Am I being uptight?

[MyPurpleHeart]

Would like a bit of perspective please

I'm currently in another country with the in laws for Xmas. We come here from Xmas Eve to the 2nd Jan. DH only gets to come over a few times a year so we stay the whole way through

The family is massive, 20 adults and only 3 kids, and we have DD 19 months. They are night time people, they will sleep in till around 2pm and then nap in the afternoons and literally stay up all night drinking, playing games and chatting. This morning as I was taking DD down for breakfast DH passed us going up to bed at 8am

I have always struggled with these late nights, every once in a while I can do but consistently late nights kills me. Before we had DD I did my best but would come home exhausted.

My problem is, DD is a standard 19 month old. Up at 7, lunchtime nap, bed at 7. I pushed this out a few hours xmas eve and xmas day but paid for it yesterday as she was a nightmare. So it means that we hardly see the family, and DH much to my frustration. I'm in another country with none of our home comforts, trying to entertain a bored toddler as best I can with absolutely no help. There's feck all to do round here so I'm driving for hours to take her out for walks and lunches to fill the day.

The family also don't seem to understand her bedtime, and whilst they are lovely people, they make comments every night that she's going to bed too early and I have to defend my position. I also get the same comments when I go to bed before them because I'm shattered from looking after DD all day

I work full time in a very stressful job and looked forward to a Xmas break. It doesn't feel like much of a break and I just want to go home so we can at least potter about the house and watch movies without tiptoeing around trying not to wake up adults sleeping the day away.

Am I being uptight about the whole thing? I honestly feel like the fucking nanny to my own child

You're not uptight at all, it sounds grim and I would be furious.

I can't bear it when people sleep all day, I think over the age of about 22 it's dick behaviour: complete waste of life and a fuck you to the people you're with.

It would be just about tolerable in young adults but from the whole family; no thanks. And the fact you've taken leave and spent money to be there and brought a small child and they're leaving you to it? Fuck that for a game of soldiers.

I would leave and actually divorce if this didn't change.

Are they spanish? Sounds like a spanish Christmas timetable. Expecting small children to go to bed at 10/11/12 at night...

I was going to ask if they were Transylvanian, because that sounds like the schedule of a vampire.

Neither of you are prepared to compromise, so it was never going to end well.

Yes, you are uptight trying to stick to the UK routine. It's a very British thing to insist on a very strict routine, in many other places parents are flexible and so are the kids! Babies and toddlers included.

Travel to a different time zone, and your child will adapt. It's a simple fact. It's not reasonable to expect everybody else to change their schedule to accomodate your preferences.

On the other hand, the father should at least give a few hours a day for his child. It wouldn't kill him to be up in the afternoon, that's where he's wrong.

Both too unflexible

Go home and get divorce proceedings under way for his arrival back. His disrespect for and disinterest in you and your DD are too much. You deserve so much more.

Is this a country where it’s usually very hot and it’s normal to be more nocturnal - as people sleep in the hottest parts of the day? A lot of countries in Asia it is the norm to see very young children out late at night as it’s too hot to be outside during what we would think are “normal” hours.

YANBU.
Circadian rhythms are natural and hard to change. If you go against your own body clock you will be exhausted.

Babies naturally wake and sleep early. Adults vary, and as night owls your husbands family have different body clocks to you.

They are harming your sleep and rest by trying to force you and your baby to change your own natural sleep patterns to fit in with theirs.

You have a child, a small one! And DH thinks it’s OK to get up at 5pm and just assumes you will care for her. And it wasn’t a one off. And it’s happened before. This is the problem, not you. It’s great that he’s letting loose and having fun but he needs to OK it with you first if he’s going to miss all the parenting.

You’ve changed the hours of the routine a little, which is all that can be expected with a small child.

I hope you went home and told him why?

My family were a bit like this. Coming to bed at 4am, and sleeping till 1pm. It's fine for a few days if you don't have kids, but very difficult when you do!! After I had my two kids, I got called boring once by my sister for ending a night out at 4am (kids were with granny), and I had to remind her that I would be up at 6am with the kids!! Guess what, she was still in bed the next day at 4pm!!

Your DH is treating you appallingly. There's a middle ground he could have taken - play cards or whatever till 1am, get up the next day at 8am.

