I am going to be a rare one on here, and I think @chuckdoodle has every right to respect her husbands wishes and also to do what she can to protect. I am sure his parents love him, want the best for him, but there also seems to be a long history both of the parents ignoring him and his family, and also the parents, especially the mother, treating the son like he was an idiot and whatnot. If the mom questioned H needing surgery and was pushing some kind of alternative treatments, she could show up at the hospital and berate the son, saying “look what surgery got you”. It wasn’t like chuckdoodle cut the parents off or didn’t keep them in the loop, she did, kept them informed, and she I assume told the parents that her H didn’t want them to come while he was in immediate recuperation, yet they pushed to come. If my son’s spouse or he told me he was okay and that he prefer I came when he was in better shape, I might not be happy, but I would respect it. In a sense, the fact that the parents were insisting on coming despite the son’s wishes said a lot about their relationship, sounds more like it was about them as parents doing what they wanted rather than respecting the son’s wishes, that is breaking a boundary they should have respected.
It is touchy with me, because it is something I have faced (I was very sick around 19 years ago, ended up in the hospital with a very dangerous gram negative infection), I didn’t want my birth family coming because they weren’t exactly my favorite people and I didn’t need them telling me I must have done something wrong, my wife must have made me do something to get sick, you name it, would have made me worse…yes, this is their son, I understand that, but he also is an adult who made clear what his wishes were, and they acted like he was 4 years old and didn’t know what he was doing. If they had had a more normal relationship before, it would be a lot easier to forgive the way they are, to accept they wanted to see him, but given what the OP said, this might make it worse for the H. Most parents love their kids, but that doesn’t mean the relationship always has played out the way it should.
@ChuckleDoodle hugs to you and your H. It’s hard enough having this situation and dealing with family.
My sister had a sick H and families who were not as supportive as they could be. I understand both sides but the side that needs to have the less stress is the one in the hospital. And that’s who you need to support. No matter what.
I just wanted to say that you are in the hardest position. Trying to make everyone happy. It’s not a fun task.
If they lived nearby, did a 15-minute short “proof of mother’s here” visit, I would likely say let them visit. But your DH’s in ICU, where visits are restricted, when calm is absolutely needed, where even well-intentioned meddling isn’t welcome. Hopefully they’ll realize that their visit should be delayed until DH is out of hospital.
And nobody needs houseguests at a time like this. I agree, MIL need to see DH NOW should be tempered by DH’s desire to see her at this specific time. He doesn’t.
I think the OP has made it pretty clear the ICU was just for the first couple of nights, and the patient has been in a regular room since. When the patient first spoke to his parents on the phone, he was already in a regular room.
@jym626 I hate to say it but that hypothetical would be a reality and something my MIL would say. MIL is not a bad person, just very opinionated… update on H, all tubes have been removed and he can now hobble to the bathroom with help.
S was able to get H’s phone to work with Skype since H’s laptop couldn’t find the hospital wifi. H Skype with parents and talked his mom back from the ledge.
Now we just have to find out why H still sounds like Mickey mouse when he speaks…the doc sent him for a chest ray, so hopefully they can figure this out.
She would visit her son, a diabetic cancer patient, and say “look what surgery got you”? That reminds me of some litigation an attorney friend told me about years ago. It was years ago, so I hope I am remembering this wrong, but IIRC the litigation involved a chiropractor (apologies, sort of, to any reading here who think this was appropriate treatment) treated a cancer patient by suspending the patient in some equipment in the doorway. If the in-laws are militant believers in unorthodox and unproven “therapies” and would openly voice their disagreement with the treatment the patient chose, then agreed, they should stay far away from the patient. OR they can visit by being on the other side of a glass window.
Years ago I was the inpatient and I was asking my mother to not visit. I had all I could cope with dealing with my kids and my appointments and the diagnosis of stage II breast cancer while I felt fine.
My mother has ever since insisted that she should have showed up at my house because it was so stressful for her to know that I was ok. Yeah, ok.
Remember that poster with cancer, Sunrise East, I believe, she did not want to tell her Mother that she had serious cancer because her mother would require her (the daughter with cancer)'s support. Some parents are that way.
I’m with the OP in doing whatever she needs to do to support her husband’s wishes and his needs as he heals from major surgery.
As a mom and wife, I think that our primary relationships with our children change as they grow up and especially after they have been married, and even more especiall after they have happily married for a number of years. I do not believe it is in any way productive as a parent who has any respect for boundaries and for the (now) primary relationship of a happy child and his spouse to ever give the impression that I’d be showing up at the hospital come hell or high water if my son didn’t want it.
