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.

Not at all - I just don't think that it's helpful to jump to the worst possible conclusions and assume that people have bad motivations without giving them the benefit of the doubt. And that can be hard to see when you're in the thick of things.

But really, I think @powershowerforanhour is both wise and funny and has said all that needs to be said for now, and the rest of us should shut up 🙂

Why should we shut up? Your misogyny is showing.

Some of the comments here are bizarre.

I'm sure OP would also be perfectly capable of taking her DS on a 3 hr train journey- except it's an 11 hour trip with changes and a ferry at the end, oh and in potentially gale force weather. The two things are not comparable.

I think OP can judge for herself if the plane journey is more difficult than by the train than people making up random possible routes.

Oh and baby immunisations exist for a reason, it's not some spa day OP dreamt up to get out of going to FILs. She had already postponed the injections for one visit.

It is important to support a partner in their grief, but this doesn't feel like this. It feels like it's a challenge that is being set for OP and even if she jumped on the next available train, she still would have failed it in some way.

Like another poster upthread I'm from NI and the funerals take place with almost unseemly haste - sometimes the next day. My cousin did criticise me for not making Dgrans funeral but we were in Center Parcs at the time on our first family holiday with an 11 week old baby and I received one days notice, so I ignored him. I find this waiting for weeks to hold a funeral bizarre and builds up unnecessary expectations around attendance.

Well yes, precisely. Portable like carrying them around the room.

@rookiemere I don't think anyone chooses to wait weeks for funeral.

Scotland until recently were about a week. Usually determined by the availability at the crematorium, recently that has increased to about 3 weeks in the central belt.

The Op seemed to be guessing about waiting to half term. I'd be surprised if the islands had long waits for funerals.

So you accept baby's are fairly portable.
Have you been on a train?

It's dead easy you get on sit in your seat and chill.

@Needspaceforlego until the baby starts fussing, then not so chill! And that's if you can get a seat. All train journeys I have taken in the last couple of months have not gone totally according to plan, delays so miss connection so don't get your seat, weather disrupting things, trains just being cancelled.But I only had me to worry about. If I was travelling from one end of the country to the other with a 4 month old, I would be dreading it.

Oh this is everything that needed to be said!!

I'm a bit confused. Is your DH wanting you to come to FIL's with the baby for a few days, go home and then come back again for the funeral?
Or does he want all three of you to stay until after the funeral?

If it's the former, would he be going home and coming back with you, or would you be doing that alone as well? I can certainly see why the prospect of doing a 12 hour trip involving 2 trains and a ferry with a young baby, potentially in severe weather, 3 or 4 times in the space of a few weeks would feel overwhelming. Not to mention expensive.

If it's the latter, you could be at FIL's for weeks. You will need quite a lot of luggage. How long after the funeral will DH want to stay? I can't imagine he'll want to leave FIL as soon as its over.

I understand that he's grieving and probably not thinking clearly, but when you have a small baby there does need to be some consideration given to the practicalities. YANBU to want to think about what's best for baby, and what is reasonably practical given the distance as well as wanting to support your DH and his family. In your shoes, I would bring baby there for the funeral and stay for a week or so after if DH wanted to.

We do have the internet, you know, and many of us can even use it

We have it up here, too, not everything is on it and you still need a car/willing driver

Good luck OP if you are travelling today. I would find that journey very challenging by train mainly because of all the luggage you will need to bring if you are there for weeks. I'm not sure hiw you would carry everything by yourself

It's dead easy you get on sit in your seat and chill.

Maybe in a country with a decent rail service. Here you're more likely to have cancellations then two or three lots of people all being loaded into one train, people squashed like sardines into the aisles with all their luggage and the loo broken, assuming you could even get to it.

Or the cancelled at Penrith trick where you then have to queue hours to get a taxi. Just about fine if your onward journey is Glasgow, but if you're another 3/4/6 hours north, then what?

There are also likely to be multiple journey changes and long waits as the services aren't that frequent heading north or west past the central belt.

If you're not a driver, or have a tiny baby that can't be in a car seat for over twelve hours, then flying is the only sane option, but that's apparently not allowed according to the DH.

Yes, my original point was babies have to be carried (to another poster who thought they wouldn't need to be 'walked around' as they can't walk themselves). See my earlier posts - I travel 10-20,000 miles a year by train. 50% of my journeys have no seats left, are delayed or cancelled.

But there's no sexism here, of course!

If he was so bothered about OP going immediately and being up there for the duration, then he should have stayed at home the remainder of that ONE day while the baby had it's injections and all travelled up together the following morning.. he was at least 12 hours away when he got the news, so he couldn't be with his dad immediately following his mum's death, so what practical difference would another 12-24 hours have made? None.

It actually sounds to me like he sees himself as one unit, and sees OP and the baby as a separate unit that aren't as important as him, that is why he chose to leave them behind. It also explains why he leaves her to do all the baby care (even on the long train journeys), and why he thinks it is reasonable to demand she travel all that way just to leave her and baby on their own for 8 hours every day while he works. It also explains why he won't put himself out for 4 hours to make her journey easier.. because that isn't his problem, it's OPs problem to deal with.. and because she isn't doing as she is told he is now giving her the silent treatment.

He may be a good son, but he sounds like a shitty partner and dad to be honest, I've lost both parents and would never in a million years treat my DH and child with such disregard.

Yeah someone suggested they'd need to be walked around killing your back giving you a headache - they were obviously thinking about Baby closer to walking than a 4mth old

And you asked if I'd ever seen a baby - no actually I've never seen anyone attempt too get a 4mth old on their feet

A 4mth old will sit fairly contently on train. But I would book them a seat using the family rail card just so you get two seats and more space.

Most comfortable option with fewest transfers is probably the sleeper to Glasgow with cabin if possible, in the morning book a taxi ahead to cross over to Queen St to help with the luggage, morning train up to meet the 1pm ferry and you're there by 2 without having been in a crowded carriage for most of the trip. I would find getting in and out of airports much more stressful.

The only issue with the sleeper is cost. Can't use family rail card, so it wouldn't be cheap.

But I'm sure you can get sleeper to Glasgow, Oban, Inverness possibly Fort William but not sure which would save the faff trying to get across Glasgow.
Depending on where she needs to be to get the ferry.

Maybe the parents of said grandchild don't want him missing any more school that need be.

Reservations suspended and first class declassified with no available seats. Not frequent, but a greater chance of this in bad weather.

Or you find the reservation program hasn't loaded and people refusing to move out of unlabelled seats.

And that sleeper is usually OK, but can have horrendous delays when things go wrong.

Are they not only suspended on the Glasgow-Edinburgh trains not the big North - South trains too?

Much less chance of this on a sleeper, to be fair. What you need is a cancellation at a busy time, leaving two train-loads for the next service. Or when they switch stock or lack crew, there may not be enough time to load reservations.

No, it was you! "4mths aren't even at the stage of you walking them around the room."
I've just been walking a 4-month-old round the room (in my arms) this afternoon.

There are some arseholes in the world but there is close to no chance that no one is is moving and closing to leave a woman standing with her luggage and carrying a 4 month old baby.

4 month olds are not known for sitting quietly for 12 hours, so you may have to walk about trying to get them to sleep (they obviously won't be walking!)