Bit of background for those who haven’t read any of my previous rantings about my mother.
When I was pg with DS my mum seemed to think that she would be looking after him a lot. Not sure where this idea came from, but generally it didn’t happen that way. I loved being a new mum and I didn’t feel the need to palm my DS off on to her. Anyway, I used to see my mum on a Thursday afternoon as she used to have a half day on a Thursday and would generally come round to see me with my sister’s DS who is 8 months younger than my own DS and whom she looks after quite a lot. She would come to see my DS, she made it quite obvious, as she would never come round during DS’ nap time, she wouldn’t even turn up during nap time and stay till he woke up, he had to be awake, if she came before his nap she would be letting herself out of the door as I was carrying him up the stairs for his nap. Generally she didn’t take him out on her own as she always had my sister’s DS with her and tbh I wasn’t confident about her taking two babies out on her own, she did take them out when they got a bit older though. On weekends she often rang to ask if I needed a break from DS, tbh I didn’t, as weekends are generally DH’s time with DS because he works in London so sees little of DS during the week so likes to make the most of his time with DS during the weekend. Then about a year ago I started DS at nursery, I did it for his social benefit and he did two sessions a week, one of which was a Thursday. She still came round in the afternoon, but DS wasn’t so keen to go out with her any more because he would be tired from having been at nursery. My mum accused me of having taken her time with her grandson away from her by putting him into nursery. She told me that spending time with her was more important than spending time with other kids his own age. Anyway, she changed her job and no longer had Thursday afternoons off. Since then we’ve seen very little of her. She’s had DS on a few occasions, if we’ve been out or when we’ve been away overnight, but generally they don’t come round at weekends, sometimes they pop round but only stay for about 10 mins or so, and we never get invited round there any more. Sometimes she rings to speak to DS and promises him that she’ll come round “tomorrow after work”, dS looks forward to it and then she’s late or busy or something and doesn’t come and then DS gets upset because he’s been expecting nanny to come and she hasn’t, so I’ve told her to stop making promises that she can’t or doesn’t intend to keep.
Then today she rang me, not even sure why, just for a chat I think. We were talking about my sister who is due to give birth at the end of May,, my mum has holiday booked to spend time with her and the new baby because her DH who has just joined the police is only entitled to two days paternity leave so my sister will be on her own otherwise. So I said to her, “so then you’ll have 3 grandchildren”, she thought about this for a bit and then said “well yeh, but I never get to see one of them, but he’s still there I suppose”.
So is a grandchild only a grandchild if you get to spend every waking minute with them?