AIBU to expect my mum to cancel her gym session to look after my kids?

[Mkxxx]

For context: I (34F) have two boys (3 and 11m). I have help from my mum once a week on a Tuesday. 8am-5pm she’s at my house. All the other days I get no help and no help from my MIL either. I have managed my maternity pretty much on my own with my husband in the office 5 days a week. It has been hard with a baby and a toddler. My son only recently turned 3. Anyway I never bug my mum to come outside of a Tuesday because honestly it’s just hard work and not worth it. However right now I’m very ill. She knows I’ve been unwell too. I don’t ask anyone to help me unless I’m desperate. So I asked my mum last night to come today. She said she can’t come until the afternoon when most the day has gone because she has the gym. I asked if she could miss it this once since I never ask like this and she said no. Now im feeling so much anger because the lack in inflexibility shocks me. If my child had asked me for help I would go! Also she doesn’t work and retired to ‘look after her grandchildren’. So am I wrong for feeling annoyed and upset?

Its not so much the OP's situation that's sad, it's the replies. So many people who don't have that kind of support in their lives, even going so far as to call op a CF. It cuts both ways BTW, my own mum is getting elderly now and if she needed help with anything I'd be there in a heartbeat.

It makes me the opposite on behalf of women. This women already does every Tuesday, she already does other days for other grandchildren. She already offered the afternoon. She’s finally said ‘no’ and looked after her own health instead. Good for her.

Hope you are feeling better OP. People are brutal on here when it comes to the topic of grandparents helping out. They’ll also be the same people moaning they don’t get to dictate how and when they get to see their grand kids. So I’d take all those “you chose to have kids” comments with a massive pinch of salt.

Sometimes we need our mums and I know my mum and many mums around the world would cancel their gym session to help, it’s
a once off and you’re her baby so she should want to help and take care of you. Sure,
it’s good to have boundaries but if my kid needed me no matter what age they are, I’d be there.

So I don’t think you are being unreasonable, and sorry to hear you are not getting as much support as you need.

I haven’t been able to follow my gym routine for a week because it’s the school holidays. My mental health has declined sharply! I don’t always recognise that the working out is more than keeping fit and strong. When I don’t do it for a day or two or if I do it at a time where I can’t train properly (for some of us the right time of day and nutrition / medication etc is important) then I am bad tempered and frankly a bit depressed. Is that ideal? No. Is it my adult child’s fault? No. Should there be more help available for women in peri-menopause / menopause? Yes but it’s sub standard. More than one thing can be true at the same time. We are human too, there is no way I would have the patience to look after a 3 year old and an 11m old if I wasn’t feeling 100% myself and sometimes that would include having worked out. Obviously in a life or death situation I would need to skip a session but someone else feeling ill doesn’t trump me feeling down or depressed or my needs. This attitude is why so many women are burnt out. If the OP was as poorly as she claims she would have jumped at the chance to have a few hours to nap in the afternoon.

Anyway, I had to get up at 5am this morning to workout because my mood has been awful and I recognise that it’s not fair on my children. Those children were better off with a poorly Mum than with a Grandma that didn’t want to be there and was maybe cranky because her routine was altered.

Nitpicking exact words to support a mother not helping her child makes me think you would do the same.
Fine if you think prioritising the gym over your sick child and grandchildren is acceptable but I don’t and it’s not something I would do.
For whatever reason her husband is not coming to look after the children, so I will help. If he’s at work and can’t leave I will help. If he’s a prick and refuses to help then I will help. Either way she needs help
What mother says to her child just keep struggling because I’m going to the gym? No idea why some people on here even had children

OP is a CF, I mean bemoaning that she only has a full days childcare and her DM could only come over in the afternoon!

How ungrateful and cheeky is that!

To all of you saying ‘well I did it, so just get on with it’ about parenting seemingly entirely alone, imagine this scenario. An elderly person, male or female, is seen struggling with shopping bags in a supermarket. Would you simply ignore them or offer to help? I can’t imagine anyone walking past a struggling elderly person.

now imagine it’s a mum with two small children struggling with shopping bags. Would you walk past now? I worry some of you would, because you seem to think that it’s women’s jobs to just get on with things, because you did and others do, and having a bag day or wanting help is somehow weak. It is ironic that some of you are citing sexism in not expecting dad or grandad to help when your approach to expecting women to suck up hardship or plough through childcare when feeling shit is the very essence of gender based sexism - women should suck it up because we always have.

now imagine that mother with two toddlers and loads of shopping bags is walking not next to you but next to her mum. In my view, most mums would grab the bags or the kids and try to help. OPs cry for help to her mum when feeling ill was precisely this scenario - a short term, easily resolved issue which most loving parents would drop everything to help with.

in the absence of any poor relationship history or piss taking by the OP, which doesn’t seem to be the case here, I would most certainly feel hurt that my mum chose to go to some gym class instead of helping out her family. Not because she HAS to, but because she wants to. Because, and this is important, I would want to help anyone who was struggling, but I’d walk over hot coals for my family. So to find that fierce kind of protective love was not reciprocated would hurt like hell.

