Cancelling birthday weekend due to illness - there wasn’t any alternative??!!

[Sicknessbug]

Dsd birthday weekend was last weekend , lots of things planned / booked.
At about 4am on the Saturday morning I woke up really really ill (?noro) so we had to cancel everything as dh needed to look after our 2 dc. I have other conditions which complicate things. On the Saturday afternoon dc1 also became unwell.

We have rescheduled everything we could for next weekend (EOW contact) but dsd now doesn’t want to come and says I ruined her whole birthday and she refuses to come here . Dh explained to her that illness is unavoidable and she needs to accept that sometimes plans have to change. Dsd mum is also furious as she thinks it should have all gone ahead and it’s causing so many issues - dsd is 12 so old enough to understand?

You ALL - including you - need to start viewing your DSD as one of 3 children. She has younger siblings. Yes baby siblings cry and toddlers are demanding (especially if there may be SN). But that’s life.

But on this occasion it would have at least given her the option.

Tbh this keeping it as your DH having two very separate families is part of the problem. Some 1-1 time is an absolute must, but some time with her siblings should be part of it too.

If there was at least an element of her spending time with her siblings this would have been a non-issue - "Sicknessbug is unwell so we need to do X or Y as we'll have siblings. We'll do Z the next weekend" would have been much less impactful if she at least spent some time with them.

And even if she had said "no I don't want to do that" she'd have at least been given the choice and shown that her Dad did want to spend the time with her, rather than just "your siblings that you don't spend any time with need me so you are being ditched" - which is how a dramatic teen will likely be viewing it.

I really thought that it was better for her to have that time with dh ‘protected’ as he sees our dc every day and they needed uninterrupted time for the majority of her contact ? I really thought that was the best way

DSD and her father might prefer to pretend that he doesn’t have young children every other weekend. But everyone involved has to live with things as they are rather than how they’d like them to be.

It’s also dreadful for the younger children to grow up knowing that their dad basically abandons them half the weekends and everyone thinks their sister shouldn’t have to spend time with them.

This whole dynamic is dysfunctional.

How does she ever build a relationship with her siblings?

And how does she ever see herself as an everyday part of her father's life if she's never included in it?

No. This is the result of that.

Your DSD is one of three children in her father’s household. Contact is to spend time with her family, including her younger siblings.

A bit of 1:1 time is fine but the default is that this is her family.

You realise that for some people being ill isn’t something you can just push through right??

I think cancelling all contact was unfair on her. Yes things may have needed to be change a bit to accommodate things but to not see her at all took it too far.

If the OP had been a single parent she would have had no choice.

Norovirus can make diabetes much harder to control and there is a risk of falling into a coma in extreme circumstances. So I don’t think OP should have been alone, and certainly not in sole charge of 2 children including a baby and a demanding toddler. And that’s without the added complications of crohns which may have meant that a bathroom is needed, not a sofa and sick bowl.

The problem seems to be that no one involved in this situation seems to see the DH looking after all his children as an option. 🤯

I think this is our mistake then ? We have approached it as that it’s dsd time to see dh and that’s the priority so maybe we need to have a think about going forward and how we do things

I think you should have let it all go ahead as planned. Most parents have had to look after children while ill - it's unpleasant, but you do the bare minimum and get through it.

In hindsight and with the comments here I can see that now and we will be having a discussion about going forwards as I think we maybe have done it wrong (with the best intentions)

So here is your answer.

HER plans were cancelled so she was pissed off with that.

Was it your DH who to,d his dd about cancelling the party? Did he explain to her what was going on, incl how poorly you were?
Id wonder what the mum has told her dd tbh. Because going on from some answers on this thread, it’s likely that she had a right go telling the dd that you should simply have pushed through like any other mother. 😢

But then when does she see, play, spend time with her siblings. They will be siblings long after you and their dad are gone. Your DH has three kids not one kid with x and 2 with y…. He has 3kids full stop.

