Would you be annoyed

[tellyou]

DSC arrived today, I was in the bedroom with my 2 month old baby and DH told me that DSC had been exposed to chicken pox by their 4yo nephew who developed spots when they were visiting yesterday.
The DSC told my DH in the car on the way to ours, so exw never told DH but he phoned her to confirm it was true
DSC has never had CP so I've had to decamp to my sisters house with my baby for three nights to protect my baby, would you be annoyed?

Their father gets to make his decisions too, and to make them in relation to his own life. Whether his ex agrees with that or not.

That’s where we simply disagree.

I don’t believe the father does get to make decisions that mean he isn’t taking responsibility for his children when he’s supposed to. He doesn’t get to decide that he won’t be having his children on his allocated time when that means that his ex has to do his share of parenting for him. He doesn’t get to decide that the ex has to cancel any child free plans she might have on her weekend off.

All he gets to decide in this situation is how he manages to take care of his older children at the same time as taking care of his baby.

He doesn’t get to absolve himself of responsibility for his older children just because their cousin got some spots and he decided to have another baby.

The two are not related. Or comparable.

He chose to have another child. That’s not a trivial or frivolous thing. It’s a child who matters as much to him as your child does. But one with only one home , which can affect whose needs might have to take precedence where there’s a clash (often in your child’s favour, I might add!). He has responsibility to all his children, you can’t simply dismiss the baby as less important because your kids came first.

The nephew has chickenpox. Trivialising it doesn’t help at all.

Ah. Of course.

The problem is that the ex isn’t going to get her time off. That’s all that matters.

Luckily my ex and I don’t think like that. He’s kept DS on ‘my time’ due to covid more than once. Because he is able to recognise that exposing a baby to it entirely unnecessarily is no good for anyone.

If roles were reversed and he had a baby, there’s no way I’d just send DS round with infectious diseases because I deserve my time off and it’s simply his responsibility to look after DS.

It’s often the case that many posts on MN that are dressed up as all about the kids turn out to be about protecting the ex’s child free time.

But what you are essentially arguing is that even if they are infected it's fine for her to deliberately withhold this information because she considers her kids need to see their dad at that exact time to be more important than the baby's need to not be infected with something that could seriously harm them. The older kids needs in this scenario absolutely pale in comparison and it's incredibly dangerous and selfish for any parent to try and claim they don't.

I didn’t say it was fine, I said it was understandable if the alternative was her having to deal with upset children feeling like they’d been rejected for the sake of their baby sibling.

I take the point that telling the children could be done in a way that is sensitive to the children's feelings, but there’s only so much that you can dress it up.

Your child will have maternal antibodies from your previous infection/ vaccine
the incubation is about 2 weeks and they wouldn’t be infectious until the end of that
many children have multiple exposures and don’t get the disease.
its not possible to cancel seeing his own children every time they are exposed to a normal childhood illness, it happens very frequently. Unfortunately this is just what happens to children with older siblings
You’re being unreasonable

It’s not dressing anything up though. It’s being honest that sometimes we do things to protect more vulnerable people.

It’s actually a good thing for children to learn. We don’t visit grandma in the nursing home when we aren’t well because all the people there need to be protected from germs. We’ll reschedule things so that you go to dad’s for a different week because we don’t want to risk the baby getting chickenpox.

It doesn’t have to be framed as in any way a rejection of the children.

If I had two children and was lucky enough to have two houses that me and DP and the kids moved freely between, you can bet that I would absolutely decamp with the potentially infected child to the other house rather than infect the baby. This is the logical thing to do. Because the children have two houses it is entirely possible to do that. If the mum decides she's not a magnanimous enough person to help out with that and delay contact that's her prerogative, but what is absolutely NOT her prerogative is just hiding the information so the dad can't even decide to do so (either by him calling in favours to have contact elsewhere or OP going elsewhere with the baby) because she considers the risk that their dad might try and mess around with contact more important than the risk of just sending them around and exposing the baby. It isn't.

It’s often the case that many posts on MN that are dressed up as all about the kids turn out to be about protecting the ex’s child free time.

Thats such a feeble accusation to thrown out against ex’s for no reason. It’s pathetic.

Why shouldn’t a father be expected to live up to the responsibility he has?

Kids come home from school being exposed to chicken pox all the time. Parents can’t just refuse to collect their children from school if they have a baby at home and have heard that a child in the class got sent home that day because they developed spots. It’s exactly the same thing. The fact that the older children have two homes is irrelevant. This is just normal parenting of more than one child.

The fact that the older children have two homes is irrelevant.

