to say something about SIL's baby plans

[nomorethan2thankyou]

ok bit of background. SIL (DHs sister) has 2DCs and we have two DCs. she is a single mum, absolutely lovely and loves her children more than anything. however, she does have a range of health issues which mean that me and DH help her with looking after her DCs a lot (at least one day every weekend and over school hoidays with her eldest). we are happy to do this because she really needs the help and her two DCs are lovely and get on with ours really well, but we do find it exhausting with them altogether. she does struggle with them at home, especially when her youngest DS was a little baby and did need help from the family a lot.
well at the weekend, she told us that she had decided she was going to have another baby by having one night stands until she got pregnant basically. i think she expected us to be pleased for her. we just kind of froze and didn't know what to say. she thinks she can manage it (i think she has forgotten how hard she found it when her youngest DS was newborn) because she knows she has help from family (DHs parents help her out all week with her DCs).
not only are we worried about the risks she is taking with her health and her managing on her own with 3DCs, but we are also worried about PIL managing (in their 60s with their own health issues). she is also heavilly in debt and gets by on her overdraft, so we do worry about her coping financially as well.
DH thinks she is being selfish and feels angry with her. i feel sorry for her because i know she isn't happy and desperately wants something to make her happy (i think she may be a bit depressed, which is making it harder for her to manage her current health issues, although i don't think it would be a good idea for me to say anything). PIL just desperately want her to be happy and will always help her out when she needs them no matter what, although i'm certain they don't believe it is a good idea.
the fact is although DH and I are happy to help her out with her two DCs, realistically we all know as time goes on and it becomes more difficult for her and PIL she is going to be relying on us more and more to help. we love them and are happy to take on more of an active role with them. but the fact is we couldn't manage to help in this way if she had another one, 4DCs together is hard enough for us (we only had 2DCs oursleves for a reason!). we know it is her decision, but surely if you know you are going to rely on help from others then you need to consider them as well?
i know she will carry out her plan and will get pregnant. don't know what to do. do we say anything? do we tell her that we can't manage to look after all 5 and if she does have another one she'll have to sort something else out (thats what DH thinks we should do but i know if we withdrew that support it would only make more work for PIL), do we need to get a bit tough and do as another family member has said and tell her to stop being selfish? really don't know what to do but we cannot manage with helping her with anymore children. that might make us the selfish ones but we can't change that.
sorry about the length of this post.

nomore I think people here are getting cross on your behalf, and you don't sound like a bitch for saying that.

Can you help her make a more realistic plan to improve her self worth? Having a baby as 'something to love me' is what neglected and naive teens do.

I think you need to stage some sort of intervention here - all of you, together, sitting her down and spelling out that you cannot and will not help her if she does this. It needs to be pointed out that she is a bad mother if she's going to bring random strangers back to her childrens house whilst they are there and that she could catch a very nasty disease. It sounds to me like everyone is very, very nice to her and perhaps they need to be less so.

It is seriously sounding as if you don't just need to talk to this woman seriously, but you also need to give her a damned good shake and tell her to wake up. And yes, I do think I'd be telling her to take care of her two children alone this weekend, as part of the wake up.

Please don't worry about sounding like a bitch. You clearly are a very very nice person. Maybe too nice for your own good.
Honestly, it seems like things need to change as the situation is unfair on you all. And she needs to accept that. People are free to live their lives how they wish, but that doesn't include just her, it includes you as well.

Oh I missed the bit about the debts.

To be fair I would not appreciate my mother 'suggesting' that I lose weight etc. Because I'm an adult and it's none of her business. But you all seem to treat SIL almost like a child despite her being apparently an intelligent grown woman with a good job - that in itself may not be doing her self-respect much good.

It sounds a very odd situation. She certainly sounds unhappy, and chaotic and self-destructive, maybe depressed. But all the help and kindness that you've given doesn't seem to have helped much with that, maybe it is time to back off a bit and let her take some responsibility for herself?

