Feel awful about MIL's passing but struggling with baby - AIBU?

[Charlottef94]

My MIL sadly passed away last week after a terminal illness. She and FIL live in a very very remote part of UK which takes around 12 hrs door to door from us. We were there a week ago luckily before she passed, with our 4 month old.

When she passed overnight last week I stayed as we had already postponed our babys vaccines by over a month due to all the travel over Christmas and up to see them, and they were due to have them that day. DH went up to FIL straight away - however I now feel that he is angry with me that we didnt go immediately and is being quite insensitive to me in having to make this huge journey now on my own as well as currently solo parenting our baby who is going through 4month sleep regression.

I have offered to go up asap, however with the funeral date tbc I would like us to stay up there, until the funeral rather than come back home and back up again. I just feel that it's so many extremely long journeys for our baby who was v unsettled last time we went up there, has just settled down at home again - this is why I wanted to give him a few extra days to get over his jabs and be at home before more upheaval. We have also only been married a year and I did feel that at such a raw time for FIL, having me there hanging around in the very beginning would feel intrusive on his grief as he is alone with DH at the moment.

I just feel my DH is not caring about us at all at the moment, he is barely speaking to me and keeps making sharp comments about how he wants me to get there asap as FIL is really keen to be surrounded by all the grandchildren, as if I am refusing to go. His SIL gets there today with baby. There is a turn in the weather this week meaning I am unlikely to be able to make it to where they live this week or could get stranded with our baby, but I feel DH will tell me we have to try and make the journey.

AIBU in feeling a bit upset myself? I know he has lost his mum but I am trying my best to hold everything together and stable here for our baby and I feel so alone and worried that I've been unreasonable in staying home for a bit longer given the circumstances.

How do all these sentimental thanks turn into a free for all when it comes to impugning the motives of OP?

None of you are as kind and humane as you pretend to think important. Its really shocking how fast you have swarmed to assert that the OP’s legitimate logistical concerns were evidence if bad faith.

You kinda need to put him first at this point. The entire world doesn't revolve around you and your baby.

I don’t understand why you need to be there. It would be nice, but it’s understandable to not be able to attend given the distance involved. I live overseas and was not able to travel to support my husband and vice versa. We both attended our respective parent’s funeral alone. Of course, I missed him but as a grown adult woman it would never cross my mind to insist he come with me or get upset over this. He has his family, he will be fine, you can support him when he comes home. He is being quite selfish, grief can do that, but doesn’t mean he is right.

This would be a reasonable post if she were demanding her dh stay home with her and baby. She’s not, she’s just working out what she can handle, so this is just kicking a struggling mum frankly.

She should go, but by the easiest method possible, and if it’s too stressful there she should stay up to a week, and come back home then go back for the funeral. Otherwise she risks her milk supply, and baby’s health is the most important thing.

Her husband won’t speak to her or sgree to a compromise—such as a less arduous form of travel, a different travel schedule, or a shorter visit. Sensible suggestions like “just fly up for a week” are…well..sensible but useless as OP’s DH snd FIL are uninterested in compromise.

We recently lost our beloved 100 year old Estonian Grandmother. DP and I both without parents so a hard loss. She was heroic in many ways. DP and I have a new baby. He has to travel for hours at a time currently to her come county to sort the estate, the funeral etc. He has not once requested I come with him for emotional support. He understands it would be unfair on the baby, and me as a very tired mother with toddler, too.

Anyway, on her death bed, and occasionally throughout the final years of her life, she was incredible enough to reflect that her old age had made her very selfish. They were words she said on her death bed and something that she was astonishing enough to even apologise for.

To everyone slandering this new mother - she is not being selfish. She is considering the best interests of her new baby. The FIL, and DH, as cruel as it may seem to say are putting their emotional desires first. They are acting more selfishly than her. I think it must be easy to lose sight of selfishness in old age due to a deterioration and health and as a result anxieties that develop, creating a desire to have others close to you.

There is a storm coming. It is not safe. There is something called stoicism and it's an incredibly respectable attribute. Thankfully my family act with it alot, whilst also being able to communicate their feelings but without guilting others to act for them. Take from this what you will.