No, it isn't.

To get chicken pox the children would have to actually catch it and be in the infectious period, they will not be in the infectious period in the next 3 days so all a bit of an over reaction

Best that they see dad now with no risk. If one gets CP and then the other afterwards they could go without seeing him for 6 weeks…

It’s not dressing anything up though. It’s being honest that sometimes we do things to protect more vulnerable people.

Absolutely, and that’s easy when it comes to missing out on a party or a play date or something, but I don’t think it translates as easily when it comes to something as fundamental as a child seeing their parents.

I agree

It doesn’t have to be framed as in any way a rejection of the children.

I agree with this and maybe it's my asd here but why would you frame it as a rejection as it's not ?

Because it’s not hard to see that a child who is in perfect health being told that they are a risk to their baby sibling and that they aren’t allowed to see their own Daddy might easily feel some degree of rejection.

Exactly why they need to be taught that avoiding people purely when you are a risk to them is NOT a rejection. If they can learn this in the care home analogy, why can't they here?

not read the full thread so apologise if anything has been repeated by others.

If it’s at all reassuring my youngest got chicken pox from his brother when he was 9 weeks old. I was too told cos I was breastfeeding and cos of his age he wouldn’t get it, but low and behold he definitely did. He was by far the mildest out of my 3 kids, had maybe 20 spots and was fine in himself just napped a bit more.

I understand why you’re upset because you’re obviously protective over your new baby. But I wouldn’t of thought your SC if they have caught following exposure it would be contagious yet - if they were only exposed the day before to CP, if they were infected the incubation period is 1-3 weeks, so they will come out in spots within the next 3 weeks. But you’re not contagious until 1-2 days before spots coming out. Given the time frame, I’d wager that the likelihood of him passing on CP is pretty low. SC may also not catch it, CP was going round my sons class for about 4 months so had lots of exposure and it took him 4 months before he finally got it. He was one of the last few to catch it. So whilst he’s been exposed it’s not a given he’s got it and the chances of being able to pass it on in this early stage is low.

Because the person they’d be prevented from seeing is their own father!

Surely you can see the difference when it comes to a child’s own parent?

Either way, the main point is that the dad in this situation doesn’t have the right to ignore his responsibility to his older children and their mother. It was up to him and the OP to find a way of protecting the baby at the same time as him having his children and that’s what they did.

It was up to him and the OP to find a way of protecting the baby at the same time as him having his children and that’s what they did.

Which he could have done more effetctively if the ex had been courteous enough to tell him. She didn't.

We get it. You think the ex can and should do whatever she wants and the dad should suck it all up. Alternatively, they could communicate like adults.

The SC are not the only children here. And not the only ones with needs. 100% SC are not the only priority here

*Because the person they’d be prevented from seeing is their own father!

Surely you can see the difference when it comes to a child’s own parent?

Either way, the main point is that the dad in this situation doesn’t have the right to ignore his responsibility to his older children and their mother. It was up to him and the OP to find a way of protecting the baby at the same time as him having his children and that’s what they did.*

No, I don't see a difference because it's his father. The principle is exactly that same. It's a basic lesson in thinking of others that all children benefit from learning. It's not a rejection to have to consider not infecting others, regardless of who those people are.

And I disagree that the MAIN point is that the dad cannot delay seeing his children. People do swap around contact for various reasons, it's not nearly as much of a problem as risking infecting a baby. The MAIN point is that it is disgusting behaviour to withhold that information just to avoid the off chance that he might ask to switch around his contact. That is CLEARY the more significant problem here.

If it was up to him and OP to find a solution, it was repugnant of her to try and deny them that opportunity to protect her own, less significant interests.

We get it. You think the ex can and should do whatever she wants and the dad should suck it all up. Alternatively, they could communicate like adults.

Pathetic. Theres no need to project opinions onto me that don’t exist, and that is clearly not what I’ve said.

Expecting a father to live up to his agreed responsibility is not expecting him to suck up whatever the ex wants.

I said I understand why the ex might have felt like she couldn’t tell her children's father without there being a negative consequence for her children and tried to explain a different perspective. That’s all.

Yes, yes he can. It is more than possible to get CP more than once!

Expecting a father to live up to his agreed responsibility is not expecting him to suck up whatever the ex wants.

But it's fine for you to project this onto the Dad? That the ex expected him to cancel if he knew? The OP said nothing about him cancelling or wanting to cancel (or anything remotely close to your comments about the baby being 'a new priority'). Quite the opposite.

As a step parent have you never swapped or moved contact times for each other?