MIL might come to visit H in hospital, what can I do?

Parent Cafe
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Don’t be sorry @eastcoascrazy. It was very interesting. These things are very hard and I think they help (at least they do me) how mothers need to think about transitioning from being a primary person to being an important but secondary part of your child’s life.

I know my parents have a problem with boundaries at times. When my bil was ill, it was very hard for my parents to think that my bil and family might not feel as comfortable with them there as the family feels just themselves. It made for some hurt feelings.

It makes me think about how to treat my S and his fiancé when the time comes and to try and put myself in their shoes.

It’s a hard place to straddle. To try to convey that you are empathetic but respectful of their feelings.

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@bookreader In the OP’s original post, she did not specify that her husband did not want his parents to visit nor did she explain the difficult history with her in laws. That color cam later in the thread. My guess is that if the thread had started with that info, many of the posts would be slanted differently as it changed the understanding of the situation.

I hope @ChuckleDoodle husband is recovering nicely, that he is pain free, and that he is getting his normal voice back instead of his Mickey Mouse voice.

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Chuckledoodle, my voice was funny for a few days after I came out of a coma. Was on a ventilator. If they had to intubate your DH, that might be part of the issue.

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@mom2and The situation with a mom not being allowed to visit her dying son sounds heartbreaking. A chaplain, social worker, hospice worker or other family member might have been able to intervene and help the family work through that if the dying person was at all receptive. Was the mother forbidden to attend any memorial as well?

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I haven’t read the 6 pages of replies on this thread. Just read the first post and my advice would be to discuss this with your husband and ask him who he is OK with visiting him and for how long. Then discuss his concerns with the nurses, attending physician, etc. at the hospital prior to your MIL & FIL showing up. Make sure that it’s put in his chart as to what the requirements are.

If you run into road blocks with this, most hospitals have something called a patient advocate program. Usually somebody on staff 24x7 on site at the hospital who you can talk to if you are not getting your care needs met in an appropriate way. This is totally something to discuss with somebody like that. I’ve done it myself and it’s very effective.

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@musicprnt - where do you come across so many mil/fils that are so dreadful?

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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?>>

That is standard advice to military families.

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@eastcoastcrazy, thanks for your longer explanation. It makes perfect sense. I’m glad that you and your H love his mother, although she is obviously not the easiest guest. I was envisioning something more along the lines of her hugging him at the airport and retiring to her own home, with perhaps some carefully timed visits. Not what you describe at all! :slight_smile: And I, for one, am grateful for your insight into a situation that few of us have experienced. No hijack at all.

@bookreader, as @doschicos explains, the OP’s original post did not include the information that would incline many of us to sympathize more strongly with her concerns.

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I think that when I read the OPs original post, I read it through my own lens of experiences. My MIL seems to be similar to hers, so it was easy for me to see her point of view immediately.

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OP here. Sorry I did not explain all the details. I realized it as soon as I started getting the push back from everyone. I was so annoyed when I first heard from H’s niece about his mother and father ‘popping in’. It’s interesting- MIL tells H’s niece she’s worried about H and his ‘breathing’. MIL tells me that she wants to surprise H, like H surprised her about a month ago (when she was not in a hospital or ill) but she doesn’t acknowledge the difference. Go figure.

H is home now. Still in a bit of pain but doctor is extremely happy about his progress. He is still talking like Mickey Mouse but his chest x-ray was clear so they think if his voice doesn’t return to normal then he will see an ENT doctor(?) so they can look at his vocal chords which were possibly bruised during the intubation. He has a followup appointment on Thursday with his surgeon and the home health care people will be stopping in this week to check on him.

Luckily, we still have the arm rest thingy that we bought for my mom. The base fits under the sofa legs and it has an oval handle that H can use to leverage himself forward from our very low sitting sofa. We also have mom’s old twin bed that raises the head and feet so H is going to sleep there tonight until he feels comfortable getting out of bed on his left side (ostomy side).

I’m cautiously optimistic that things will continue to go well for H. If things get really bad, the nearest civilian hospital is about 1.5 miles from us whereas the military hospital is 25 miles.

H will probably call is mother tomorrow. I’m hoping she decides to hold off visiting for a few weeks, but that is up to H on whether he can stand her stopping in. I’m still in the doghouse with her, but that’s her problem, not mine. She tends to hold grudges a long time.

As an example, the same niece who called me decided that she wanted to enroll in a Master’s degree Biology program in Florida near Tampa. They live in Georgia. Both niece’s mom and grandmom (my MIL) told niece- no you can’t go, we won’t let you. Niece stood her ground (she was 25 years old) and said she was going anyway. Nobody in her family would help her move, load up a rental truck or even help her with a car purchase.

I’m so proud of niece, she stood her ground and lived her life- she had a close friend sign as cosigner on a used car, got a uHaul truck and had several friends over to help load it up. H was on his way there to drive it to Florida for her when another friend offered to drive the truck. Both niece’s mom and grandmom refused to talk to niece for over a year. Grandmom held a grudge for about 2 years, then was slightly appeased when niece moved to Virginia and got married to a nice Navy man (who she met online, which was another issue). Overall MIL has the memory of an elephant and if she thinks you are in the wrong, then you have to make it up to her. I could give more stories about MIL but you get the gist. She’s a nice person until you cross her and then wham… :wink:

It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one with a crazy MIL… you can bet that if my kids ever have spouses, I know what NOT to do.