I have held that line with my own MIL. It is sometimes our duty as a spouse to be the bad guy when our spouse has stated his wishes, is unable to enforce them himself, but his mom simply wants what she wants.
In my own case, nobody was hospitalized, but my husband was heading home from a nearly year long deployment in Afghanistan. We had been married for 30 years at that point. What he wanted was to see me, his three kids and their significant others, eat some good food, drink some good wine, have private time with me, and sleep for about a week. and THEN he would be happy for his mom to visit. He did not eant to deal with her at the airport or staying with us in our house.
She was upset. It has been three years, and she is still ticked off with me about it, but my loyalties are with my husband and supporting his his wishes.
I’m also with chuckdoodle on this, given that the husband doesn’t want the parents to visit at this time. It is the husband’s decision.
OTOH, I have a friend whose DH was dying and would not allow his mother to visit him. The DH and mom had a rough, up and down relationship, but IMO, it was a bit cruel to keep her away in his last days. The friend and her family felt like they were honoring the DH’s wishes, but she was still his mom (and they lived in the same town).
@jym626:
There are relatives like that, believe me, and I have seen plenty of mom’s and mother in law’s from hell (as well as fathers from hell), to tell you that given the OP’s description, the mother very well could do that kind of thing, parent’s who constantly criticize children, parents without boundaries ,don’t change their stripes and can make it miserable for their kids.
@eastcoascrazy :
You hit the nail on the head, that while of course we remain our children’s parents, there fundamental relationship changes when the kids have their own families,that family has to come first, and having been the victim of a birth family that didn’t understand that I can tell you it causes major strains. As a parent, of course I’ll always be my son’s father and will always be there for him, but he also is his own person with his own life, he will (hopefully) have his own family someday, and at that point I will have to stand down in terms of his focus and respect his boundaries, even if I don’t necessarily like them. It took me several years in therapy to realize that, that the dynamic I grew up with was skewed, that once my son has his own family they have the right to set their own boundaries and wishes and my job has to be to respect it, even if I don’t like it. I have heard far too many people say “but look at everything a parent does for a child”, to justify things like the MIL here, but that is BS, you do things for your children because that is the right thing to do, not to gain power over them or control them, it as a parent is supposed to be done without strings…but far too many parents see that as “you owe me” or “I own you” (then, of course, there is guilt, like the “I was in labor with you for 3 days, you couldn’t call me?” kind of thing lol).
@Consolation, my husband and I both love his mother dearly. She was visiting, staying at our house, both times he deployed at the time he left. I personally would have preferred not to have to entertain her, and drive her, and comfort her at those times. But it was fine that she was there. She has stayed with us, sometimes for a month at a time, when we have lived in beautiful places. And we have always welcomed her with open arms, with an open ended invitation to stay. She has been a delight over the years.
But the rejoining and reconnecting of a family after a year long deployment is different.
My inlaws live half a continent away from us. We see them once or twice a year, Sometimes more, but sometimes less. It wasn’t as though she lived down the street, or even in the same state as us, and just wanted to drive to the airport to give him a hug when he arrived. Of course that would have been fine.
She lived halfway across the country. She has never rented a car, driven herself anywhere when she visits us even with one of our own cars, or stayed anywhere except with us, in our home, when she visits. Her expectation would be that she would fly here, I would pick her up, she would stay in a bedroom right down the hall from us, and she would fully participate in our every family activity while she was here.
Seriously, you can’t imagine that a husband and wife might want to be alone together, with their own children, for a week or two after spending most of a year apart?
(When he returned from an Iraq deployment a few years before the Afghanistan deployment it took him several days before he would even drive. Returning to east coast traffic was a bigger adjustment than any of us would have guessed. There is so much more to “coming home” than most people understand.)
I was stunned at how many thought that the OP was wrong to keep the MIL from visiting. I thought she explained the situation well and it seemed to me that many offered opinions without reading carefully the entire story.
We moms need to respect the wishes of our adult children and their spouses. Several on this thread seemed to feel that as a parent you always should have access to your child. Would you like it if your parents treated you that way? Likely not. The OP made it clear that this mother had a history of not respecting her son’s wishes.
I also have a MIL who would show up at the hosp telling her son what he should have done (rather then be supportive of the medical choice he did make). Maybe many of you have nicer MILs. But this is my reality and so we have also had to put up boundaries to keep her opinions at bay. A person who is recovering from surgery definitely does not need this kind of headache - even for a short visit.