In Mumsnetland, nobody is ever supposed to get over the death of a parent, even if they are in their sixties and the parent was well along in their nineties and had been yearning for release for years. I suppose it's something to do with the site being primarily aimed at parents. Most of us like to feel we are indispensable. However, in the wider world, the death of a parent is a sad but expected event, part of the circle of life and eminently survivable.

Well baby should come first.

Going to Scotland is not bad for a baby. Sitting on a train is not bad for a baby.
People who travel to other places aren’t not putting their baby first. Baby doesn’t know whether it’s in England or Scotland.

The weather in Scotland is often positively dangerous to humans. Rail travel is extremely risky for babies. Standing room only (half my frequent long-distance legs have no seats or luggage space available), frequent cancellations and delays (my delay-repay is several hundred pounds a year), queues, crowds, chanting drunk football fans, no/conflicting information and staff uninformed. I look out for mums with children as I know they are going to need extra help and most passengers are too desperate to notice.

I'm pretty sure I know where she is heading too...

1 hour ferry journey is not remote at all. Any of Scotland's islands that only take 1 hour to get too are not remote - they are all in the inner hebrides and despite weather warnings, have well serviced ferry timetables, which won't be disrupted for too long.

If it's the island I think it is, then it has a brilliant community who will rally round and it has a well serviced ferry route and shock horror, even a bus service, which would mean OP could travel to the mainland. People bring children up in rural locations, the kids are absolutely fine.

It's unusual for a funeral to be held back a month and OP is assuming that this is the case. Also, in the islands funerals are family events, everyone attends, everyone mucks in when neighbours etc visit - it's what has happened for centuries and it still happens today.

As OP is on leave and baby is 4 months, there is no real reason why she can't travel and stay, other than her relationship with her FIL. She needs to have a discussion with her DH about boundaries but I'm not sure that now is the time.

On this occasion, my advice would be put on your big girl pants and get on with it. Get the train, it's easier than flying if going to the inner hebrides and cuts out the need for a taxi / car, book a click and collect for Tesco / Argos for all the baby stuff, to save you traveling with it and arrange for a local courier company to collect and drop off at in laws - McLennabs or Derek Wilson travel to the islands every day from Oban - this will save you getting stung in the local Coop and work out cheaper overall and ask for help at the ferry terminal - they are actually really good at helping people travelling solo with kids.

I don't think I would forgive my partner, if they didn't travel to be with me and my family, during the loss of a parent. Likewise I fully expect to travel and support my DH, when the time comes, despite have no contact with my in laws.

But this is one of the things that OP is worried about. Her FIL insists on taking her baby from her and has previously said that he will give the baby formula, even though OP is breastfeeding.

OP's FIL being so overbearing is one of the reasons why OP is worried about being there for a whole month.

You kinda need to put him first at this point. The entire world doesn't revolve around you and your baby.

The loss of an older adult is not a reason for OP not to continue to put her baby first. In fact nothing should make her not put her baby first. Her DH would do well to adopt the same attitude.

Oh give me a fucking break, rail travel is not “extremely risky for babies”. Get out of your own bubble once in a while.

That's something, I suppose. Though the minimisation of the baby, the FILs stated attitude, the isolation and the safety issues in all this is still problematic.

Everyone is assuming that it would be easier to fly and the husband's issue is financial. It is very likely that the husband has a better understanding of the logistics and understands that as @Newbie7654 and @Newbie8918 have suggested, that it really wouldn't be easier and would introduce a whole set of additional problems.

FIL's 'stated attitude' - for goodness sake, we nearly all have to learn to deal with old people like this! Just calmly say you're not using formula, smile, and relax about visiting the neighbours. A new baby in a small rural community is a massive deal and will bring such joy, especially to old people. If you don't want your FIL to take the baby without you, go too! Get to know the people who will have such a rich store of love for your baby.

'Isolation' - again, learn to deal with it, and how to live in and with a community that you, after all, chose to marry into. There might not be Starbucks down the road but there will be all sorts of other ways of finding friendship and support. Try talking to those neighbours! There will be a local baby group, people will be able to help with lifts, you just need to get stuck in and start building relationships.

