Disabled husband, 3 kids

[LdnRed99]

Disabled husband and 3 kids...

My husband was born with a condition which is degenerative and recently he has started using a wheelchair. He is looking to buy a new one that can be folded down to take about with us. Whilst we are the getting a hoist for our car there may be times we don't have a hoist available and he is expecting me on those occasions to lift the chair in and out of the car. I already have shoulder problems from lifting our double pram in and out of our boot (we have a 5 year old girl and identical twin boys at 10 months).

Am I being unfair telling him I won't be doing that ever and he can use an adapted taxi instead should that situation arise?

Please vote and comment...I'd love to know why you answered the way you did

It sounds like you may need to trade the car in for a van.

It would give you the space you need for all the DC things as well as not having to lift in and out of boots. As for holiday with your mother, can you not all go in your car?

Your shoulder can be strengthened but it needs to be done properly over time. Had separated shoulder and did physio and later began a weight training programme. Best thing. Now I'm so strong and seldom get any aches or anything

You have young children and you have to preserve your physical health for them. Even the lightest of wheelchairs can seem heavy when putting them in a car (I have done this for people in the past) and are awkward. Electric wheelchairs are really good so perhaps keep that for in the house etc. If you prolapse a disc by lifting the wheelchair and are laid up who will look after your children? I have disc problems and have had an op through something you never would have thought would cause a severe disc prolapse. I have issues for life. Can social services get involved if they are not already and get your husband more support? I don't think you are selfish or unreasonable.

Yanbu..if you totally damage your shoulder you wouldnt be able to help him or lift the buggy and he going to need more help as time goes on. If have to be stick here no hoist you cant lift so he takes a taxi. If he cares about you he totally understand and what to keep you fit to help him.

Yanbu. I am shocked that 55% think Yabu and wild bet my bottom dollar they are all people who have never been long term carers.

I lost my father (he is still alive, he was just unavailable for being a dad) to a combination of his severe disability and his masculine entitlement and that’s rubbish for me but I at least got to leave home: my mother feels obliged to stick around.

Your husband is taking a very short term view wrt his own comfort: your strength will decrease in old age and any recurring injuries be exacerbated, rendering you less able to care for him then.

Stick up yourself, OP: it doesn’t sound like he is at all considerate of you. I cannot imagine demanding my partner commit to undertaking something like this once he’d said he was worried about the effect on his own health. Outrageous.

Maintain your boundaries. There is literally no limit to what will be demanded of you as a family carer up to and including your death. No sacrifice will ever be too much. No one will help or protect you and a lot of people will attack you (see this thread) for having any boundaries at all. So you have to do it early and you have to be strong about it. You are really wise to be clear about this now. Don't give in to the pressure.

Exp: 20 years as a family carer.

You have an awful lot on your plate, OP, emotionally and physically. You can only care for all these family members if you are fit and strong yourself. You know your physical limits and you have explained them.

How will your DH cope with the DC if you put your shoulder right out lifting and manhandling something too heavy for you so that you have to wait for it to heal and cannot lift a pre-walking baby?

No, he needs to accept extra help sometimes to avoid running you into the ground, and you need to prioritise your health in this situation.

This is realism and practicality. Respect, support and love for your DH does not mean martyrdom!

My mother is in a wheelchair too. There is a lot of pressure and expectations on family members to help. So I personally think its good that you're thinking of your limitations. It will get to a point where he ll stay home and never leave. So I would encourage him to go out while he still can, using a taxi. I dont understand the poster saying not to bring your mum to make room for your husbands chair. Of course you need your mum to help with the three children, (especially the twins) as you also have your husband to look after. Sending you hugs during this difficult time.

Surely the electric wheelchair is the smarter option given that the condition is degenerative and also given that you will have your hands full with DCs if you go out as a family?

How will a new lightweight wheelchair be wheeled/ powered around?

Can you get an adapted vehicle?

You cant make yourself worse that will be two of you that someone needs to look after plus the kids how exactly is that going to work? (It wont)

The OP's mum could go in her own car and still help with the children, Beautiful3.

