Hi all. I really could do with some advice. Our daughter and her husband asked us to look after their two-and-a-half year old son and one-and-a-half year old daughter for five nights while they attended a weekend house party with their army friends. Our granddaughter was vomiting the morning they left, and I expressed some concerns about whether they should leave her if she wasn’t well. I was outvoted however-by both my daughter and her husband AND my husband. Two days into their trip my husband fell ill with a stomach bug. I took the little ones out for the day and he spent the day in bed. The next day our grandson also caught the bug-he vomited eleven times during the night between about nine p.m. and six. I spent the entire night changing sheets and comforting him as he cried for his mummy. The following day I fell ill as well and have now been confined to bed, vomiting and doubled up with stomach cramps for the past 48 hours. My husband is feeling slightly better today, but it’s been brutal. I messaged my daughter and her husband after their son had spent the night puking and asked them to come back early as he was so poorly and we weren’t coping at all, but once again I was outvoted-my husband told them not to cut short their trip, even though neither of us was fit to take proper care of a couple of toddlers, and they said they didn’t think it was worth coming up a day early as it would be bed-time by the time they got here. I pointed out that it would save us an extra day of struggling, but I was ignored. Our grandson got himself up this morning while we both lay ill in bed and tried to make his own bottle up, bless him. We didn’t even know he was awake! The kitchen was a quagmire of milk by the time he’d finished.
Our daughter and her husband are due back to collect the kids this evening. They’ll be staying the night before returning home (they live four hours’ drive away). I don’t want to see them-I’m staggered that they would be so selfish as to leave us all in this mess. I know that speaking out risks adding fuel to the situation and potentially causing a rift between us, and there’s a good chance that I’ll be held responsible for that rift by not going along with their choice-especially as my husband has been so non-confrontational with them.
Advice, please?
How much do you spend on yourself?