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?

This thread could mark the beginning of a new approach and a lovely blended family.

At 12, she is old enough to hear that you do thought you were doing the right thing but that family time is going to a big part of her time with her dad from now on.

She'll probably find her siblings less irritating if she gets chance to bond with them too.

While you may "like to think that" I suspect reality may be different.

This

Absolutely this

DH has some work to do to show Dsd she is still a priority

I think they all need to do some work to manage expectations about what ‘being a priority’ in a family with 3 children actually is.

Treating her as an exception and the priority during contact time has created a situation where her younger siblings being involved in her birthday is unthinkable.

For anyone that doesn’t realise that norovirus can be very dangerous for diabetics
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/norovirus-and-diabetes.html

It is much more important that OP looks after herself rather than trying to also manage children that are too young for sandwiches and TV.

It’s one thing to cancel the specific birthday activities (and I understand why you did that) but I think it’s unfair to cancel her weekend visit completely. She should at least have been given the option of coming anyway, seeing her Dad, opening her presents with him, even if the planned activities had to be delayed.

OP you keep saying it’s the first time you’ve cancelled in 8 years, but you shouldn’t have cancelled at all. If you had a 12 year old child yourself, how would you “cancel” them if you were unwell? Simply eliminating a child from the house shouldn’t be an option.

Also, did your husband’s ex have plans? She might have had lots of things that she’d been looking forward to, paid money for, and I’m not surprised she was pissed off when your DH basically said that 2 kids was enough and he couldn’t be bothered with a third one.

This is one of those annoying things about part time parents - they see parenting as a choice, they can do it if they want, but if it doesn’t suit them then can opt out. It’s a bloody cheek!

You’re not the problem here, but your husband is! He definitely could have done something with all of his children to celebrate his eldest child’s birthday. And it would have also given you some space for a few hours while you’re feeling ill.

Is he one of these dads who needs someone to hold his hand?

@Blueroses99 i had a sickness bug last week and was sick every 30 mins with diarrhoea and was very dehydrated. I couldn’t have cared for young dc. So I really sympathise. I do think the dad could have made some effort though. It’s really hard for the every other weekend child not to feel secondary to the new family so you do have to work a bit harder in those circumstances and I personally feel they could have found a balance but going forward I think they need to show empathy to the 12 year old rather than thinking she’s old enough to understand.

i spent my 40th birthday in bed with covid and I was gutted so I can imagine how disappointed a 12 year old would feel.

It would have been less unfair than cancelling everything. She could at least have been given a choice.

At 12 she would understand the situation if it was another family. But this is personal to her and her emotions from what has gone on with her parents splitting up and her father having more children elsewhere who he lives with.

That awful for her and her father should have taken her out even if it was just for a few hours. Cancelling the whole weekend was wrong.

Why do you keep saying that this is the first time you’ve cancelled in 8 years? It’s completely irrelevant. You don’t get to cancel being a parent.

Whatever the reasons are for your DH cancelling his child on her birthday, she is going to be very very hurt over it and she deserves to be made a priority now.

Crazy how ignorant people are about the risks of norovirus with type 1 diabetes and chrones. Op was at serious risk of life threatening complications. Sudden hypos , dka , dehydration etc etc. With norovirus your blood sugars can drop like a stone with very little warning , being that low is akin to being extremely drunk , your brain cannot function with such low sugars. How could anyone take care of a toddler and a baby in that state. It would have been negligent of her dh to leave her alone in that situation. Dsd birthday celebrations have been rescheduled and I'm sure she will learn to deal with the disappointment.

I have had norovirus. I also had a bad case of covid with vomiting and dizziness that was so bad that I could not stand up. Still had to parent though, as do many people with partners working away, or single parents etc. I would tell most people they just have to get on with it, because as shit as it is, you do need to if you have children and noone to help and it is manageable. Not op though actually, due to the complications, which make it dangerous.

Trouble is, because she doesn’t live with you she couldn’t see for herself how ill you were and so the cancellation feels out of the blue and possibly unwarranted (from her perspective). 12 year olds often aren’t great at empathy anyway but particularly if they haven’t seen you run to the bathroom etc.

