, long before I had DS. Looking back on it now it was stupid and dangerous and I would never do it again.

Its mephedrone reality, until recently a legal high. can cause really bad side effects.

YANBU novice, I would have been annoyed in your position. I am sure he wasn't up to anything else though.

If my DP told me he did meow meow I would have gone mental. I would also have gone mental if he went out pissing it up till 3am every night too, even if he was at a festival - what did he do, come back and tell you how good it was and what you missed? Hey I am also preggers maybe I'm also hormonal but I'd be exactly the same love.

No one has actualy died from taking it.

Its not very good for your guts if ingested though or you nasal cavity if snorted, it will do more damage than coke in that respect - and the comedown is pretty nasty.

Sounds like it was a one off thing - maybe he needed to be irresponsible for a bit and now hes got it out of his system YANBU to feel upset but I'd just let it go TBH and concentrate on yourself and your baby.

No, no are not overreacting and definately NBU. I'm all for having a good time but this is where I would draw the line too. A lot of people probably wouldn't approve of smoking weed either, no big deal in my eyes as long as it is occassional and doesn't interfere with looking after the kids.

Meow has been in the news a lot lately and yes, you can be hit by a bus as well and then die, but given how quick someone can die from taking meow, it is quite irresponsible of him. If something happens as a result of an accident, then it cannot be helped but I think parents shouldn't 'push' their luck.

He can still have a good time without this shite and at his age, should know better.

Let him come up with the excuses, you will have plenty of counter-arguments as well. Talk to him again when you have calmed down a bit, tell him its not about him not allowed to have fun but you are concerned about the effects it could have. Tell him you are worried about losing him, maybe he will find it easier to accept. Yes, plenty of people take it and nothing ever happens but he just doesn't know who will get the next dodgy batch or how he will react to it.

So, basically, you were stuck in the tent whilst he was off, getting a bit wasted, with his mates?

Bit selfish.

To put it mildly.

I'd say the same if he had gone off on a (non-negotiated) holiday, or insisted on weekends being sacrosanct to his cricket.

Time and money become scant resources, post dc, and ther has to be equality there, and honesty. Likewise, responsibility, the parenting bit of parenting, has to be shared. In bad relationships, it's like a ball, thrown from one parent to another, with neither wanting to catch it, and it ends up devolving to the one who least wants to drop it.

You sound as though you're quite happy catching the ball, and you dh isn't. you're going to have to make sure he does pick it up, and carry it for his share, or you're going to find yourself doing all the repsonsibility stuff.

I'm sure he is lovely, brilliant, la, la, la ... but this wasn't brilliant.

He basically left you holding the baby, because he knew he could, and f*ed off to have a bit of, non-discussed, singles time. That's reducing you to servant/nanny/non-determinate mother status, rather than partner.

I think you will have to call him on it, just to make sure it doesn't set a pattern.

What he did with that time hardly matters (other than the fact that he must have been less-that-optimal the next day, ie. devolving yet more responsibility to you,) it's more the fact that these holiday-from-responsibility intervals should be discussed and fairly distributed.

The whole set-up doesn't sound very reasonable, to be honest. You're both as bad as each other. Drug and alcohol-fuelled festivals are not appropriate places for toddlers and if you're both in your thirties you're old enough to know that.

What Chil said.

Very irresponsible.

He's been a wanker. If you are at a festival with your pregnant wife and two-year old you don't act as you would when you were young, free and single.

You do the more family orientated things, you might have a drink but not get hammered and you get to bed at such a time that you are bright eyed and bushy tailed when your 2 year old wakes up and wants to climb on eg. the luminous dinosaurs. If you're still pissed/groggy/hungover you can't be trusted to look after a child.

Or do you just let your pregnant wife do all the childcare and fuck off and take nonsense drugs with your mates?

Tell me, does he wear skinny jeans and have a slight paunch that hangs over the top of them?

Wanker.

Actually... I do think you're over-reacting but I think it's understandable in the circumstances. I know SO many people that have taken it and that continue to take it, and it's REALLY not as bad as the media like to make out. There were some real scare stories coming out about it but the reason there was so much criticism about making it illegal was because,

1. Nobody has ever died from taking it. Think about how many people die from alcohol abuse. There have been several deaths where the person has been found to have taken small amounts of it, but usually alongside massive quantities of other drugs or alcohol. This information is usually disregarded in Daily Mail news reports however, as they simply love to create a new drugs scare.

2)Banning it is likely to result in the drug becoming less safe and cut with crap. We have to accept that people are going to want to take this drug, so why risk it becoming more dangerous?

The Commission that had to test how unsafe the drug was in order to help the Government approve whether it was justified in banning it concluded that it made absolutely no sense to make it illegal whatsoever. Several people resigned after the Government totally ignored their advice.

Read about it here

In all honesty I can't understand why you would feel any worse about your husband taking Mephedrone than him getting drunk. Is it because it's illegal? If so, I understand why you might have been a bit worried, but he's at a festival where a lot of people will be taking drugs. They'll be more worried about people getting drunk and rowdy. If you think it's because it's an unsafe drug then YABU. Taking anything is massive quantities is obviously dangerous but your husband had one line of it- it's not even remotely enough to do damage.

Unless of course he was unlucky enough to take a dodgy one. Just because nobody has died from meow meow doesn't mean nobody ever will.

YANBU. in all honesty it wouldn't bother me if DP did this at a festival, but it would bother me if he did something I wouldn't like regardless of knowing my feelings about it, especially when I was tucked up with our child in a nearby field.

Also it is pretty irresponsible to get wasted if you have a toddler to look after all the next day. Wouldn't you be sweating it out all over them?

