Lost my family

[Lilsquish]

Not really sure why im writing this. Just feeling so down right now.
A brief overview...

Im married with a young baby. Last year my sister had her baby son (7 weeks old) removed by ss due to him having broken ribs. Sister and her husband took him to hospital as he was constantly unsettled and crying. The broken ribs were discovered via xray and it transpired that it had occurred on two seperate occasions.

Police and ss got involved. Both sis and bil deny doing it or knowing how it happened. Police couldnt find enough evidence to charge anyone so it was left in the hands of ss.

Since the injuries were discovered my nephew has been living with my parents and my sis and bil get supervised access.
6 months after this all kicked off i gave birth to my daughter. Initially my OH and I were trying to be supportive to sis and parents and the whole topic of how this happened was a massive elephant in the room.
But this just couldnt go on.

Due to various reasons my OH and i believe it was my bil (my parents also suspect this). As such OH and i decided that we didnt want him around our baby. My OH then however decided that my sis knows her OH harmed their son and is just covering for him as she doesnt want a failed marriage (i should add at this point that absolutely no one in my family/friends know about this - it has been kept secret to protect my sis and the lies etc that have been told is unreal)

So now my problem. Since iv told my parents and sis that she is not allowed to see my daughter, they have cut me out their life.

Im completely heartbroken and feek so helpless and lost.

My OH hates my sister and now barely tolerates my parents and my sister and parents hate my OH. My choice was between having a relationshiop with my OH or with my family. Iv obv chosen my OH but i feel so alone and sad about it at the same time.

Theres so much more to this but id literally be typing all day.

Guess im just looking for a hand hold......

I've just read the whole thread and really feel for you op.

As an outsider though I hope you don't mind me saying you seem to be allowing yourself to become obsessed and dragged down into their case.

This comment you made upthread jumped out at me "Unfortunately im struggling with just cutting them out. I know i have to, but my god its so painful." You haven't cut them out though, they have decided to cut you out.

Your parents are delusional and are playing a dangerous game with their gd's welfare.
It is not their place at all to protect these two adults, their only role should be ensuring the safety of their gs.

I think deep down they probably know they are in the wrong and that either their golden child was responsible or her knight in shining armour (who sounds completely narcissistic by the way) and by you challenging their innocence it's made them more defensive of them.

Please pass on the info about the dog and unsupervised contact to SS, you have nothing to lose now. Never protect abusers. If you feel something isn't right with the guy your probably correct.

Please focus on your own wee family, you have a little girl of your own and a husband who sounds completely grounded and trustworthy.
Don't let the situation steal any more happiness from yourself. They care not one bit about how this has affected you.

Your parents are not the perfect people you thought they were sadly.

Yeah i agree i am prob too invested in it all.

I do think taking a step back is a good idea and prob best until after the panelz decision. Just scared that this will be years.

My parents have already missed over half my daughters life. But then that was their decision and I cant change it.

Had a pretty crap afternoon today. Went to the local shops and for lunch with my wee girl.

Kept seeing grannies with their grandchildren and it made me so sad. My daughter is 13 months and my mum has babysat her once, for 3 hours.

This just shouldnt be the case.

I know loads of other people have problems and family issues but it just looked like everyone today were out with their families having a nice time. I spent the majority of it fighting the tears

You will notice lots of Granny's and Granddaughters, because that is what you are thinking about. But lots of children grow up quite happily with few grandparents and limited contact.
Mine had one Grandad and one step-Grandma, and they lived a long way away and had health issues so had relatively limited interaction with them. It's sad but quite normal.

It's your Mum's loss OP.
Keep strong.
You are standing up for your dn.

We have no grannies and granddads through bereavement and other factors. My kids don’t miss what they never had. Also your mother in law is involved so she has somebody.

I do know this.

I also didnt have a particularly close relationship with my grandparents.

Ironically before all this happened we (as in my parents/sister and I) had regularly discussed how we didnt want history to repeat itself.

Thanks again for all the replies.

Im finding it helpful to use this thread to put my thoughts down.

I dont like to keep bombarding my OH with it, this has already near destroyed him and he's so angry and bitter about it all.

He also doesnt understand why, after how we've all been treated, i even want them in my life.

Just read this thread and want to say how much I admire you and your DH. It is not easy being a truth teller, especially at the cost of losing family members. I'm struck by how strongly your family is driven by keeping up appearances. They are engaging in a charade to make sure the neighbours don't find out, at the cost of hiding the truth. Your daughter will grow up without secrets and lies around her. That is a great gift you are giving her.
This must be such a hard time of year. I understand how sad you feel, but you are doing the right thing.

Hi Lil DH and I have had something similar happen and we are 16 months on from you. We are NC with his sister and his two DC. They dumped us over something tiny but that blown up massively by them. They have told anyone that will listen that we dumped them. There are myriad other lies too to support their view.
At the beginning we fought to be hard and asking for explanations but pretty quickly we realised everything we did was weaponised and turned on us. How you are describing your feelings echoes exactly how we felt. They are DH kids from his first marriage but I was heart broken. I can't tell you what it did to him! It pushed me to the edge of a nervous breakdown. We stopped getting in touch and blocked all lines of communication. We are experiencing the odd flying monkey but we are gradually feelig better because we have done the right thing for us. Gradually other members of the family are getting in touch and we are telling them what happened. From the behaviour of the three that went NC with us, these family members can see that we are not the liars.