I would have flown home days ago - not worth the extra expense now, if you are due to leave on the 2nd anyway.

This.
I come from a family where alcohol was rarely offered and 10.30 was bedtime. I met a man during my college years.Spent the period after Christmas and up to 2nd January with his family. They started drinking alcohol at 11 in the morning and drank until they went to bed at midnight. If I was offered a drink and asked for a tea they brushed it away and got me a G and T. I can really sympathise Op. I felt ( and looked) so ill by the time I got on the coach to go home. I never went again.

Record each and every day for yourself - the times your dh woke up and how much he interacted each day. Do this for yourself so you won't be made to be some mad, overreacting woman.

This is disgraceful of your husband. I would actually just leave and never do this again. Fine if the rest of the adults want to behave like this but your dh is pathetic. He's just dumped you with all the responsibility when it's meant to be family time and a holiday for you too. You would be perfectly reasonable to never do this again. What a pathetic man.

YANBU

I wouldn’t even have made the trip, it sounds so boring.

I wouldn't be normalising drinking all nighters to my child either. Fine if it's a day or two over the main days but each day? They all sound like the sort of people I wouldn't like to be around. My idea of family time and this differs wildly.

@MyPurpleHeart well I for one would not be returning to this shit next year!! your husband is a lazy shit and has neglected to do any parenting duties, just leaving it to you!! Personally, i would be looking for an early flight home asap. leave him to it!

Yes, you are uptight trying to stick to the UK routine. It's a very British thing to insist on a very strict routine, in many other places parents are flexible and so are the kids! Babies and toddlers included.

Travel to a different time zone, and your child will adapt. It's a simple fact. It's not reasonable to expect everybody else to change their schedule to accomodate your preferences.

That's one thing if they were out as a couple without children. Although even in countries with very nocturnal countries people don't sleep all day. They may have a siesta but normal life would carry on. What the OP is describing is nothing to do with "culture", its just being debauched.

Also it's not "British" to expect to be allowed to put your child to bed at a time which suits them or to expect the father to spend a bit of time with their child.

What he's doing is effectively outsourcing all childcare to the OP and expecting her to make it work despite the fact that no one in the family has any respect for hers or her child's needs.

I think that would be something to work with but her husband was heading to bed at 8am and getting up at 5pm so there's no working around that schedule!

I hope you actually did this OP. Can’t think of anything worse, does the grandparent(s) not even want to adapt their schedule of drinking to spend time with their grandkid? It’s just really strange.

Sounds awful, and very lonely 😞
I would also fly home early and then make sure I absolutely didn’t go for next Christmas if the message hasn’t been received that it’s totally unacceptable to step out of parenting and spending time with you both/giving you a break, especially as he usually works away.

Son and DIL have always gone to Spain with her parents every summer.Her parents are very generous and have always paid for everything and they always seemed to have a nice time. After first grandchild was born it collapsed a bit. Its her parents big holiday of the year and , absolutely understandably, they haven't changed how they do it. They become more nocturnal during the 2 weeks. Get up at 2 go out and eat. Drink alcohol with that meal and throughout the afternoon. That goes on to another meal and more alcohol then bed at around 3 in the morning. It was impossible to do with a small child and very stressful trying to keep him quiet so the parents could sleep. They didn't go with them this year. That's the first time in 12 years.

Sounds crap. Hope you managed to sort an early flight home. You deserve something resembling a break.

And I’m not talking about the odd night of keeping the kid up late - that’s fine. It’s the father going up to bed at 8am and expecting his partner to do all the childcare that’s bloody rude. Did he expect the kid to be able to stay up that late? I’ll bet no - but it’s ok because he can just have a jolly and let his partner do everything.

I hope you flew home and I hope you're ok.

Is he normally this absent? Why on earth does he think it's acceptable to tap out of being a parent completely? I'm in shock! My partner would never do this and if he did I'd leave him. Firstly, I'd be getting on a plane back home now. This is so unacceptable I can't even cope!

You and your daughter deserve a Christmas. Next time I would plan to go 28th-2nd, expect it to be some alone time for you and DD, but no way would I continue to basically miss having proper Christmas with DD like that going forwards.

I completely agree, it's utterly grim and doesn't bode well for what "family life" would be like with this family. I would seriously be rethinking the marriage.