I don’t think you are being unreasonable at all. Why should you wreck your back and shoulders to help him? The answer is that you shouldn’t. Just like patients T the hospital. I couldn’t possibly get off the bed by myself. “Okay well how did you get out of bed this morning?” And voila they rise!! 🙄

Just echoing others, my dad has MS and is in a wheelchair. Mum is his carer and has a dodgy knee. When her knee is flaring up they elect to say in or get taxis, because if she buggers up her knee helping dad into the car or lifting the wheelchair then they’re both fucked - no her helping him to the loo in the night, no her helping him from an armchair into his wheelchair: the idea is to cut back on the non-essential manual stuff to make sure she’s ok for the essential stuff.

Being a carer is super hard and those saying you sound like you don’t care don’t know the reality of it, I only know it from the sidelines as an adult child and that’s without small children involved.

Yanbu for not wanting to lift things you feel you cant safely lift. You have a lot on your plate already with your children and I think keeping boundaries firmly in place will be the difference between you being able to manage this or not.
Its one thing to help your partner when you can, but it sounds like there are just some aspects of his care you cant do. This is up to you to decide. You werent put on this earth to be a mans unpaid carer just because you fell in love with him. You also have a very young family. He is going to have to accept there are some things you cannot do and he needs to accept this a bit more gracefully right now or seek out paid care.
It sounds like you are already doing a lot.

So it's not any heavier than the current twins pram and it won't be all the time just the odd occasion.....yeah you're being unreasonable....you sound like a right charmer ....so much for "in sickness and in health"

It doesn’t sound like you don’t like your husband to me, and poster saying that kind of crap are either very entitled or so wrapped up in their own point of view they’ve failed to comprehend the plea in your OP.

I can see that you’re a bit shocked/surprised to have found your own limitations with the buggy. Lots of twin mums get this (presumably mums of two v. close in age too) - strains from frequent over use of muscles. It feels fine the first 30 pr so times but you slowly realise you are in constant pain and it really doesn’t get better until you can ditch the buggy. You’re sensible to be clear that aren’t physically capable of the task your DH has assumed you will undertake. It’s not an unwillingness, it’s a realisation that the task will likely be physically debilitating for you. It may be difficult for your DH to realise that’s what it is, just as it probably took you a while to realise that your body wasn’t really up to using a twin buggy everyday.

YANBU to point out your physical limitations and to insist on planning around them.

Anyone saying YABU has clearly never been in the situation.

He needs to keep the electric chair, because he has a degenerative condition and they're so much easier for him to maintain some semblance of independence. And even the lightest of wheelchairs are heavy when you're pushing someone around in them. I think you also need to think long term about the car situation and get a van. Presumably he qualifies for PIP so a motability van might be an option (you don't accrue no claims bonus on motability so be aware of that).

You sound like you have a lot on your plate. Remember to look after yourself, and take help whenever it's offered.

YANBU.

However, it's clear from your posts how much resentment you have at the situation (and your DH) at the moment.

I don't think that's disgusting - it's completely normal and understandable, and some posters here seem to have zero understanding about what it's like dealing with chronic illness in a family - but you might benefit from some support outside the home to be able to process some of those feelings. I know that's really hard to do with young DC in tow, but a good GP might be able to guide you in the right direction. Worth a think....

What a sad situation he can't help it sounds like you resent him. You new it was going to get like this when you committed to marrying him.
I don't think he see you as an inconvenience but you see him as one.

YANBU. My dh and teenage dd have disabilities so I can see both sides. Nobody truly knows or understands how a situation is unless you're there.

I absolutely get that if your shoulder injury worsens, you will be stuck as your dh can't do the things that you do, and we don't all have someone who can help us. Being a carer places you under immense pressure and you're juggling everyone's needs. Please contact your local Carer's centre for some advice. They may come up with a solution that works for all of you.

Btw, you can get wheelchairs that are incredibly lightweight. They can be extremely expensive, but do shop around. A proper Wheelchair Services assessment always looks at who is supporting the wheelchair user as well.