What I am saying is wait it out. Go quiet. These things have a habit of settling down and people realising in the cold light of day what the truth is. While you are still raging it keeps the matter hot. The matter needs to be let go cold before anything can be done IMHO.
We had a Happy Christmas text from his DD this year but we are ignoring it. We are happy without them now. It has got to a point where we realise that if they can lie the way they did, we don't want them in our lives anyway. I assume the text was sarcastic. DH not sure but either way. We ignored it. If they suddenly had a lightbulb moment now, we would assume it's because they realise that we are the only family they can hope to inherit from maybe. We have been through the full process that you are at the start of. I'm not saying cut them out like we have but it has to be let lie for a while is what I'm saying.

Heard not hard - typing in the dark

Thank you Saffron.

I do believe ur right and that we are doing the right thing, but my god its so hard.

It consumes my every thought and spoils any nice experiences i have as in the back of my mind im thinking of how id like to be sharing these things with my parents/sis.

Sorry to read that you have experienced similar Butt.

Its just horrible. And i feel like its completly robbed me of what should have been the happiest time of my life.

Some counselling with the right counsellor might help you express your feelings. It would also be good for your DH to gain some emotional literacy.
Yes they've behaved badly.
But they are your family, so of course none of it is simple. Maybe if he learnt a bit about the conflicted feelings children who are adopted or fostered can feel for their birth families, it would help. Feelings are not coldly logical.

You sound like you were extremely close to your family....this is all such a terrible situation.

The way your DH had zero empathy that you miss them would concern me personally... it's like he wants them gone and you yo never look back.

I'll say this ... as your family are out of your life ... try and get other support systems in place for yourself... because even though your marriage is fine now ...that may not always be the case ... your husband has his family...you'll be on your own and more likely to take any kind of nonsense from him as a result.

Don't make your husband your everything in life... that could come back to bite you.

I do understand your point sandy.

He does have sympathy and has absolutely never wanted them out my/our lives. but as i said, he is beyond angry at them for how we have been treated and doesnt understand how im not.

I thankfully do have close friends to fall back on tho, so dont feel i would be entirely on my own should OH and I not be able to pull through this.

Sometimes things work out on their own. It’s better to have space nowX it’s means you are not arguing and things aren’t being said that could cause further issues. I think it’s a case of wait and see. Just see it as a pause for now. Take care. X

I really hope ur right Tom.

At the moment it certainly looks very bleak

I am not surprised your DH is angry and distressed.

One of them broke the ribs of a 7 week old baby twice. The other one covered it up. BIL severely injured a dog. Your parents are colluding in covering it up.

Your DH sees all this utter awfulness.

His wife is bemoaning how terrible it is to not be on contact with these awful people. She's hoping it is them pulling up in the car outside. If they turned up tomorrow and mouthed platitudes she would welcome them back.

You've only told one person. You are already covering up. No wonder there is a strain on your marriage.

Poor bloke must be terrified that you are teetering on the edge of putting your own child in harms way or of being an abuse enabler. Can you imagine the stress of that?

You are lucky he hasn't left already. Maybe he is scared that if he did leave then he would also have to go to court to ensure you only got supervised access of your own child because you would find a way to convince yourself that your child can be around such people.

You really do need serious help to get your thinking straight and for your DH to see that your thinking is straight.

I think your Dsis has also posted a thread about this.

Perhaps your right to a certain degree Rabbit. But thankfully my OH knows me well enough to know that is not the case.

Brizzel - can you point me in the direction of this thread? Id be surprised if she had, i dont think forums are her sort of thing but then i dont know

Yes, there was another thread about a baby with fractures, although there was an older child too and the ages are different, I think. Odd coincidence, though.

I don’t really understand how they would have your nephew for two days a week; they are either a danger or they are not, surely.

Though I have not read the previous couple of pages yet. I feel very sorry for you to be stuck in this situation, but I also urge you not to let it spoil days out with your DD.

Thank you iced. Id be interested to read this thread if someone could point me in the right direction.

They have DN twice overnight at their own house supervised by my parents. I think the idea behind it was so my sis wasnt living 100% at my parents and also so DN was spending some time in his own house.

It is very much expected that this is a temporary situation until the panel decide that he can go back to sis n bil full time/unsupervised

@Lilsquish the thread I think op are referring to was in 'Parenting' titled Interview under caution. The thread was deleted by MNHQ as it contained quite a lot of detail and some posters felt it was too raw for MN.

If I remember rightly it was a mother posting that her 7 week old baby was found to have 2 sets of rib fractures, one was old.

She claimed she was doped up on drugs at nights leaving her husband to do the night feeds. I don't know if this fits with your story or not but sad that child abuse is still so prevalent.

I hope things are a bit better for you.