I am wrestling with my feelings about this. It was my baby daughter's christening yesterday which we also rolled in with a celebration of my birthday since it was a ‘big’ birthday (i.e. turning a decade). It was one of those rare opportunities to get family members together in one place for a joyous occasion. It was also meant to be an opportunity to show my appreciation for the Godparents who are making an important commitment to ‘be there’ for my daughter in the future for which I am very grateful.
I organized the event singlehandedly, battling tiredness to do a lot of it late at night as it’s the only time I could find (I have an older DS too, my DH works long hours so wasn’t in a position to help, and my daughter still wakes up every 2-3 hours in the night).
Everything was going really well and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves at the post-christening buffet lunch in our house. DS even surprised me by opening a bottle of our old wedding champagne – I had no idea we still had any! For a couple of minutes I had one of those dreamy moments where I was thinking I wanted to remember this moment forever!
Then, everything changed. Someone asked me to call an ambulance. My mother-in-law was carried out of the room. Another room was cleared of children and turned into a hospital zone. One of the Godparents is a doctor and my sister-in-law is a nurse so they took over, focusing on reviving her. The doctor send her husband home to get her medical equipment to do some tests. Meanwhile my MIL came round. It seems she had fainted but was fortunately caught before she hit the floor. We were getting more hopeful that this wasn’t too serious. Then she started to vomit, covering herself, the living room and SIL in vomit. And so, it went on, various people running around fetching buckets of water, clean clothes, more calls to emergency services to ascertain if an ambulance should come or not.
Needless to say the atmosphere was ruined and the focus was now on my MIL and what was wrong. People were offering to go home early to get out of the way and leave us to it. Then, more information started to filter out. It seems she wasn’t taking some medicine she had been prescribed by the doctor. The medicine was supposed to calm an inflamed stomach, which it seemed she had developed the week before, and was also supposed to prevent vomiting which would be a symptom of her inflamed stomach condition (it was not food poisoning or a stomach bug). It also seems she had repeatedly insisted on closing a patio door that had been opened to let in fresh air when the room was getting hot and stuffy with all the people standing around, oven heating food etc. Then she had said she ‘needed some air’ and passed out! Knowing all this, now, I can’t help feeling that my MIL brought this on herself and ruined a lovely family event. At the same time I feel guilty for thinking this because she obviously didn’t fall ill intentionally and we were very worried at first.
She’s OK now, just needed a few hours to recover, but that was basically the rest of the event and some time afterwards when we should have been clearing up. DH drove her home afterwards and I’m still clearing up the last of the vomit today (she vomited in more than one part of the house!).
So, having taken stock, I know it wasn’t serious and could have been avoided by simply behaving sensibly and taking prescribed medicine. Am I being unreasonable for resenting her for ruining this event?