Three year old and us being away for hospital visits.

[Rockandrollwithit]

I have two boys, one is 3.5 and the other five months. When DS2 was born he spent three weeks in NICU at a hospital 100 miles away. DH and I were both away for a week and DH was back and forwards for the second and third week. I spent a few days at home with DS1 too.

DS1 had just turned three and we had never been away from him for more than a night before. He was looked after by his grandparents who kept him in a routine with preschool etc and we explained that his brother was poorly but would be home soon. DS1 came up a few times to visit DS2, he wasn't bothered by the incubators / ventilator as he didn't know any different.

In the last week, he keeps bringing up that Mummy and Daddy were away at the hospital and he missed us. At bedtime just now he didn't want to go to sleep in case we were gone when he woke up. It seems to be hitting him now, four months later.

I've explained that his brother is better now and that we missed him a lot too, and that we love it now we can all be together as a family. DS2 is likely to need further surgery within the next year so we will be away again for at least a few days, so I can't even say "don't worry it's all better now". DS2 has a relatively rare health condition that we haven't gone in to, but will have lots of hospital and doctors appts in the future.

How would you handle this? We are planning to take him out for the day on his own next week, which he is looking forward to.

Has anyone been in this situation?

So difficult op :(
When my dd was 3 I had ds who was in and out of hospital about 5 times within the first 8 months- before that I’d never left dd’s Side she also didn’t say anything straight away but mentions it from time to time. I’m just as reassuring as I can be ‘mummy needed to be with ds to make sure he was being looked after at hospital and I knew you would have lots of fun with grandparents’ kind of thing. Make time for one on one things when you can too. Don’t beat yourself up op.

@ManyFloralBlouses

That must have been really tough, your response to your DD is what we have been trying to say with DS.

I do think we could have handled it better initially. DS2's condition is almost impossible to detect antenatally so it was a big shock and he was critically ill for the first week. It was down to my parents to do most of the explaining to DS1.