To say she'll need to make other arrangements.

[Bugggg]

My husband is away with work next week working abroad, been arranged for a long time. His older children were due to be with his mum that week but she was invited to a hen week of a friend starting Wednesday. She begged, pretty much literally, me to have them so she could go. I said no initially as I'm working in the week and have my hands full with our own young DC without DH but she wore me down a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway my son who is 1.5 has started with some mystery chest illness yesterday. Spiking a temp of 40 a few times and very very chesty / miserable.

He is prone to chest issues and is on quite a few things for it, he gets chest problems regularly and has been admitted to hospital multiple times with chest problems. They believe it's something to do with his airway being smaller than usual so when it swells when he's poorly it can get very bad/ wheezy / low oxygen levels, even blue lighted once due to him looking blue. Basically anything with his chest is a massive worry.

I've told DSC mum that she is probably best arranging something else now as I cannot guarantee I'll be able to look after DSC whilst she's away (she was wanting to bring them tomorrow even though she's not travelling until late Tues / early Wed).

I cannot deal with the stress of having two extra DC around when I may have to rush DS somewhere if he worsens and frankly I'm bloody knackered as it is and not likely to get any better for this week.

Anyway, long story short I'm now the devil incarnate, she's threatening to bring them anyway blah blah. AIBU to ignore ignore ignore and focus on my unwell child. I honestly don't really care what she arranges, my son is more important than her pissy weekend. DH has told her to leave me alone and has said to just ignore her.

🤣 you crack me up.

I get what you and PP mean about how the respiratory issues, my youngest was the very same. He had a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy a few months ago, this alongside inhalers and inhalers has really helped the situation. He can actually breathe properly now when sleeping and/or poorly, before he’d have to go straight to hospital for oxygen and usually an overnight stay of more than one night.

I wouldn’t feel able or comfortable to have two more children to take care of if I thought youngest might be getting poorly and need a hospital trip. You’ve made the right decision, ignore her tantrum.

Can’t believe people are suggesting the husband cancels his trip. Imagine telling your boss ‘Yeah Mike, about the conference this week…. Yeah I can’t go. My ex-wife wants to go on the lash in Benidorm on a hen do with her mates so I’m gonna have to have the kids. Sorry about that.’

If she needed to go somewhere for work, or a planned medical appointment ,or needed to finish writing her final masters assignment then it would be fair enough if she felt miffed at you pulling out of the arrangement which you were under no obligation to make in the first place , but it is a flipping hen do ffs. She is a mother of two late primary kids, not a fancy free singleton, so going on a week long hen do is pretty ridiculous anyway, and then to kick off because your child is ill is as self centred as anything I have ever read on MN.

I hope your little boy feels better soon, of course you need to focus on him and his health.

How often does your husband have his children? Is he one of these once every other weekend but starts a new family dad or is it 50/50. Mum doesn’t want them, dad will come back early to see his full time child but not to look after them and stepmum regrets saying yes and is now saying no and the advice on here is to lock the doors and leave the children on the doorstep if they turn up. Feel so sorry for them children

The hen-do is not a life-or-death necessity. Ex-wife won't find herself on er death-bed regretting missing the hen-do, or if she is, she's very strange.

It's unfortunate that OP agreed and has to back out, but that's life! Adulthood is full of this type of disappointment. She sounds fairly heartless to be more interested in her chance to get drunk with friends than in the health of her children's half-sibling.

no need for them to be on anyones doorstep, their mother can choose not to go on the hen do and look after them herself while their father goes on his long planned work trip and their step mum looks after their poorly half brother.

She is not cancelling for the craic! Her own child is unwell and she does not want to be trailing him on school runs. Or thinking about how to get two children minded if she needs to go to hospital. That is a perfectly valid reason to cancel.

I think once you’ve said yes then you’re stuck with the arrangement.
Its not as if they’re strangers, they’re family.

The OP has literally said the dad is trying to arrange to come home earlier because of the sick child.

But I'm sure he is also confident in his wife's skills to look after their child

This isn't the either or you are presenting

You seem to be saying that either the 1 child is so sick he needs 2 parents looking after him, or he is well enough that the OP can look after 3 children.

It falls in the middle, the 1 child is so sick he needs one parent looking after him who hasn't got a backup plan for if she can't get the other 2 children to school because she hasn't needed one before and it's too short notice

Do you really hate step mothers so much you will twist the narrative any which way just to make sure the mum, whose turn it is to have the children, who bullied the OP into having them, who continued to try to bully her even though the OPs child is sick, who threatened to leave her children on the OPs doorstep, just so she can go on a last minute hen do can't possibly be the one in the wrong?

I just feel so incredibly sorry for the children in these situations.

