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?

It’s also the case that your particular bit of whataboutery is not relevant here. Not least because the only person at risk of being in an ICU was the OP not the SD.

But still, magicking up childcare is not as simple as you seem to think it might be.

The level of ignorance on mumsnet is getting worse. Are people really so unaware of the seriousness of type 1 diabetes, crohns disease and norovirus? In spite of google being easily available? Then there are all the people who seem not to be able to read. Or can't be bothered to read.
I think the 12 year old's mother could have done a lot to calm and reassure the child but chose to wind her up and make things worse because her own plans had to be cancelled.

More than one thing can be true at a time.

Yes, the OP has serious health considers, and no one wants to pass on Noro. The OP and her DH were in a difficult situation.

It is also possible to be sensitive and empathetic to the emotions of a 12 year old. And yes, her Mum wasn’t helpful and was probably winding her up, but that isn’t the 12 year olds fault either.

Tbh, I think many mothers would be quite pleased to get to spend their child’s birthday with the child - even at the last minute. I certainly would have viewed it positively and framed it as such for my child.

Good point. And without the spread of norovirus

I think you just need a bit of balance. Yes it's great she gets 1:1 time and many do suffer from none. However she also needs to feel like part of the family. And your DH needs to feel like he can have all his children around him at the same time, not just one batch or the other.

As a side issue, I suggest you also start building some relationships for your little ones. Somewhere they can go when you're ill / late back from work etc. Do they go to childcare? Sometimes nursery staff will babysit. It's a risky strategy to have no one but yourself & DH who can look after them.

Ignorant answer. Trust me, if your teenage child has been in a car accident and is having life saving surgery or is in ICU with perhaps hours to live, neither parent worth their skin will be at at home on the end of the phone pandering to their 'new family'.

Well then it stands to reason that he wouldn't want to be out pandering to his "old family" when he has other family members in a precarious medical situation.

You have a fair point here, but it applies to the actual situation OP is in, too. Whichever (equally important) member of his family is in medical jeopardy needs to be the priority at that time.

mummyh2016 · Yesterday 12:40

Have any of you posters had norovirus

I was wondering that myself. Some of these replies are utterly batshit it's a nasty bug that one, you can't just power though. Her mother is also weird for saying it should have just gone ahead. I wouldn't let my kids or myself anywhere near anyone living in a house with noro in it. It's idiotic.

Some people man.

Honestly I sometimes think I live in a parallel universe to everyone else

1. I see nothing wrong with the ops dh planning an one on one activity as part of his time with his dd. He gets one on one time with his other children all week long and at 12 it's lovely that she has some alone time with her dad to tell him her news etc. I'm assuming that the alone time is only for a hour or two of an entire weekend where she is with her siblings.

2 the people who are saying the op should have sucked up the illness and minded a baby and a toddler clearly have never had norovirus where you can have projective diarrhoea for hours at a time and yes the op could have technically minded her baby while pooing and puking on herself if absolutely unavoidable ie work event etc but a 12 year old activity which can be rescheduled even if it's very disappointing doesn't bit qualify as absolutely essential in my eyes. 3 she's 13 and full of the drama as they are at that age , of course she is disappointed but in live shit happens and pandering to her tantrums won't help her in the long term.

1. I see nothing wrong with the ops dh planning a one on one activity as part of his time with his dd. He gets one on one time with his other children all week long and at 12 it's lovely that she has some alone time with her dad to tell him her news etc. I'm assuming that the alone time is only for a hour or two of an entire weekend where she is with her siblings.

Not a single person has said she shouldn’t have some alone time with her Dad.

Your assumption about the hour or two of the weekend absolutely isn’t what the Op has said. She said His contact is mostly 1-1 as it’s his time to see his dd on the weekends they are usually out most of the time and A lot of the weekends they go away as well , dsd has always had that 1-1 time

Them spending no time as a family unit including the DSD is what people are questioning, especially as it was one of the reasons they couldn’t/wouldn’t even consider the OPs DH taking the younger children to spend the day with their sibling rather than cancelling (had that been an option)

It’s also probably not the case that the younger children get 1:1 time with dad during the week. Certainly, I bet they never get special 1:1 weekends away with daddy.

Too often the fathers who operate in this way are busy working and doing everything else so that they can pretend their nonresident children are the only thing that exists in the world on contact weekends.

Because the whole family is operating to try to ‘protect’ and ‘compensate’ DSD for the demise of her parents’ relationship and her father’s subsequent choices. The younger children are positioned as a misfortune that DSD shouldn’t be subjected to.

They’re small now, but it’s one dysfunctional dynamic for those children to grow up with.

Very good post, sadly

I agree with this. But also, even if the dad IS maximising his time with his younger kids during the week, it's not a foregone conclusion that he's doing this on a 1-1 basis - there are two of them.

The focus on 1-1 time specifically has never been a thing in any family I have encountered with multiple siblings - it's primarily all just family time - let alone all the time you spend with them being structured that way.

Trying hard to imagine a world in which my soon to be 12 year old DSD kicked off like this.
Can't.
She'd be disappointed about her birthday plans, of course, but she genuinely would be mostly worried about all of us. And she'd also know it would be made up to her at the next opportunity.
What world do some of you people live in?
Last year we had to cancel a Christmas day out, booked and paid for, because DSD herself caught the dreaded noro. Do you think my kids and I were on the sidelines booing and hissing about our day being ruined?
Absolute joke.

Oh, and the year before DH cancelled contact because our 2 year old DS had landed in intensive care. I was sick myself so DH had to stay with him.
DH "prioritised his new family" and do you know what DSD did? Spent her pocket money on toys for DS and got her mum to take her up to the hospital to visit.
She didn't tantrum about it being unfair to her.
Oh the horror! 😱😱😱

This behaviour really isn't inevitable and doesn't have to be pandered to, either IMO.

@Sicknessbug I hope you are feeling better.