to not let his mum be involved with our baby

[gta]

DPs mum is an alcoholic but wont admit it
In September 2017 she was in hospital with liver disease, had horrendous jaundice, hair fell out etc she didn't respond to treatment in hospital and was told to basically go home and if she lived long enough to get a liver transplant , great ! but we should get ready for her to die .

So between September to the end of October everything was fab, she made an AMAZING recovery which even doctors were shocked at.
On her 50th birthday at the beginning of November she had 5 glasses of wine at the birthday meal. She has 7 children and we were all understandably very concerned when we saw this.
The next day she reassured my partner and his brother (the eldest out of the 7) that it was a one off and she wont be drinking again. We were all very stupid to believe this.
It has since gone from a one off on her birthday meal, to a one off on special occasions (Christmas, NYE, her DPs Birthday). She is the matriarch of the family and a very fiery woman and i think everyone has brushed it under the carpet in fear of starting an absolute shit storm with her.

Until on Mothers Day when me and my DP went round to see her and he basically lost the plot at her , she looked horrendous , her hair has started falling out again , she was bloated and puffy and stunk of alcohol. She admitted she was drinking a bit more than she should and told him she would pack it in. All good or so we thought.

After seeing his mum we nipped into town and bumped into my partners younger sister who is 18 where she told us she had found a bottle of vodka hidden behind the cleaning products and she had a sip of her mums "water" and it was actually vodka and she was very worried.

We went back to his mums house to confront her about this as she hadn't mentioned any vodka just she was drinking a bit too much wine on quiz night at the pub, on a friday night etc.
She wasnt in as she was out with her own mum , partner and his mum for a mothers day meal. My partner decided to search the house and go through the bottle bin where he found 33 LITRES OF EMPTY VODKA BOTTLES! and 11 BOTTLES OF WINE! the bin was last collected on the 22nd February!

There was a massive confrontation where my partner bagged up all the bottles and dumped them at her table in the restaurant where she was having her mothers day meal in the hope of shaming her into admitting she was an alcoholic and needed help.

When she was in hospital in September, my partner took a week off work and gutted her house as it was rancid, and was at the hospital every single day after work.
My partner has said he simply cant do it anymore that shes just causing us stress and until she can admit that shes an alcoholic and goes to AA meetings, the GP, whatever, then we need to cut contact and that includes when our baby is born early August.
She still wont admit to being an alcoholic and is trying to guilt us into talking to her/seeing her .
Are we being unreasonable ?!

@NeedsAsockamnesty if someone posted “my ex is an alcoholic and that is the reason why we split. At one point I went through the house and found 44 empty bottles consumed over the past ten days and that was when I snapped and threw him out. Now he wants to have the children come and stay over and I am refusing to allow him access due to his drinking as he refuses to admit there is a problem.”

The cries of “withhold access” would be heard across the boards.

Remarkably any poster would be advised to go NC with parents/inlaws if they forgot their pfb’s birthday in fact “go NC” is typical advice given for the most trivial crap. Yet a woman leaves a six year old child in a house for three hours with a dead body while she is out drinking, gets undressed at his birthday party once he is an adult and drinks 33 bottles of vodka in a ten day period and we must feel sorry for her????? what the actual fuck?

I haven’t read the whole thread. I have to go out now.

From your OP I think it’s a sad situation all round. Your MiL is alchohol dependent ( there will be good reason for this).

I don’t think you should cut her out of your dc life. I also would never suggest you leave dc in her care. There is no reason why dc can’t see his/her grandmother for short visits with you to supervise.

I believe all children have a need to know family members. They will make up their own minds whether to continue seeing them.

Honestly? It sounds like she's not too far from the end with all this drinking. The damage she's caused herself sounds irreversible. I'd ask yourself, and your DP, how you'd feel and what you'd do if she died next week, because that seems a v real possibility.

Bagging up the bottles and putting them on the table was a horrible thing to do.

As horrific as having an alcoholic family member is (believe me, I know) they are ill, they are gripped by their addiction and they are HUMAN.

Hateful behaviour towards her is not going to help her change. Caring also may not but I know which one is more likely to help. She needs a positive reason to change and done serious professional help.

I wouldn't let her see your baby unsupervised or for long periods but I e wouldn't stop contact altogether.

gta your DH needs to block her number. I had to do this after I had 36 phone calls in 20 minutes from my brother after I told him to get help and not contact me until he'd been sober 30 days!! Dial, mumble incoherently, hang up, redial, rinse, repeat. It was horrible.

An above PP suggested AlAnon and I strongly agree. It may also help your DH to see a counselor. Mine was of unbelievable help in making me understand that I was not responsible for my brother and that what I was doing (going NC) was not only 'ok' it was the right thing to do.

I will be brutal here. She may sober up, she may die. Either one is her choice. I actually made funeral plans for my brother during the height of his drinking. Went to the undertakers and set everything up, did everything but pay for it. That's how sure I was, in my fear, that my decision to go NC would most likely result in him dying, either from alcohol poisoning, a drink-driving accident, or suicide. But if I accepted that he was responsible for his own life, then I also had to prepare for the choices that he might make.

Your DH has a long slog ahead of him. Encourage him to stay the course, it will be the right thing to do in the long run, no matter how it turns out. His mother is responsible for her own decisions. It's not helpful to her to take that control out of her hands.

