AIBU to be LIVID at my DSS mother

[Gooodmorningusa]

A long post. im livid and upset and I can’t sleep. I think I know how this is going to go but oh my god I need to vent.

my DSS mum, I feel is taking the absolute piss and I think she’s an audacious cow.

the back story is, we have DSS (8) EOW, I have been in his life since he was 2.5 and me and DH share a 2 year old boy. I work in a school office so I am fortunate enough to have most of the school holidays off (literally 12 weeks out of the 13!) so in the school holidays I step up and have DSS extra. So on the weekend he comes EOW, he comes on Friday morning, and we keep him till Tuesday evening and he goes home before bed time. I have always done this since he started in reception class and I do this for two reasons, so he has more time with us and also to help out his mum who is single and has to cut her hours during the school hols. In term time it returns to the normal EOW.

last week my 2yo DS was poorly with chicken pox and it floored him, early hours of Saturday morning he had a fever, had a funny turn, his eyes rolled into the back of his head and we couldn’t bring him round. It was horrible and he was rushed in an ambulance with me and DH stayed at home till MIL arrived to sit in the house with DSS as he was sleeping upstairs. DH came to hospital soon as he could. I was hysterical and have never seen my son so poorly and it frightened me, i thought he was gone when his eyes rolled into the back of his head. Anyways he was kept in hospital till Sunday night, we got home at 8pm. DH stayed with us most of the time while we waited for tests and DSS stayed with MIL (his grandma) then went back to his mums on Sunday evening. Just to add his cousins were there at grandmas too so not like he was the only child there.

anyways DH ex has booted off basically. Ringing up calling DH a selfish dad for staying at hospital all weekend and shipping DSS off to grandmas 🤯 so anyways DSS has come back this weekend as he was upset his missed his weekend last week. So I get a text earlier today off his mother ‘it makes sense for you to keep him till Tuesday as you needed to give it a miss this week’ ….. 😵‍💫so I reply saying no actually that wasnt the agreement, i have plans including an appointment of my own, wedding dress shopping with my SIL on Monday and I am going into work on Tuesday to do my admin. My mum will be looking after DS for these.
she then proceeds to call me selfish and tells me how I’m ‘palming my own son off’ and that ‘she knows I secretly hate her DS’ plus loads of other shit which I don’t think I deserve. In her opinion I should be making up for
the time I missed earlier this week. I reminded her my DS was very poorly and I also reminded her DH was in work on those two days so it’s always me who facilitates the extra contact.
my DH is fuming and has confronted her and she has repeated the same shit to him.
shes basically annoyed that she had To cancel her plans / work on Monday and Tuesday. But my DS was poorly and I didn’t sleep a wink all weekend with checking on him and being on a hospital ward. I admit that on Monday and Tuesday this week I didn’t think about DSS at all, I was shattered and I just let me DS sleep in my arms all day.

Would I be wrong if I told her to suck my big toe from now on?

You literally said ‘OP has not said anything about that’ (re it being possible to have DSS midweek). I think my shouty caps were justified although can see you may disagree.

This.
Don't waste energy being livid. She's not your problem OP. Block her and tell DH he's got to deal with her from now on.
No more special favours. You don't owe her anything after this shitty little display.

How is he a lousy father exactly ? His ex wanted EOW. And she’s still being paid CMS on the days her son is looked after by OP - these aren’t his contact days. So effectively she’s being paid twice. If OP is unavailable there’s no reason why ex shouldn’t have her son. And given the circumstances and how flexible OP has been up to this point, her behaviour is appalling.

And your points are irrelevant to me. But you do you!

Is this a joke?

I think the OP said that she covered it with the agreement of both parents to save them both money due to holiday childcare

there should be a better more official holiday set up though as actually it is just 4 days a month he covers as opposed to 16 the mum does

In fact the op and her dh have had the child for an extra weekend to compensate, she’s just not agreeing to extra weekdays

Your mindset is all wrong.

Yes it's not the OP's responsibility but the ex isn't relying on her for childcare. The DH is.

The child has two parents. Both have equal responsibility when it comes to caring for the child. EOW means he's not pulling his weight. Its not right that one parent gets to shirk all their responsibilities and burden the remaining parent who then has to step up.

Its misogyny for childcare/parenting to default to a woman or women in this case.

He needs to step up and parent his child 50/50 which is the norm these days. It's what court would expect. The ex is not his nanny.

We need to stop making excuses for shitty fathers and the OP needs to open her eyes and see who is the real problem here.

In this situation you were not wrong and she is unreasonable. EOW is pathetic though and I couldn’t be with a man who didn’t parent his own child 50:50. If you split you’ll be doing 12 days in 14 solo too. Maybe she’s angry because she feels it’s inherently an unfair division of workload. I’m a SM - 50:50 shared care - and always try to see a stepparents POV but I feel sorry for his Mum here.