But, if he came back and actually went to sleep and you didn't notice him feeling rough the next day then I doubt he had much/the stuff he got was any good.It was probably teenagers ripping off the sad old hasbeens!

Make sure he knows he let you down and make sure he is on babysitting duty next year.

Thanks all, I didn't think I was being unreasonable and I think he knows it too tbh. He works very long hours and I can appreciate that he needs some down-time so I don't massively begrudge him letting his hair down - but within reason. I think this went way too far.

His line at the moment is 'just because you're pregnant, I don't see why I should stop having fun' and I'm not one of these women who insists their DH has to stop drinking in sympathy or anything. When he told me I felt like the bottom had fallen out of everything.

animula, you are so right with your 'ball' analogy. He knows he can get away with it because fundamentally I will always always always do the right thing for DD and pick up the parenting where he falls short

I feel like this is the latest and worst in a string of little things which have been upsetting and frustrating me. I know he loves me but he seems to be going out more, spending more time away from us, and when we do spend time together I feel like he finds me quite boring. I suppose me being a huge, pregnant, hormonal, crying mess is not really very attractive and there are probably loads of people he'd rather spend time with. But thinking about how unattractive and boring I am just makes me even sadder. I have tried explaining SO many times how exhausted I am, how I need his support more than ever, how I am only just holding things together atm. I feel like I am begging him for his support rather than him offering it gladly. And then he does something like this and it feels like a huge two-fingers to me.

Chil1234 - just to clarify that the festival we were at was extremely family-friendly, tons of kids of all ages, a huge childrens area etc so I don't agree that we were being irresponsible to have gone at all - DD had the time of her life.

"Meow has been in the news a lot lately and yes, you can be hit by a bus as well and then die, but given how quick someone can die from taking meow,"

No one has ever died - this is very much a case of the media not letting the facts detract from a good story.

'just because you're pregnant, I don't see why I should stop having fun' I would have kicked him in the balls at this point.

The psychologists amonst us might say he sounds like his shitting himself over the baby coming and wants to rebel against become a 'boring' dad type.

PS - I am fairly sure people have died from taking Meow Meow - I just saw it on t'internet.

vosene, thanks for your post. I am not a DM-reading type, I am hopefully not having a knee-jerk reation to what I have read in the press or anything, and I know the dangers of meow-meow are hugely overstated. TBH I would have been just as annoyed had he been doing coke, or mushrooms, or E which are all considered much more 'acceptable' drugs for my generation. I just think we're too old for this shit, besides which we have a daughter and another baby on the way. I like a good night out as much as anyone but I've found that horrendous hangover + toddler is not a good combination, and horrendous comedown + toddler is probably even worse. I don't see why just because I am sober and responsible at the moment due to being pg, that means he has the right to go off and be utterly irresponsible. It feels like he took advantage. And behaved like a dick.

YANBU to expect more from your DH regarding his behaviour but the mephedrone is a symptom of his attitude and not THE issue I think.

In terms of risk and danger, meow isn't particularly high risk, I would personally put it in the same category as smoking weed. Only a couple of people have died from it but it can have really nasty side effects, with fits being relatively common, which would be my only issue. Given that you don't have a problem with him smoking weed I can see why he thought it would be ok and not a big deal.

However, if you've got your kids actually with you I do think you should knock drugs/excessive drinking on the head. If that's what he/you (when not pregnant, obv) want to do occasionally then that's absolutely fine but leave the children with someone else.

He sounds like he needs to man up to his responsibilities and realise he isn't a 21 year old anymore and that you need his support, you shouldn't have to beg/cajole support and help out of him. I think you both need to sit down and have an honest conversation about your expectations of one another.

Thanks Amberc, that's what I was wondering. We already have a DD so TBH I thought he'd have done all his 'shitting-himself-about-fatherhood' bollocks last time around.

Perhaps he can see that pretty soon I'll be focussed on a new baby and he will be on his own with our DD a lot more so he's trying to get in some 'fun' while he can.

A huge part of my annoyance is that I think it's really tragic for a 34yo to even want to do this kind of thing. Does he realise how stupid he looks trying to be 'cool'? Is he having some kind of early midlife crisis?

You're not boring - you're beautiful. And you are putting in the lion's share (it's your body that's pregnant,) of bringing a phase of life that will give him so much joy -- and prestige.

He owes you, don't let society make you feel like a serf.

It's an untold truth that men get huge kudos for being fathers. Even though it seems that they get more for being single and childless.

Society is a bit furtive and mixed-message about this. On the one hand, seeming to applaud men who are not "boring", ie fathers, but, in fact, giving huge rewards to those who are, or who act in a "fatherly" way. Think of the words we use to designate men-in-charge.

To choose one small thing - his career will probably benefit from him being known to have children. Unfair, but true.

Don't let it be that he is reaping the rewards, having cake, blah blah, with you picking up the bill.

Sorry if I sound harsh, but I remember one of my friends ranting about this 15 years ago, before I had children, and it seems that much has not changed. I do wonder if many of us get time-transported to a weird 1950s world within the 2010s the second we have children. I feel the resistance will begin on mumsnet.

Ewe, thanks for your post. Before I fell pg, we would very occasionally have a big night out together to let loose, but DD was always safely with grandma for the duration and we were always fully recovered when we had her back with us again.

I'm going to insist we talk about it properly tonight

OP I'd be pissed too, he was quite irresponsible and it is totally different to a few puffs of a joint.

I am pretty sure it has been a factor in about 30 deaths. One of them was local to me just recently and that figure was reported.

John Smith has been the only case where it was the drug that caused a fatal heart attack and therefore was the cause of death, and not one of a number of factors. I think most kids that die have been very drunk or stoned and it has contributed but not been solely to blame.

And a wee side note, make sure you have something booked for after DC2 arrival, so you can do festivals properly too?