OP it sounds like you need to have a longer conversation with your DH about boundaries and make clear what you are and aren’t willing to do going forward. He seems to be assuming you will be happy to pick up more and more caring responsibility, so you need to make clear now if he needs to be planning to get that care from external sources. You come across like you’ve been sticking your head in the sand a bit with these discussions as it’s “hard”, but to be brutal it’s only going to get harder, and you need to be open with each other.

Explain to him that you are not physically capable of hauling the wheelchair in and out of cars without risking injury. Don’t muddy the waters with how you’re “prioritising the children”, as quite frankly this isn’t a surprise and should have been a factor when deciding how many children to have. And having children isn’t a disability.

YANBU. If you injure yourself by lifting his wheelchair, then where will your family be then? Lets be honest, it be a horrendous situation.

Do you need extra help OP? Are you also helping your husband with personal care etc? May be worth making a referral to adult social care for an assessment.

That must be the most unsympathetic post I think I've ever read on here.

Get in touch with social services adult care and tell them you have a disabled husband plus three tiny children. Hopefully they will work with you to get some additional care or respite or just make sure you have all of the equipment you are entitled to. Don't just go off an old assessment or make out it's all ok- they do not want carer breakdown in a family of small kids (as this would be disastrous for everyone) and so may put more things in place.

Agree with everyone- don't part-ex the electric wheelchair as you can go out yourselves locally with this. I am puzzled about who is going to push the new wheelchair or is that also electric? Obviously you couldn't push it if you are pushing the twins.

Don't agree to pick it up and put it in the car and knacker in your shoulder! This is daft. If you injure yourself, you can't care for him OR your children properly. Using an adapted taxi is a sensible idea, if he gets PIP that's what it's for- and ask for a reassessment if he had it done a while back. And think about getting an adapted vehicle now through PIP so you are prepared for the future.

The posting style is a bit unemotional- my guess is that you are spending a lot of time just about coping and that you have developed a pragmatic, perhaps slightly hard exterior to cope with what is really a very bad hand in life in many ways. Your husband is deteriorating before your eyes and this is very distressing. To cope, you get your head down and carry on, especially for the children. Most people on here could NOT cope with twins and a disabled husband who requires care and another young child- they would be struggling enormously. Get a carer's assessment for yourself and also support for yourself as you are carrying more than most.

Thank you for all the kind words and comments. Just to clarify a couple of things which maybe I should have added earlier to avoid any confusion. The chair he wants has the ability to have the wheels removed to make the moving to a boot of a car easier, if a little fiddly. It also comes with an electric joystick adaptation so he can self propel or use the power assistance. It's not as robust as his current chair but it is transportable which his other one isn't unless you drive the chair up into a car. He thinks the other chair wil ok help him be more independent and will allow us as a family to go out more. He walks so slowly with a stick it as actually painful for me to walk that slow and he knows that.

It is exhausting and I do feel like I have 4 children now at home. He does as much as he can so I can't criticise him for that but at times he is totally bed ridden so that puts more pressure on me. My mum has come to live with us virtually Monday to Friday to help me, but my DH doesn't get on with my mum...neither do I at times...so she goes home at the weekend to give us some space. My DH then does what my mum would do when with me but this is tiring him out so much that he often misses work on the monday because of it. I can't involve his parents as I can't stand them at all...it's just a no go area because of many many incidents in the past. We weren't trying for children at the time we feel pregnant with the twins and it took us so long to get our daughter we were both certain the odds of getting pregnant again would be tough...so the twins are a miracle and we are so so.lucky. DH wants his parents to help out but it's just not.an.option. it gets so.bad at home sometimes I tell him he will lose us all if he doesn't change his attitude and stop making stupid mistakes. I do say to him at times maybe he should go and live in a care home where he can get the care he supposedly wants.
We are hoping to change the mobility car to one that will accommodate our.growing family and his medical.needs so we will.end up with a people.carrier of.some.sort.

Get an urgent social services referral (to adult social services) and do not tell them your mum is helping out- that is not a good solution anyway to the situation and may be untenable in the future if you don't get on or she can't continue.