To be sick of being sick at PILs?

[LondonUnited]

I will admit that I am weak of stomach. BUT every time we go to PILs I end up with an upset stomach. Following on from our visit this Christmas I feel ill and the baby has loose nappies too.

The issue is their lack of cleaning and lack of appropriate food hygiene (think leaving meat out of the fridge, complete disregard of use by dates etc. Once we visited them a few days after they had come back from holiday in France and they fed us burgers they had cooked over there and brought home in their hot car and another time I was ill for four days after they left a chicken out to defrost for 24 hours in 30 degree July heat!)

I am absolutely fed up of it now. DH has spoken to them and nothing changes. WIBU to simply refuse to visit? They live over 100 miles away so popping in for tea is not an option!

Food poisoning can kill, cause irreparable kidney disease and problems for many years to come - I ended up in hospital with campylorbactor as a young woman and took years to recover.

Children are at even more risk. You've been given great advice here OP - for the sake of you and your children, doing nothing is not an option.

Are they from the generation that had no fridges? I doubt it, that ended in the 1950s.
Nonsense. We got a fridge in the 70s when we moved in with GPs and had room for one when parents had a new kitchen fitted. That was normal for rural areas back then. Gps had a cold store in garage that kept things cold, never any problems with food poisoning. Milk was delivered daily and if it was really hot in summer it was kept in a bucket of cold water😀

i don't think it's very possible to stay in the relationship and outright refuse to visit his mother. It will make you look crazy.
Ditto going there and refusing to eat or let your child eat.

If she shows dp the consequences of food poisoning he can't think she is crazy.
I would rather pil thought I was crazy than spend days in hospital with a seriously ill child. Sod what anyone else thinks. And if my dh put his parents filthy habits before my kids and my health then I wouldn't want to stay with him.

Your DH doesn't care that you all suffer with food poisoning every time you eat at his parents' house? Christ. He has a very unhealthy relationship with his parents.
I hope you're feeling a bit better.

I would be prepared to take it on the chin for being called the fussy one and do so for my sake and the sake of the DC

You can't take these risks. people can have a stomach to deal with all bugs and other people do not.
If you come home ill then it is not ok.
It is very unhealthy,
Let them judge you but you will be doing the best for you and your family.
I would take my own food and drinks and have done this once before. I claimed food allergies which is also true.
But protect the kids is the most important issue, not the Pil feelings.

Late MIL became a grubby old lady, sadly. During visits BIL/SIL and their children took their own food and drink, pretending it was a picnic - an adventure for them. Obviously this works better for visits rather than prolonged stays.
Eventually she suffered from gippy tummy too quite often but due to her dementia it was a mystery to her how it happened. BIL gave up being tactful (telling her that she was dirty) but again she was aghast and didn't believe him.

Sympathies for you OP, it's a delicate situation all round.

Strange how PILs aren't suffering from dysentry, I wonder why?

My Ddad took pride in eating stuff way past its sell by and poo-pooing use by dates which might have been better if his eyesight and sense of smell were fully operative. He ate stuff with mould on it, cut the mould off if it was prominent enough for him to notice. He was awful at handwashing or using soap but was very rarely unwell. On the odd occasion he was ill, he was adamant it was nothing to do with his eating/hygiene habits.

Hygiene is so important... I lost my baby because of an infection. I don't know if it was the swimming pool or people not taking shoes off or washing hands or if I just did something wrong. I just don't know.

Lweji

Nothing about what you posted corresponds with modern food hygiene rules. Unless you live in an igloo, even cooked poultry meat needs to be cooled and stored in the fridge under 5ºC. No amount of reheating after 24 hours will make it healthy again. Let alone on day 3 left out. Leaving it inside the oven doesn’t help, it was cooled, served and returned to the oven presumably.

I will agree with you that raw poultry left out for 3 days would have been worse though!

You have a spineless DH problem here

Considering only you and the kids got sick - my guess would be the oldest child was probably the cause of the sickness bug this time. Kids can often cultivate bacteria for days before it shows any symptoms.

In fairness, the op hasn't said they have 'dystentery', the have an upset digestive system which will soon be over with plenty of water.

Re: fridge: I can only say my parents bought one in the late 1950s when I was a child, as did most rellies & friends so I'm speaking as I found. When I left home as a teen and lived in furnished, I didn't have one so obviously it varies from person to person, place to place. However I doubt any of that applies to the op's family, they are probably younger and used to refrigeration.

I hope digestive upsets are now over and special precautions taken for further visits.

I have a cast-iron stomach and even I would get sick with that lack of food care.

Avoid eating meat or feeding it to your children while there.

Fuck that for a game of soldiers. I definitely wouldn't go @LondonUnited.

No amount of reheating after 24 hours will make it healthy again.

No need. You can eat it cold, if it was cooked properly to start with.

My MIL does the same things regarding food.

We don't eat there after we all got food poisoning.

I can't believe you keep going when you know you are going to be ill, and feeding their food to your baby, are you mad?

Strange how PILs aren't suffering from dysentry, I wonder why?

Because:

a) They are used to eating dirty food
b) They don’t have sensitive stomachs

One bout of food poisoning can create problems afterwards. I suffered a nasty bout of salmonella in 1984. I have had IBS ever since and no longer have a cast iron stomach.

I don’t understand why you posted this Notodontidae
I suspect the above applies to the husband who was brought up with these unhygienic food practices GrumpyHoonMain

I would have thought most people here would have heard of the microbiome, in the gut.

we all are different. Her DH having grown up with his parents will have a different set of bugs in his stomach...we all have bugs, good and bad there is trouble when a bad one outplays the good ones.
This can have with a known germ like salmonella or a course of antibiotics which destroy good and bad bugs.

If eating in a certain home makes you ill avoid. It is not clever to make the OP the problem.

Nobody’s had dysentery or food poisoning. They’ve got slightly upset stomachs. Another dramatising thread.

Alsohuman having the runs isn't fun
Are you always completely lacking in empathy?

As someone with IBS the OP has my sympathy. Knowing that every time you eat at someone's house you will get the runs does take the shine off the visit.

Have you never had diarrhoea before?

I’m not lacking in empathy at all. Just pointing out OP says she feels ill and the baby’s bowels are loose, yet other posters have catastrophised it into dysentery/food poisoning.

Well... if you go back for more of the same next time op, you’d be an idiot. Invite them to you or don’t go at all.

MIL lives a similar distance away and we've done the bringing food and cleaning the kitchen while we cook it, cleaning the bathroom before we use it etc but now we drive up, take her out for lunch and come home.