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?

Probably my wording! Absolutely agree with your point though, often they promise all sorts and then turn out to be useless.

"How do you propose that women know a man will turn out to be a lazy father before they marry them and have kids?"

Well for starters I wouldn't form a relationship with a man who only see's his own child 4 times a month that's a pretty telling sign that he's a lazy father in alot of cases.

EXACTLY. Its the same with domestic abuse. They arent going to start being controlling or hitting you on the first date or even in the first few months And they arent going to show they are lazy till later down the line either

I didnt mention the NRP I was talking about the stepmother (OP) Of course the NRP should have sorted it. As his ex well knows and yet she had a go at the OP And the ex fucking KNOWS she is in the wrong because despite using a photo from Facebook she didnt use fb to send the message did she. She sent it by private text. Because she knew damn well how it would look making those comments about a sick child.

And what if (God forbid) the child suddenly took a turn for the very worse after that text was sent,

That's absolutely out of order of her to treat you and your child that way OP. There's no excuse, it's vile.

Block her, all contact regarding your SS goes through your DH. Either get rid of mutual friends or limit them to what they can see on your social media.

DH should ensure he is home for when he has SS over, he can take either his paid holiday days or he can take unpaid parental leave (You’re entitled to 18 weeks leave for each child and adopted child until they are 18. You can take up to 4 weeks a year. They must be taken in week blocks, unless one of the children have a disability).

There are a few different issues here.

Yes, DSS mother has been a total cow to you considering how ill your son was and to look at that weekend as DSS being farmed off to his gran is totally unfair and then to accuse you of palming off your child is out of order.

So last weekend when your son was in hospital, was he supposed to stay till Tuesday and went home on Sunday? And he was upset he didn’t get to do the long weekend so came back this weekend even although he usually comes EOW? Just trying to get my head round the arrangement. Does he always stay extra every weekend he comes during the holidays? Because if so, wouldn’t it be reasonable for her to expect he’d do the same this weekend regardless of what happened last? And she’s put out that you’ve actually made other plans? If that’s case I can sort of see her point. She will see that as a confirmed arrangement during holidays and as DH arranging childcare on ‘his’ time (ie you!)

Although you yourself go above and beyond to offer extra contact during the holidays to help her out, and are under no obligation to do so, an expectation has been built up and she might see it as you’ve changed the plans. EOW outwith holidays is actually not a lot of contact and I’d be querying why DH isn’t stepping up more. Is there a reason why it isn’t more often? From her point of view, even during holidays, four nights a fortnight isn’t really DH doing his share. That’s not on you though, you’ve clearly bent over backwards.

Your DH has been a bit shit at parenting, hasn’t he? I realise that the original agreement was the mum’s idea but your husband sees his child EOW and would allow his mum to have to give up work shifts, which will impact their shared DS, rather than step up and take annual leave or parental leave or do anything else that’s not just handing over cash. Would you be impressed if he took that attitude to your DS, bearing in mind one day you could also be in that situation with him?

Your DSS is not your responsibility and his parents (plural) should have sorted the childcare in the summer holidays in the first place. Her behaviour towards you was unreasonable and unacceptable. “Refusing to have him” will feel like a punishment to him, though, so this kid loses out by feeling unwanted. Different if you’d never started the arrangement but you did (kindly), and in doing so you committed to the child.

I also think you have to remember that your husband has two children. You didn’t give your DSS a second thought on the Monday and Tuesday which is fine, but your husband didn’t give his other child a thought? If one of my children took unwell, I wouldn’t have the option (or want) to just forget about them for 4 days, and no matter the worry with one child your husband remains responsible for both of his children.

This was covered upthread. The contact arrangement was at the request of the ex not DH. And it’s not every weekend during the holidays - it’s still EOW and he stays an extra couple of days on those weekends. So given that the following weekend isn’t one of the contact weekends how is it unreasonable for OP and her DH to have already made plans, given that they didn’t know DS was going to be ill and hospitalised. I think an awful lot of posters are losing sight of the fact that this child was seriously ill, and that in spite of that the ex behaved appallingly, even in the face of the goodwill OP has already shown in doing her absolute best to make DSS part of the family and included in holidays/weekends away -not to mention facilitating extra childcare for ex.