It's not prioritising her life over her sick daughter and grandchildren though, it's prioritising it over her son in laws company. And why should she care about that?

No-one will be satisfied until all her own hopes and desires die and she runs herself into the ground exhausted.

If you're well enough to be posting frequently online, you're probably not as ill as you think you are.

Yes because its always the responsibility of an older women to sacrifice her time to make a man's life easier.

Good god

Hi OP just to say this will defiantly need to be thought through, as when they go to childcare- literally they will be sick for the first year or so- literally every other week. It’s part of the process, so you need to have a good system in place- it will literally be one day in, one day sick/ it’s just how it goes.

youll be off work more than your in- so husband needs to step up I’m afraid

This is how it should work, I’m afraid. My Dh has a high level job and he still accepted that if I was so ill I could not safely look after our children when they were young, he had to work from home/take a day off. It only happened a couple of times in 10 years, but knowing that he WOULD be there when needed helped.

This is a DH issue, I’m afraid. Though I, as a mum, would absolutely have skipped the gym to help my DD and DGC. However, perhaps she was deliberately making you face the issue with your DH as he should always be the first call. And, tbh, her personal life is no less important than your DH’s job, is it?

I did it alone and didn't think twice about it. Why would I? My mother was working a full time job anyway. One time my husband was working overseas and me and five children all got the flu. My youngest was three months old. I set up camp beds in the living area, we bunked down in front of the TV, I got easy stuff delivered from online shopping. We did what we had to do and survived. It really wasn't that big a deal. If I'd got so sick I had to go to hospital, I know my mother would have come to help then.

To answer your questions, in my experience elderly people often don't want help. It hurts their pride. Would I offer to help carry? If I could and it seemed appropriate, yes. In my experience most would be insulted by the offer though.

Would I help someone with young kids? Depends. If I didn't have my arms full, I might. Depends if it felt appropriate.

That said, in a community group I'm part of, I did recently offer to help carry something for someone who had a back problem. It was appropriate and appreciated.

I don't recall anyone ever offering to help me with the supermarket or bags and it didn't bother me.

You completely ignored that I said the interval between sessions was very important. That may or may not be true here.
Having learnt the very hard way sometimes you need to put your own oxygen mask first. There is a high chance OPs mum is menopausal it is shit, a lot of it is finding the right balance of stuff, there is a tiny shift in that balance and you are totally messed up.
The OPs mum has a boundary her gym session, but she said she would come in the afternoon. Everyone on MN talks about setting boundaries with their parents, it is okay for the parents to set boundaries too.

I hope your husband is taking over for the weekend so that you can have two days' complete rest, OP.

It isn’t hard to work out the history here.

the husband has NEVER helped.*

so all those hand wringing that they/their mother would definitely prioritise them over the gym, are completely missing the point. It isn’t her responsibility, it’s the fathers.

women will never be equal whilst so many other women dismiss the inadequacies of men so so easily and cast their eye about for a woman to blame.

*he can’t possibly, he has a willy.

Yes but op specifically said she's struggling. Of course DH could help but my DH is self employed and my mum would not see our family lose money in this instance. I think op's mum is being cold...I thank the Lord for my lovely loving kind and understanding mum. I'd be there for my DC no question

You are being unreasonable, your children are yours and your husband’s responsibility and not your mum’s. Maybe she has other things to do and not just the gym (of which you sound rather dismissive).
Your DH’s attitude needs questioning far more than your mum’s.

Yes we should make our daughters struggle to teach all men their responsibilities and bring down the patriarchy. I’m sure your daughter will appreciate you making a stand for feminism while she needs help.

She wasn't leaving her to struggle though that's the whole point. The OPs mother was the only one willing to actually come and help. All she said was she could come in the afternoon.

The DH here is not self employed though!

Make our daughters struggle or make our SILs step up?

The view of some on this thread seem to be that the OPs mum isn’t allowed to have a life of her own she has to be at her daughters beck and call and drop everything to be available.

she was busy but said she would come as soon as she was done. That is more than fair given it doesn’t seem it was an emergency situation.