Am I a terrible bitch to DH? Quite long and self involved!

[Marzipanface]

Background is I have spent the last five days staying at DBs flat other side of country with my two children. DH stayed at home to do work although three of those days were weekend and annual leave for his birthday.

Baby ds fell ill whilst i was there. Hospital visit but turned out to just be virus. I ended up extending my stay as could not face five hour train journey with constantly crying 10 month old baby. I had v little sleep whilst I was there. Ds was coughing and screaming all night, everynight. I come home on day 5 as ds has improved. On the train my DD starts vomiting just into the journey :( then she faints. She has blood sugar problems so this has happened before. It was very stressful to say the
least, but I managed to stay calm and deal with her throwing up and collapsing, and with a toddling cranky 10 month old stuck between carriages as we had no seats for the first two hours.

I texted DH who offered to collect us. Sweet but impractical. I asked him if he could please please meet me off train on platform as had a wobbly 4yr old in pushchair, a free range baby, backpack and two other bags. He didn't, choosing instead to amble down platform whilst I got a stranger to help. I snapped at him. 'Thanks for helping me off the train'. His face fell and I basically got passive agressive distant treatment for a while as is the usual form, however, I did apologise later on and organised presents (actually his birthday that day) and a takeaway and put kids to bed, cleared up the vomit laden bags and buggy. Not quite in that order! He remained frosty with me for some time despite all of this.

I slept with both kids in our bed as Dd was up in night retching etc and I was worried about her blood sugar. Baby was also up four times in night. I breastfeed btw. Dh had a nights sleep downstairs on sofa. So night six of hardly any sleep for me... my ds seems to have taken a turn for the worse. Coughing and crying, my Dd now has diarrhoea. DH asks what is wrong with baby and I was pretty sarcastic. 'He has a virus, I had to take him to hospital remember?' DH gets stroppy. 'Do you realise how horrid and snappy you've been since you got back?' and then he starts up the sulky treatment again.

I can't deal with it. I am SHATTERED. I have two sick children, I also have a cold. I cannot deal with DH disappearing in a sulk because I was sarcasti to him. Surely a grown man can see I am at the end of my tether and need support?

So i lost my temper big time. I roared at him, shouted, cried. Called him a child. My poor girl was scared and frightened. I stomped out of the house to go to the post office and cooled down a bit. When I got back I have been told that I 'devalue and discredit' my DHs arguments, that it is unreasonable for me to shout him down and call him names. He shouldnt
have to put up with me being stroppy and grumpy... and he has nothing to apologise for. He actually rarely apologises for anything.

second round right now - I told him out of earshot of children that I currently hate him and want to get out of the house away from him. I've never spoken to him like that before.

Things have quietened down now.

Am I a horrible horrible person? I feel wretched.

You know I think actually that what you really need is a good rest - sleep deprivation is not a form of torture for nothing. The world looks a terrible place when you are exhausted, please don't think that what you're feeling is abnormal in anyway. I appreciate that will young and ill children rest isn't going to come easy, but a couple of good nights sleep really will help you see things in a different light.

Marzipanface you need to sleep. You have no ability to think rationally due to sleep deprivation and stress. Sleep will fix this. Stop thinking about it and snooze. I wish we had sleep visitors instead of health visitors. Say have a 6 night/day allowance you can call in any time in first 2 years.

You are human not superhuman. Sure, its not good to lose it but it's so understandable and understanding should be provided.

For what it's worth my husband would have got worse.

You probably do need to get better at limiting the load you take on but that can wait....sleep!!

If my husband treated me the way you treated him he'd have got a lot worse than your husband have you. You need to explain what you need. Both me and my husband have best intentions and want the best for each other but often misread or don't understand how best to achieve that. In the a sense of mundreading skills, kindness and communication are the key. If anyone shouted at me they'd get far more than passive aggressive.

If anyone shouted at me they'd get far more than passive aggressive.

Apart from threats or violence, I don't think there is much that's worse than the PA emotional crap the OP's DH uses to control her.

My DSis had a non-sleeping DC and years of serious sleep deprivation made her incredibly short-tempered, to the point where we (as in the extended family) became almost scared to speak to her at times, even to offer help (which was often angrily rejected as she felt I think that accepting it would mean we thought she couldn't cope or something). However, it wasn't 'her', so to speak, and now her DC are older she's pretty much back to her normal self. Get some sleep and hopefully in a few years time you and DH will be able to look back on this time with a wry shrug.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the father of your DC to be able to work out what's helpful to do without being given detailed instructions.

Your little girl is four and after ten months of you bf DC2 your DH surely knows the drill by now. Granted OP turned down the offer of fetching them because it was impractical but thereafter he couldn't have been less involved if he'd met OP at the station for the first time on a blind date.

I hope you can apologise for shouting but birthday or not it was a gruelling day and you needed some help.

Maybe you can agree a truce. Acknowledge each other's input and recognise that in the heat of the moment under pressure you snapped.

Sometimes as a parent worn out with sick infants during a particularly stressful week it's a bit galling when your OH can't take the initiative without minute instructions.