@Rosscameasdoody and it was also covered upthread that many many families have different contact arrangements in the holidays and that a 4 night a fortnight arrangement for the boy to be at his father's house had been in place for 3-4 years now, enough to be an established pattern.

There's nothing new to be said and the OP - understandably - hasn't come back for many pages, so I will hide the thread now.

It was an established pattern. So if he had come the following week to make up for the weekend he was home early, that wouldn’t have been part of the established pattern would it ? That’s the point I was making. The established pattern was blown apart by the fact that DS was seriously ill in hospital, and now that the ex wife has behaved so appallingly, the OP, who was previously amenable and flexible towards ex wifes’ childcare needs, won’t be. I agree that sending him home early wasn’t the best, but given that one child was seriously ill I would have thought the fact they weren’t really thinking straight as a result would meet with a little more understanding from another mother. If the responses here are anything to go by, evidently not.

He wasn’t sent home because the other child was unwell though. He wasn’t sent home because they were in hospital over a deathly ill child.
He was sent home because dad wanted to go to work and decided mum would have to take the days off because he doesn’t think it’s his responsibility to take any days off to cover his established days with the child. He just dumped it onto mum.

This wasn’t about sending the child back to mum because of some emergency. He just didn’t think he should take time off work to be a parent. Neither did the OP. They blew the schedule apart and forced her to take more time off work because neither of them “thought about anything other than their child.”

What would you have done if you had two children both bio kids and one went into hospital. You would need to find alternative childcare and then have both at home while one recovered.
yes you were tired but you had another child who was probably worried about his sibling too being in hospital.
DH needs to do his own childcare from now on and maybe it would be easier if both his kids lived with you. That should make the mum wind her neck in if it’s such a big drama for her

You're absolutely not in the the wrong. Step child or not, the poorly child was your priority, or course.
Let your husband deal with her. Block her number and font engage.
Also please wtf is EOW??? Why do we need so many abbreviations? 🤦🏼🤣

I hope little one is all better and crazy woman gives you a break soon 🥰

The irony of using an acronym (wtf) to complain about acronyms 😉 EOW is commonly used on here in place of every other weekend, as in access arrangements.

Sorry to say this but I think she has a point. Not to demand extra days from you, but for your DH to help more. Yes, you help with the childcare of your DSS but you're not just helping HER, you're helping your husband (his dad!) too. You've done the right thing and taken parental responsibility for one of your dependents, but while you're both tearing each other apart, DH goes blithely off to work leaving you with one of his children and his ex with the other. Why did she have to be the one to reduce her hours in the holidays? Why did she have to take both days off work in an emergency situation? He should have taken one of them and she take the other.

Also please wtf is EOW??? Why do we need so many abbreviations?

It would be 'easier' if both kids lived with you . Are you being serious?

It's clear that this child isn't a priority in his dad's life, he barely sees him! Or pays much towards his son's upkeep!
How on earth is he better off away from his Mother?

Where do you get that he doesn’t pay much to his sons’ upkeep ? £400 a month, clothes, uniform, hobbies all paid for and half of after school clubs. Plus he’s included on all family holidays and trips. And OP says the contact arrangement is what the childs’ mother wants. But he’s a deadbeat dad just because he sent him back to his mum early when there was an emergency with his half sibling. Yes, they should have thought about it a bit more, but the other child was seriously ill in hospital - not exactly conducive to clear thinking. MN is batshit.

Every other weekend. There’s a list of abbreviations on the homepage.

Ex doesn’t reduce her hours in the holidays. She works cash in hand while OP has DSS for extra days to allow her to do the extra work.

You mean ‘time off work’ from the cash in hand job she wouldn’t be able to do if OP hadn’t agreed to taking DSS for those extra days during the holidays ?

You had a shock but clearly you got over it quickly enough to want to go shopping. I don’t understand why that takes priority over looking after your children. There, I think, lies the issue, neither you nor your husband value the first child to the extent that it is important enough for either of you to change your plans. The child’s mother has to lose a day of work. I feel very sad for this child who does not seem to be loved by you.

You know there was over a week between the child being unwell and the pre-arrange wedding dress shop and going to work??

She made a commitment to her sister, her child was now well, and was going to be looked after by his grandparent.

What's the issue with all of that?

The mother wanted EOW as opposed to every weekend at dad's so that she too could have time with the child that wasn't the school run and homework etc, but do we know that she turned down dad having the child a night or 2 during the week every other week?