As a stepmum to 4 (plus my own 1) I can say categorically that I did whatever was needed to look after my stepchildren and I would have looked after them, even in your circumstances .

I would have been outraged that she prioritised a hen do but I helped bring up my step children like they were my own. My stepchildrens' mum was erratic and selfish and I wanted to make them feel equal to own child. I did have to deal with medical emergencies for all of them on my own but I wouldn't have dreamt of not making them feel welcome. I wouldn't expect my DH to still work away though.

It’s disappointing for her but it’s what happens when you have kids - plans change,

Incredible to me that anyone is suggesting to keep the door locked and call the police if she comes over. Fuck me. There are people who would genuinely leave their step-child on the doorstep and call the police? No thought for the child’s feelings there at all is there. If the mum is prepared to do that she’s an awful parent and a step mum who does that is pretty awful too. The PP who said they ‘fight fire with fire’ made me laugh out loud. Absurdly aggressive and nasty behaviour. Poor kids.

If my husband’s ex-wife were that terrible I wouldn’t have married him. But if she suddenly snapped and started abandoning her kids, no way in hell would I make them think that’s all they deserve and do the same.

All that’s important to consider in this situation is whether DSC would prefer to be sent to stay with their stressed and anxious step mum and a poorly sibling who’s probably going to be crying and needing lots of attention, or would they prefer to stay home with mum. And is it best for baby sibling to be dragged out on the school run twice a day?

As MN is always so keen on pointing out, the children should come first.

I hope all the people saying they feel sorry for the DSC would feel worse if they also developed a chest infection after spending time with a poorly baby.

But no, let OP run herself ragged, because hen do trumps said poorly baby. Except it doesn't, and I look askance at the woman who has neither compassion for the OP, nor the sense to not expose her kids to an illness that could make them very poorly too.

Small children get poorly rather fast. Even if he shows signs of improving, that doesn’t mean he won’t end up being hospitalised. Parents, whose children don’t have a medical condition have no idea how stressful it is for those that do.

The only thing I will say though is that if your dh comes home early and your ds is well enough, he could perhaps take his dcs.

And it’s their mums contact time!! So work trip very much takes precedence over boozy do. ^^

What are the current contact arrangements with the children? Does your H have them every other weekend? If so, you would be having the kids Fri to Sunday (I presume, regardless of your H being there)
Wed Thur -two full days is what's being asked surely?
Your DS Has another 2 days to get better. I would have told the mum that If his temp was still high Tue night I would need to cancel and wouldnt have the DSC but if he improves then I would have DSC.

YANBU. Not your circus, not your monkeys. Mother of the year will have to miss her piss up with her friends, like all mothers have to do when they don’t have child care.

Hope your ds feels better soon

The OP states that the mother wants to drop them Monday even though the hen do is wednesday. So she wants the OP to have them for 2 days before the hen do even starts

I'm suggesting a compromise.
Also, the OP has been asked MULTIPLE times what the contact arrangements are. But hasn't responded.

Why are they getting dropped off on Monday when the hen do starts on Wednesday?

Also who has a hen do starting on a Wednesday?!

It wasnt clear you were suggesing a compromise, it read like you hadnt understood the mum was expecting to drop the kids from the monday

the contact arrangements are fairly irrelevant at this point anyway, as whatever they are they wont involve an expectation of the OP.

However if the mum feels they are unfair and the dad should having a higher level of contact she can absolutely bring that up. But that is not the same as bullying the OP and certainly shouldnt be done just as the dad is gping away with work because the mum wants to go on a piss up

This is a totally ridiculous response. If one of my children were hospitalized, and my husband had a work trip, and I had no one to look after the other kids, he would have to cancel his trip. Parents having to cancel things because a child is hospitalized and the other children need care, is a thing that happens. In this case, there are three things going on: father has a work trip, stepmother has a hen do, mother has a child with a serious illness who may need to be hospitalized. The least essential thing on this list is the hen do. The stepmother going to the hen do is the thing that should be canceled, because this child needs his mother's full attention, and so that if this child needs to be hospitalized then a parent can be with him.

If this woman had promised to help out with a church dinner and her child was hospitalized, should she still do the church dinner because she had already committed to do it? No. Because something more urgent came up. Sometimes schedules have to be changed because emergencies happen. Reasonable people understand that when that happens, the least emergent thing is the thing that is canceled.

You want someone to do you an overnight babysitting favor? An implicit part of that is that if their child gets seriously ill, the favor is canceled. That's the risk you take when you ask another mother to do such a big favor for you.

Dear Lord, sometimes the priorities of people on Mumsnet are utterly messed up.

The number one tule of step parenting is never look after the step children on behalf of either parent, they are not your responsibility. You do it once, you'll end up always doing it and you'll grow resentful which will then negatively impact the relationship.