I think you (or rather DH) have to explain that you were literally glued to the bathroom and so the cancellation was trying to ensure she got a really good birthday outing rather than a) risking catching noro herself b) risking dh being called back home as you / the step dc are too ill to cope.

Those saying you should have coped are being unreasonable IMO. Looking after a baby and toddler with noro and complicating health conditions - sure, if there was literally no alternative you’d have to get through it but here there is an alternative so why should you have to cope with that. Yes birthdays are important but not so important that OP should have to go through hell on a stick rather than delay plans. And it’s also ignoring the strong chance that DSD would catch it too if staying in house of sick people.

@Snugglemonkey we'll have to agree to disagree - I couldn't have managed it - I couldn't even lift my 1 year old out of his cot - every time I stood up for more than 10 seconds or so I was going dizzy. If I'd had no option other than to look after them both he would've been stuck in his cot for hours. It would've meant no nappy changes. 6 year old could've got him water and food so he wouldn't have starved but he would've been neglected no doubt about it. I cannot believe that people are suggesting the OP and her DH should have neglected her two younger children in order to accommodate an older child's birthday that could be rearranged - this isn't even taking account the OPs other health issues. It would have been dangerous for them to have done this!

We also didn’t want to expose dsd to it so that was another consideration

You always get the martyrs in to say single parents would cope looking after the kids whilst vomiting everywhere but you are not a single parent and I would 100% have done what you did whether it was my SD or my own daughter.

I'm not sure if I've missed how it was explained to her but I do think that your DH should have rung her to explain in person, and possibly ask whether she'd prefer to wait until next weekend to do the original plan or go out with him and the siblings that day (though in my head it would be a foregone conclusion that with something so contagious it was only a matter of time before one of the other kids started throwing up, which turned out to be correct). But it might have softened the blow to have discussed it directly rather than hearing it through her mum.

But ultimately, I think you're right. It's fine for her to be disappointed, but these things DO happen, nobody has done it on purpose, and she needs to learn to be more accepting of that.

When it was my stepsons birthday, we had norovirus and had to cancel all his birthday plans as well as him coming here as we could barely look after ourselves and thought it a bad idea to pass it on to the other household who has a 2 week old newborn, SS mum still complained as it meant she had to do stuff with him. Life happens unfortunately, she’s 12, she’s allowed to be upset, I’m sure she will get over it eventually.

You’ll find she understands better once you and her half siblings are more part of her life.

Atm she’s just seeing that her birthday has been cancelled because of some people who weren’t even part of it anyway.

One of mine was meant to be going out with their uncle today. She cancelled because hes ill. they’re disappointed but because they know him do well (BIL used to live with us) their instant reaction was “oh he must be really not well”

Yabvu and selfish, posting on here for validation isn’t going to change that.

Oh dear this hasn’t been handled well.
There wasn’t any malice in it, just lack of thought. You expected her to say ‘Yeah sure that’s fine’ when in her eyes it’s not fine. Your DH ought to know that as her father as he should know what she is like.
What’s done is done but use it as a learning opportunity. Get some back up childcare in place. You will have these conditions for life - what happens if DSD is taken very ill and both DH and her mum need to be with her in hospital (ok extreme case but it happens). And you have some making up to do.

Get some back up childcare in place.

Oh FGS. How many people have back up childcare who they can call on at short notice at a weekend for a baby and toddler, especially when they may be harbouring D&V?

I would have thought the learning opportunity is for DSD to work on her empathy - as PP have said that will be helped by her getting to know OP and her half sibs better.

They can’t possibly both need to be at the hospital. The parents could take it in turns and make decisions via the marvel of modern telecommunications. So that bit of whataboutery isn’t even realistic.

The DH has 3 children. He needs to accept that he isn’t a father of two one weekend and a father of one on the next.

Magicking up childcare when you have no family nearby is not easy. Nor does it actually address the real problem which is that the DH treats his eldest child as an exception who must be individually prioritised rather than a member of his household/family.

Nah, I hope op is taking heart that actually she is not a monster. It's far more selfish to expect someone to cope in these circumstances rather than postpone something that can be postponed. Understandable from the DSD, she's 12, but you and other posters like you are not.