@Willyoujustbequiet the mother had picked that arrangement! Lots of mothers don’t want 50/50 or anything like! You can’t have it both ways!

Who is she to agree or disagree. She is not the child's parent, Attitudes are all wrong here.

Doesn’t make it okay though? Is this man so passive that he didn’t fight for what he wanted.

very unattractive- hate weak men

There'll be a point some time in the future when the op will need her dhs help. Maybe she'll be poorly, maybe she'll have two kids and a similar situation to now.

And her 'd'h will swan off to work like he's always done.

Only then will the penny drop.

I hope when it does, the op will finally realise why the ex gets frustrated.

Sorry you've had the usual "evil stepmother" comments.

YANBU.

Even if DSS was your bio-child, you'd have had to send him to grandparents whilst your youngest was unwell.

You don't have to have contact with his mum and your DH doesn't have to be abused by her. You can block all contact with her and your DH can set boundaries and refuse to talk to her if she's being like this.

Did she really? Or did she feel she was left with little choice as is often the case. I can't see from the posts.

Regardless circumstances change. If its not working for the mum now and clearly it isn't if she's having to take time off work to cover for the dad then the arrangements need to be reassessed. If she's finding it difficult doing virtually all the parenting then the dad needs to start pulling his weight and do an equal share.

@Bellyblueboy how do you know he didn’t fight it? Not everyone has thousands to pay court fees and even if you do the court do not always grant things fairly. I don’t know about these days but last time went through this sort of thing, mothers were still greatly favoured.

This

Why did he have to go to work? He had his son to look after. These were his scheduled days but instead of taking off work, he made his ex take off work? Why? Seriously? Why did neither of you realise that it was his responsibility to call out of work?

Why are you only having the boy for a few extra days during the holidays as well? You say his ex has to cut her hours over school holidays. Why? Your husband clearly isn’t. Why not? He should be taking his son for half the holidays; he should be using annual leave or unpaid parental leave to cover half the time so his ex isn’t making all the sacrifices.

I’m very sorry your son was ill. I’ve been there. That dash to the hospital when you really believe you’re going to lose them… I’ve been there. I know how you felt. You probably aren’t even over it yet and you need to look after yourself. I needed some counselling after our close call, because I couldn’t shake it. If this affects you, please reach out for help. You went through something horrible. No one is going to judge you for how you felt during that time, or how your husband felt. You did the right thing get grandma to step it, you did not “palm him off.” The problem is then afterwards, your husband went to work when he was actually meant to be responsible for his son. So his ex had to take days off work. It’s inexcusable. It cannot happen again and really; he needs to take more time off during the holidays so it isn’t all left to his ex. I actually think you’ve both been really quite selfish and her response is so extreme because she has snapped. She has had enough of your husband shirking his responsibilities, she has had enough of her career being put in jeopardy while his swans off to work and leaves it to her to sort.

I know you’re angry at the things she has said but reframe it. Put yourself in her shoes. She has just snapped; her inappropriate comments do not negate the truth. Your husband isn’t doing his share and she is suffering because of that.

I think sending your DSS to his grandparents is fine - this is probably what you'd do had the older child been yours and your husbands?

However, every other weekend the majority of the time is absolutely shit and I suspect some of the upset and stress on her part is not just this situation alone.

So you think he is paying extra CM every week during the school holidays to cover his half of childcare fees so both he and the mother can work? Because from the OP it sounds like his solution instead is to have his wife take his child an extra 2 days every second week - she couldn't on this occasion so he should have cared for his child instead of going to work and landing the problem in the lap of his ex

I was responding to you saying that the mother had chosen this arrangement, pointing out that the only thing the OP had said about the mother’s choices were relating to the weekends.

Maybe you should read your own words before you post?

You're not addressing the posts about your DH being the problem

Why didn't he have time off to have his son on the days you couldn't?

He's leaving all to the women...

You can self represent for nothing. It's very easily done.

There is a presumption in the Children Act for contact with both parents. So unless there are specific circumstances such as a history of abuse etc.. if a parent asks for 50/50 it will be granted.

Lots of posters on here are clearly projecting their frustrations from their own downbeat exes and putting the boot into the OP.
Horrible.
It seems the original arrangement here is that the OP's DH has his ds EOW, which is a fairly standard arrangement. Under that arrangement, it usually falls to the ex-wife to cover the rest of the time (regardless of whether posters on here like it). The OP has (kindly) volunteered to ease that burden for the ex and look after her dss (as a favour). Had she not volunteered that extra, it doesn't mean the DH would take it on instead, it would revert to the mother.
This last weekend there was an unavoidable and distressing event that got in the way and the ex-wife was unforgivably rude and spiteful to the OP about it - someone who was doing her a favour.
Well, actions have consequences and I hope the ex-wife is about to find that out.

well I didn’t find that in practice to be true. We went for 50/50 and we were granted 60/40.