The problem with letting her have supervised access to the baby is that then the OP and/or her DP will have to supervise it, when what is best for them will be to go no contact for their own wellbeing.

The baby is not a sticking plaster, it does not exist As a potential aid to her getting help. And the baby isn’t going to gain anything from having contact with her, only stressed parents.

Which is IMO why it would be far better for the OP’s DP to cut contact altogether, and that includes his mother having no contact with any of his family.

OP sorry to hear he’s been getting guilt voicemails. Unfortunately even blocking doesn’t resolve that one as the blocked number does go through to voicemail. But I would just advise him to delete them and say nothing to her for now. If that is what works for the older son then that is the approach I would be inclined to take.

Didn't sound like it was hateful behaviour from the DP. Sounds like it was desperate behaviour. There is a massive difference between the two.

You're over invested. You need to back off and let her decide to change or carry on drinking.

There is absolutely nothing you can do to "encourage" an alcoholic to stop drinking. You are naive to believe there is. I'd recommend you and your DH go to an open AA session, without MIL, to learn about it.

Your partner was cruel to behave like that.

Why have you bold quoted what I typed about my grandmother and other relation who were and are alcoholics, TheDailyMail? I'm missing the relevance of what you typed?

Over invested in her child’s safety?

That is what she’s asking about

Taking 44 wine and vodka bottles in bags and dumping them at a restaurant table is very inappropriate and not something Al Anon would advise.

I’m with you chaos if I had a ghast it would be flabbered

Sadly, I have a lot of experience with alcoholics.

You and your partner need to focus on your own lives, and on making sure your child has a full and happy childhood, unmarred by alcoholism. And also, if you're able, on making sure his younger siblings have a safe place to go, away from his mother and step-father.

You won't be able to save her, she might sort herself out, but in my experience, that's rare.

You don't owe her anything though, life is too short to be someone else's rope.

fennel having been a user of al anon for a fair while I can safely say they would be far more concerned for the well-being of the person who spent 3 hours alone with their drunk dads body whilst their mum was out on the piss

I understand that a lot of people can't be arsed to read the full thread but the same people seem to find the energy to write a really harsh and judgemental post about one isolated incident at the restaurant (with no consideration of what has been decades of alcoholism from both parents with all of its ugly manifestations). The incident at the restaurant is a tiny aspect of what has been a very long and sad story with long trail of really bad behaviour from the mother in law.

I doubt Al Anon would also advise leaving a 6 year old boy with the body of their dead (through alcohol abuse) father for 3 hours either but here we are.

Surely it’s not a case of “advising” the act of dumping the bottles on the table but understanding how he had been driven to it.

What I mean is that groups like Al Anon wouldn’t advise that course of action but they’d would understand the desperation that had lead to it and wouldn’t condemn the person who had done it.

The son isn't 'over invested' this isn't a stranger were talking about its his mother !

There is a lot of guilt surrounding alcoholism, on both sides, family often feel guilty that they didn't do enough to help the person stop drinking . They may be naive in thinking they can make them stop but it's perfectly normal to want to at least try. Please don't have a go at them , it's a miserable, desperate situation.

We have experience of alcoholism in our family, dh’s dad and my uncle and an aunt all died from it, and dh’s brother is heading that way. I truly believe addictive personalities run in families, dh has one brother who is an alcoholic and another is in gamblers anonymous, but it didnt rear its ugly head, or wasn’t identified until middle age.

It’s is a cruel and unforgiving disease and I pity anyone with it who does not have the strength to fight it for the rest of their lives.

Your dh publically humiliating his dm like that was very unkind, there is no point in irrational displays like that and coming from an addictive family I would seriously be worried about his inability to control his emotions or think rationally under pressure as that’s when a little help to calm down starts to be needed.

As for his dm, I would not sit with an alcoholic while they drank over dinner, no dramatics, I would just leave. I would not visit or have them anywhere near my child if they were not 100% on the wagon. You can’t make them change, leave them to it until they realise themselves or die. If they do go to gp, aa etc for a reasonable period of time then of course help them and consider having them back into your life.

Your dh can focus his attentions on supporting his 18 year old sister now and finding somewhere else to stay.

I have linked my DP to this thread and he's very upset. He knew after reflecting that the resteraunt incident wasn't helpful , its not changed his mum's POV and just got him barred !
We're going to help his sister with a deposit for a house share as we forsee it's going to spiral out of control again.
Social services told my DP they will look into the situation with the boys and their dad but my DP has been in touch with them to tell them to tell him when their dad's getting pissed so they can come here or the eldest brothers house in the mean time.
I think he's going to contact the boys school tomorrow as well .

Your poor dp. I really do feel for him. I hope he also saw how many messages of support and understanding were posted.

GTA you know you aren't being unreasonable, and you know that your DP had his mothers best interests at heart, which is why he acted like he did.

If you came on mumsnet a week from now and said everything you've said about your DMIL but said it as your DP, you'd be justified in his actions.

This place can be great and a mind fuck at the same time.

It's difficult as my MIL is a self harmer and my DP is worried that about how far she will go if she's upset AND pissed

Op's husband , please ignore all the horrible comments, you are dealing with a shit situation as best you can.