'Safety issues' - really, what utterly over-dramatic townie nonsense.

The thing I find odd is that the OP seems to be finding all this out almost at the last minute now that there's a family emergency. But surely she got to know her husband's people before they married, and had some idea of what the family and community she was marrying into is like, and what might be expected and needed of her? It's as if she expects all the adjustments to have to come from their side, without any understanding of how we all need to adapt to make things work well and happily.

FIL's 'stated attitude' - for goodness sake, we nearly all have to learn to deal with old people like this! Just calmly say you're not using formula, smile, and relax about visiting the neighbours

It's not as easy as that if you're stuck in a house with them for a month, with an unsupportive spouse.

'Isolation' - again, learn to deal with it, and how to live in and with a community that you, after all, chose to marry into.

She didn't, though. It's where here DH is from, I presume there was no suggestion of moving back there when they got married.

I was swithering on the you should go camp until the OP said her DH had vetoed the flight on the basis that a) it was too expensive and b) it would involve him having to do a 4 hr round trip.

Have you actually checked which is more expensive OP - last minute train trips are extortionate these days, the flight may not be much if at all dearer?

I think I would go for a week or so - but use the mode of transport that is most convenient and not travel in major storms, particularly on a train where you could be left stranded.

But I would look at other aspects of DH behaviour once this is over very carefully. He chose to let OP look after baby by herself on the previous journey whilst he scrolled on his phone for 4 hours, hardly the action of a family man, and his compromising his DWs and babies safety when they really don't need to be there.

My bubble involves between 10,000 and 20,000 miles a year on UK rail as a passenger. 50% of my journeys are disrupted more than slight inconvenience. Three one-unders a year - that's a 3-hour wait. Broken-down trains, crew shortages, over-run engineering closures, signal failures (that's the favourite), knock-on delays. Passengers sometimes stranded overnight. I often see extremely distressed mothers and babies abandoned on concourses or outdoor platforms with cancelled trains, no information, and filthy, overcrowded facilities. No seats or pushchair space on trains. People standing in the aisles - this one means anyone seated is overlooked from above; no privacy to breastfeed. And if there's a match on, it's the drunk fans singing "Get your XXXX out".

Is it even fair that there are babies in Scotland given it's so dangerous? How neglectful for parents to choose to raise babies in an environment that is 'positively dangerous'.

Maybe social services should get involved - even more if the parents are so reckless as to take their child on a train - the safest form of transport we have in the UK 🙄

You do know that millions of babies travel by train right? And that babies travel in the London underground all the time, and it doesn't get much more crazy and chaotic than that.

He made one comment about taking the baby to see his neighbours, but making it chest whether the OP was invited or not. As far as we are aware (or it would have been mentioned I'm sure), it didn't happen in the end. The same with one comment about formula. He is hardly the evil FIL. He's likely had more on his mind, like caring for his terminally ill wife to be overbearing.

It's not as easy as that if you're stuck in a house with them for a month, with an unsupportive spouse.
I'm not sure we know that the spouse is unsupportive rather than, say, a bit pissed off and embarrassed that the OP is being a pain in the arse and making such a fuss at a time when one would have hoped that everyone would pull together.

She didn't, though. It's where here DH is from, I presume there was no suggestion of moving back there when they got married.
And no suggestion of visiting regularly to maintain connections, getting to know and value the place where he was brought up, learning to understand a culture that her baby should be able to feel a sense of belonging to?

That seems - shortsighted. And badly judged.

in that case I would stay where you are and travel up for the funeral - cite concerns about the weather. You can support your husband over video and telephone calls, your role is to look after his child not traipse the length of the country with a baby during a storm warning to be treated as an irrelevance when you get there

The only ferry terminal close to an airport in Scotland is Aberdeen and there are no one hour ferry crossings from there!

Most ferry crossings of one hour are on the west coast and the closest airport is Glasgow. If OP were to fly, she would then need to make her way in to central Glasgow, before getting an onward rail journey. It would be easier to travel by train for the whole journey and a lot less stressful.