Or do you think she would be incapable of doing that, and the children would suffer?

Can you say what the nature of her illness/disability is? (understandable if you prefer not to disclose personal/identifying stuff obviously!)

Dies she still work then? Could she afford another child?
What illness prevents her from moving but allows her to work?
I think I would go round and have a chat to her if the pil won't. I'd ask her out right how she thinks she would cope if you moved away and the pil age made them unable to cope with helping in the future

Op, if she has a health issue that stops hee moving how does she manage to move enough to invite blokes in, walk upstairs & woohoo?

reportmenow - she is constantly on sick leave, i know she doesn't get paid for when she is off sick now (i don't know the ins and outs of it as i've only ever had to take maternity leave off myself). when i say she could afford childcare without the debts, that would only be when she is in work. she is always in and out of hosital, particularly over the last year it has been one thing after another. docs have told her to lose weight and stop smoking as well.

Also, if you ultimately decide to help less, don't feel guilty about it. Yes, your PILs may decide to do more, but ultimately it is their decision.
Do you think she would let her parents exhaust themselves helping her without trying to change what she can?

Well I think that this takes entitlement to a whole new level tbh-having a baby because family will look after it when she can´t!

So if she works (FT?) & her oldest is in school-her parents have the youngest whilst she works?

And then you have them both one weekend day?

So she has her children one day a weekend-plus evenings/overnight?

TBH, I´d think of dropping your weekend day & putting your own family first.

nomorethan2thankyou, can I ask about something you said earlier? "DH took her eldest son to our house after he had told him that [SIL had random men in the house overnight] and refused to take him back, he was fuming, obviously he had to take him back in the end though."

What was SIL's reaction to this? And how long did your DH keep his nephew at your house? Because surely if she is intending doing this all again she must know how her brother feels about it.

I would help less as maybe that is the only thing that will stop her having further dcs.
You have helped her, and that is nice but i think she is now taking the piss tbh.

OP you sound lovely,

but I don't think that you and your PiL are helping your SiL, while she still thinks it is a good idea to increase her responsibility, to supplement her parenting,

She is jeopardising all aspects of life for her children, by overloading herself,

What are her contingency plan, should the PiL become unavailable due to ill health, and you and your husband move,

You and your PiL need to have a plan as to do with your extra children, as their mother doesn't.

Living with a parent with problems really effects your childhood and has long term ramification on an individual.

nomore so the health issues, are they the same problem, ie an ongoing issue which manifests itself in different symptoms? or completely unrelated issues and fishing type hospitalisations.

If it's the second then she may either be a Hypochondriac (very real problem) or have Munchhausen's and using it for attention to fill the void she obviously has.

She sounds as tho she is in a cycle of attention seeking and relying on others for her responsibilities. Also her behaviour is very very dangerous. I wholeheartedly think she needs some tough love here. You think you are but you are not helping.

You sound very kind tho.

I actually think Wens idea is quite good - saying you're moving away, and unfortunately won't be able to come and help anymore. If she thinks the free help is coming to an end perhaps she'll think twice?
It sounds like she's so used to you all enabling her that it hasn't occurred to her that her kids are not your responsibility. You def need to sit down and be honest with her - also pointing out that while you'd love a third dc of your own you can't afford/don't have time for another etc. and that you def aren't able to care for another.
Frankly I'm amazed at her lack of care/safety for her own DCs that she'd have Internet strangers come to the house for one off shags - most single mums I know are wary of bringing proper boyfriends into their DCs lives even after months of dating! Is she a good mum otherwise? I know you say she loves them, but is she aware of appropriate behaviour, and have reasonable standards for hygiene etc? I'm just stunned that a loving mother would put her DCs at risk from strangers, and compromising her own already poor health with stds!

She is completely selfish and irresponsible.

