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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU to make my mother clean up her own accident?

715 replies

LaLaCascada · 29/03/2017 21:06

For many years my Mum has had a bit of a problem with sudden urge to wee. She's 70 and has given birth twice. She hates going to the doctor and has always suffered a variety of ailments about which there is much moaning and zero action.

During a recent visit to my parents I was driving my mum home from Sainsbury's in a rather nice rented car. It's only about a mile but there was a bit of school traffic so we had to sit a few minutes - about 1 song on the radio so definitely less than 5 mins- and she started panicking and saying get me home I really need the loo. I said hang on, it's only two more turns, keep calm and look the traffic is moving now, she snapped it's too late, I've wet meself. and then went silent.

Back at her house she went straight to the bathroom and sorted herself out while I unpacked the shopping and put the kettle on. When she came out I said have a coffee and where's some stuff to clean the car.

Then I said come on and she made a big show with getting her walking stick and hobbling to the car parked on the drive - 20 steps?- as I followed with the kitchen roll and keys. I unlocked the car and waited a moment and when she didn't respond I said clean the seat please which she did do but with a lot of huff and puff. My dad and husband and daughter were there and noticed us going out to the car but I just said we had to get something. Then we carried on the evening like normal. DH noticed things were a bit off but just assumed a little disagreement had happened.

At no point was I rude or shouty or anything. I was a bit cheesed off because we had a long journey the next day which meant I would sit there when DH was driving but it wasn't like she puked or poohed.

I spent the night researching because I care and don't want my mum to live like this and did encourage Mum to make a doctor's appointment and she is now getting some help that made her worse at first but she now is improving a bit. I haven't said anything about it until now so as not to embarrass my mum. HOWEVER there has been a certain chill since it happened. It hasn't been mentioned except to say the doctor knows about it and the making of various follow up appointments.

So, was I being unreasonable to expect her to clean up her own urine?

OP posts:
LouKout · 30/03/2017 19:02
Grin
IloveBanff · 30/03/2017 19:05

Oh wow futuristic you and I are definitely on the same wavelength. Grin

mathanxiety · 30/03/2017 19:05

You can learn to get past a troubled and complex relationship or at least manage your feelings about it when you are interacting with the person you had the relationship with.

I do not think it could possibly be a healthy thing to deal with a troubled and complex relationship by taking advantage of an unfortunate incident to exact some sort of revenge or to rewrite a power imbalance. That would be a hollow victory.

Where does the harshness end? Shouldn't there come a point where you make the choice to do better than perhaps you have experienced yourself?

Licketysplits · 30/03/2017 19:06

I'm not sure what I would have done in the OPs exact position on that day, but what I do know is that if / when the time comes I will not be providing that kind of personal care for my mother. We have quite a complex relationship and for various reasons, including lack of love (and hugs!) affection and support when I was a child and young adult, I do not feel I 'owe' her anything in that department (she thinks I do unfortunately but I need my own post for that one!). We get on, we keep in touch, I do love her, but there are limits to it that perhaps those who have normal loving straightforward relationships with their mothers might struggle to understand.

Not all of us have mums that we would be willing to do anything for, and there are often some deep seated reasons for that, often for which the mum really can only blame herself. I can't say if that's the case for the OP but I wouldn't be surprised if there was something along those lines playing a part in how the OP responded. But that's just me projecting to a certain extent, I do realise!

HemiDemiSemiquaver · 30/03/2017 19:21

I agree that a lot of people do have complex relationships, and wouldn't want to be doing personal care, or cleaning up - but still, there are ways of treating someone and dealing with the issue that don't have to involve humiliating or patronising them, or treating them like a naughty child. Several people have emphasised that it's not the issue of who actually cleans it up that upsets them, but the way in which it was done.

mathanxiety · 30/03/2017 19:29

Yes indeed Hemi - it was the way in which it was done that was jarring.

No matter how the relationship may have been in the past, the OP is not on auto-pilot now as an adult, and her options are not limited - she has a choice as to her response every time a task appears in front of her.

Chottie · 30/03/2017 19:34

I would have cleaned up after my mum too.

babyboomersrock · 30/03/2017 19:44

Babyboomersrock, whilst I completely agree with your post, its wrong to take the 'Im great so everyone else is' approach

I do know what you mean. And of course if I'd been entirely accurate/boring, I could have said I've had some health issues and I'm only too aware of how lucky I am to have made it to 70. I have lost 3 close friends to cancer this past year and I'm trying to be grateful that I'm still here, still continent, still alert and still functioning.