My DH has 3 kids , 2 to the ex and 1 with me. Blended families are tough (understatement) but the relationship between my DD and her brothers is easily the best part of step parenting … and there has been times I’ve been unwell and my DH had to have all his kids and it’s not a drama cos they know each other even with big age gaps

She'll get over it, a good life lesson to learn that life doesn't always go as planned. I hope you're feeling better, I'm in bed with noro, coming out both ends in the night 🙈 and certainly wouldn't want to be looking after young children today. I don't think you've damaged her life going forward x

Yes. I think you need to reset the default and orient everyone’s expectations so that contact is about DSD spending time as part of her paternal family.

I bet the biggest barrier here will be your DH.

You probably need to find a solution as well for when you are ill and need help. Do you have no family around at all? What if DH wasn’t around?

Only you know what you were able to cope with at the time, OP. It's not the same choice I would have made, but everyone gets sick and sometimes plans have to change at the last minute.

I'd consider talking with your DH about whether there could be a different way to approach this next time - like offering her the option of coming and having a more quiet weekend this time and postponing the birthday activities until you're all better, or whether you could cope with the two youngest for a couple of hours while your DH has dinner or seems a movie or whatever with his daughter, or whether she just puts up with her other siblings. There are lots of alternatives that others have suggested that I wouldn't necessarily dismiss out of hand.

I would also reconsider your expectations of a 12 year old. In the scheme of things, that's still quite young and of course she will have been disappointed and upset and angry to have her birthday ruined. Yes, she is old enough to understand that shit happens, but knowing something and your feelings about it aren't always the same. I think you're expecting her to behave like an adult and she simply isn't one yet.

The fact you have Crohns and T1 D changes everything. You can’t just “get on with it” and your DH could hardly have taken the child with Noro out. Actually I do think this is one of those situations where an older child can be expected to understand somewhat. Disappointing yes and you can sympathize with her being gutted but neither of you should be prostrating yourselves about this.

It's not your fault you were ill. A bit of compassion wouldn't go a miss. All you can do is apologise and explain you were very ill. The daughter will have to get over it. That's life sometimes!

Might sound harsh to some but it's important she learns that sometimes things get cancelled for reasons beyond your control. It's OK to be disappointed but not OK to be completely devoid of basic human empathy. Keep it light, explain you were ill and you can reschedule. Remind her of when she was last ill and isn't it rubbish to feel poorly?

I agree that the dynamic is odd though. It OK to have 1 to 1 time sometimes but she is also part of the family of you and her siblings

@BrimfulOfMash yes I have been that child. And yes it did sting that I very rarely got to see him at the time but my mum didn’t go off on one even though she must have been raging, she helped me deal with it, not make it worse.

As the resident parent, you can with help your child deal with the disappointment or you can show your anger towards the nr parent and make it so much worse for the child

Have any of you posters had norovirus? I had it a couple of weeks ago, sorry for being graphic but it was coming out both ends and I was stuck in the bathroom for hours. There is no way I could've looked after my children (well my eldest (6) I could've got away with but not my toddler). Telling the OP she should've just got on with it and looked after the children is unrealistic depending on what their ages are.
It's a shit situation and a 12 year old isn't going to understand. There's no right answer here.
Can I just say - if the child wasn't a step child and the poster wrote on AIBU saying that her husband took their eldest out for the day leaving her home alone with the two youngest when she had norovirus there would be bloody uproar and calls for her to LTB. Step parents are never treated reasonably on here - it's shit.

2 things going on here. First it's unacceptable to cancel birthday plans. You were not actually at deaths door and it's silly saying you were. There's lots of us here looked after sick kids whilst being sick ourselves so you can't play that card. Whilst I am sympathetic about both diabetes and crones it sounds like an excuse to say you can't be expected to care for children sick. I think you'd have made a different decision for your own DC. Really harsh of your dh to unilaterally cancel everything like that. He's sent a loud and clear message about his priorities and has damage to undo.

Secondly it's not on that your dsd is siloed off from the rest of the family. All sounds very dysfunctional. That's something that needs to change.