I'm with your dh, you need to tell her that you will not be providing any more support than you already do, and that if she has another child then that will reduce the time you can spend with the two she already has. If this effects your PIL, then that their choice. They are adults who are responsible for themselves and if they want to help then that's up to them.

She's not only oblivious to the needs of the children she already has, she also clearly couldn't care less about the effect on your children who have to have half their weekends revolve around other children.

withdrawing help would not be realistic. the fact is some days she can barely move and we can't just leave her and the kids to get on with it (the youngest is 18 months). she knows that she can't manage by herself but it doesn't seem to put her off.

What is not realistic is the way she's living now. Stop enabling her. Her plans are so unreasonable that I wouldn't bother with idle we're moving threats either. Give her some notice, get PILs on board as well and stop looking after them at all at the weekend. She'll soon give up her plans if she has to look after her DCs on her own.

she has rheumatoid arthritis (i know i've spelt that wrong) and has been in and out of hospital with it since her early 20s. she has had liver problems since the arrival of DS1 and has in the last couple of years been on medication for her bowel. the current medication she is taking for her arthritis actually means that if she were to become pregnant, it would cause problems which would mean she would have to have an abortion (i don't know the ins and outs im afraid). she was on this medication before she fell pregnant with DC2 but conveniently had to change medication due to side effects just before she 'accidently' fell pregant. she has had no side effects from the medication this time around although for the last 3 weeks she has suddenly started getting side effects again...i'm hoping the doctors won't let her change meds.

Use this as an opportunity to tell her you will be withdrawinga lot of your help with her DC from now on. It has been hard going on you and now is the time to address the subject and re-evaluate the situation with her planning another baby..then really do it and see how she gets on. She may just think you are all talk otherwise, empty threats and all that!

Surely if she is unable to move then she would get a cater coming in to help? I think she needs to understand that if she didn't get the help she does at present then her children could end up being taken away from her.
Any way I think you all offer too much help at weekends. I would o Lu help on the days where she really can't move and then I think I would help by popping in and out of her house to check on/feed the children- don't take them all day anymore

Reading all the later threads, I think your SIL has deeper problems than rheumatoid arthritis. What she is proposing is not normal, healthy behaviour that just happens to be 'different'. It's deeply risky for lots of reasons, but at its most extreme could potentially endanger her life and leave her existing children motherless.

If she can't recognise all of this, and doesn't after having it spelled out to her, then I would suggest that she needs some sort of counselling TBH.

As this affects the wider family, I think you need to have a family conference.
As you're not blood related, it may be best for you to take a back seat in this. You could end up being scapegoated by her because it's easier to make you the target. However, if you have a good relationship with her, you could play 'good cop' to your DH's 'bad cop' and offer the more sympathetic view (which would be the same as your DH's but phrased in a gentler manner than I suspect he will use). Ideally though, you need to do this as a family, because it will affect all of you.

you're all right. we need to stop having the kids consistently at weekends. it started off when she was going through a bad stage and just kind of evolved from there. i think she uses the fact that other people have them a lot as an excuse to be a bit lazy when she does have them i.e. she'll say they don't need to go to the park because we took them the day before so she'll just sit and watch dvds on a day when she is well enough to take them out.
we do need to cut it down to when she actually can't physically manage.

if i'm honest, and this is going to sound awful, my biggest fear is her wearing PIL out so that they either age and/or die sooner than expected and then we will have to help her out even more than we already do now or expect to do in the future. there's something in my brain saying "just keep the PIL going until all the kids are grown up".

You and your dh sound like you are very kind. You are obviously lovely Aunt and Uncle to her children. But that's just it - you are not foster patents or carers. I think it is in her children's best interests for you to restrict the whole day care to when she is in hospital or genuine ill.
Another thing I would suggest is that she accompanies you all when ever you do have them - don't allow her to stay at home alone ( on the Internet arranging baby-making opportunities)

It may be time for firmer intervention, such as Social Services. that way, if you do scale down help, the children are not left completely vulnerable to whoever SIL may have coming and going.