But that's unimportant. I was asking only that younger women don't stereotype all over-70s as helpless dependants who need to be cleaned up and fussed over. That's what I dread - not old age itself.

I know a lot of fit and healthy women, but of course I know women who aren't - although to be honest, even the most frail (of my acquaintance, that is) would be reluctant to have their daughter clean up after them except in extreme circumstances.

It's something everyone has to accept at the end of life or in cases of severe illness - in this case (as far as we know) the woman is not frail, dying or ill. She's just delayed seeing her GP and taking proper steps to deal with her problem.

Bigblug · 30/03/2017 19:50

Aww, that is abit mean. I've cleaned my mum up when she wet herself while drunk in her 40s 😂 but then Again, I'm a nurse and I think it's natural for me to clean up bodily functions and worry about others. I just think you were a little cold.

Kit30 · 30/03/2017 20:04

Can't image be how bad your mum felt about this! It's only wee ffs!! It can be cleaned and no one flippin' died. Would you have had the same reaction with a child? Be super nice to your mum and make sure she's okay i.e. No other health issues that she's now too scared to mention in case you put her away. Rant over.

LouKout · 30/03/2017 20:10

Anyone else want to tell OP she is mean?

LouKout · 30/03/2017 20:10

Nows your chance

PacificDogwod · 30/03/2017 20:16

I think she's figured it out in the meantime.

I don't know why this thread has stayed with me so much.
Elderly parents?
Complex relationship with my own mother?
Memories of my demented grandmother?
Continence issues myself?
Cleaning up cars after DCs were sick/peed themselves??

Not sure.
Anyway, I am really hoping that there is far more to the OP and her relationship to her mother than the OP suggests and what meets the eye.

Doyouwantabrew · 30/03/2017 20:24

I always think posters who post one liners are looking for crowd approval. Reminds me of myself as a teenager.

My dm has altzimers and needs personal care. I help out and like Big I am a nurse.

My dsis isn't snd can't but she wouldn't be cruel. She would probably pay for someone else to do it. Wink

Wingsofdesire · 30/03/2017 20:25

Are you being mean, to mock your mum for hobbling with a stick and finding it difficult to clean up after she's had an accident?

Do you really need to ask?

kali110 · 30/03/2017 20:25

Wow mathanxiety i actually agree with you. I Think your posts are very measured.
There is nothing to gain from calling the op names, it's not going to change anything and the op will probably just ignore them.
She may well have a complex relationship the, (the no hugs) and that's sad. She's said she's taken it on board.
I hope she is able to reflect on this, maybe not make the same mistakes.

Wingsofdesire · 30/03/2017 20:26

I think this thread may be a joke ...

Wingsofdesire · 30/03/2017 20:28

Yes, I think you're being horribly unkind, to your own mother, and making it even worse by coming on here and telling the world about her humiliation, and expecting us to say - what, exactly? Yes, despite her age and disability, she certainly shouldn't have expected her able-bodied daughter to do it for her and help her feel less ashamed and more looked after? Loved?

I love my mother in a very different way to that.

Cupcakey · 30/03/2017 20:32

I could never put my mum through that humiliation making her clean the seat! YABVU
!!!!!!!!!!

pho3be · 30/03/2017 20:40

If my mum did that id clean it but she'd never let me, she'd be absolutely mortified for someone else to do it so I'm a bit Hmm at you both tbh

motherinferior · 30/03/2017 22:05

I think the idea that we expect personal care from our children - and the assumption that the OP must love and feel indebted to her mother - really very odd. All this 'oh I would do it in a heartbeat' and 'it makes me cry just to think about it' stuff.

LagunaBubbles · 30/03/2017 22:20

I think the idea that we expect personal care from our children

I dont think anyone expects personal care- but I would have wanted to do it for my Mum to save her being embarassed.

PacificDogwod · 30/03/2017 22:27

Oh gawd, I most certainly do NOT expect personal care from my DCs, whenever it comes to that! I am going to great pains to make sure that I will be able to pay somebody to do that for me...

But - I would expect them to behave towards me as the kind human beings I hope I am helping them to develop in to in case of an accident like the one in the OP.

motherinferior · 30/03/2017 22:35

But I think it's quite unfair to expect other people to clear up your piss, if you're capable of doing it yourself. You should at least make some gesture towards it, I think.

ShowMeWhatYouGot · 30/03/2017 22:47

Poor woman! Why did you feel the need to do that?

What ever next, making your children clean up their own vomit if their ill? Maybe make a lady in labour clean up her broken waters?

(Please don't let pregnant lady's into your car Wink)