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“It’s nice to know that I’m not the only one with a crazy MIL… you can bet that if my kids ever have spouses, I know what NOT to do.”

I’m part of the club with a difficult MIL. I’ve said the above to myself many times.

Glad to hear your husband is home and improving, @ChuckleDoodle.

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Glad your H is healing nicely. Sorry you have folks who like drama and grudges, but sadly there are more of those folks than any of us would prefer. Hang in there and take lots of deep breaths. You and your H will get through this.

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Thanks… I just have to keep telling myself that I don’t need to get sucked into the drama llama lifestyle. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Your adult husband was once their child. You may not like them but they have, presumably, watched over him longer than you have. If one my adult offspring had surgery this potentially serious I would be there. And while I wouldn’t take over the waiting room…I would volunteer to get food, arrange for a housecleaning service to go to the house to help, order food. Sorry…and my son is married…I tread quietly. But I would be there…sitting quietly in the waiting room waiting for “orders”.

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I think there’s a difference between our sentiments about our relationships with our kids versus a monster-in-law who threatens to disrupt at the wrong time.

Bevhills, I’m just venting a bit, this isn’t about you. My mother would have done that, too. But just saying, for me, in a crisis, I want control (I am unfortunately very good with crises and fall apart later) and not to have to discuss what food to order, say a bunch of “Oh, how nice of you” things, hope she knows what we want or how we like things, or show appreciation for her choices. I wouldn’t want cleaning help (would have an omg moment, is there dirty laundry out? Do I need to do yet another thing?)

She did do this to me. And at the worst time.
Apparently, OP’s MIL already burned some bridges. She missed the chance to be the sort of mom welcomed into a crisis.

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@bevhills if my MIL was like you, then this wouldn’t have been an issue. But she’s not. She would grill the doctors about his treatment and second guess their and H’s decision. Plus, we were in a military hospital, anything that we possibly needed would require them to be escorted everywhere. Need toothpaste? They can’t buy it in the commissary or exchange without a military ID card. Go off base? Fine, but you need someone with a military ID card to get back on base. Plus, our house is 25 miles away, add to that No. VA traffic and you can forget it.

I’m like @LookingFoward and very good at handling crises, and while I appreciate MIL wanting to see her son, this visit would not have been about her son but about her. To top it off, I do like my MIL/FIL, just not when MIL is in Dr.mom mode.

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Thank you I had the inlays from hell. (When I got cancer my fil was thrilled. He saw it as the way for me to leave the family.) I knew that I would follow my instincts and it has served me well. I knew nothing about military hospital’s rules. I just know me: I am (quel surprise!) a control freak and I do handle emergencies well. But Mommy is a toughy…I would go to the ends of the world to help one of my kids. Almost had to…

’

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I won’t say my in-laws are as bad as yours, but my MIL expects everyone to listen and do as she says. Normally our relationship is a good one. I like talking with her, she has interesting ideas, but we are both stubborn. Which is another reason why we live 500 miles away. Small doses are wonderful.

I’m also a control freak but hope if I become a MIL, that I have learned from this and will ask what support is needed in such a situation.

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@jym626:
I experienced it in my own family, and over the years also have talked to a lot of people who like myself had worked through their issues, to know that ‘the perfect family’ often is not, some off by many miles. Some people are lucky enough to have in laws and parents who respect the fact that once a child grows up and gets married, they are no longer the primary relationship per se, but unfortunately a lot of parents think that ‘the family’ is the birth family and expect others to tow the line. Talk to any therapist, and they will tell you what happens when their clients go back home, especially around the holidays, then spend a lot of time patching them back up. Birth families can be and should be things of joy to share, but for many people the relationships are complicated and often downright nasty if you don’t ‘toe the line’.

It doesn’t help that in society and with religious belief they often make this big deal about blood is thicker than water, or that a child ‘has a sacred duty to their parents’, and a lot of parents take advantage of that to dominate their kids and their families, this tends to be common with Italian families (which my father’s family were). If people have great MIL’s and in laws and such that is a great blessing, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot who are not positive influences or where you don’t have to set rigid boundaries. I am not saying all families are bad, I have seen a lot of families I am quite jealous of, but what I am saying is that far too often pushy inlaws and ‘the family’ not only exist, but are encouraged in what they do, or rather, where the kids are encouraged to go along with out of respect for ‘family’, and that drives me nuts. In the OP’s case, if the MIL was a pushy, know it all person constantly injecting herself in others affairs, and the spouse knew her husband had a difficult time with the MIL (and/or rest of the family), she has every right to set boundaries she feels she needs to protect her family, the same way she could if she felt she needed to protect her kids. Some of the comments in this thread made it seem like a parent has the ultimate right to be in their kid’s life, but once a kid grows up that is up to them and their current family how that plays out, and parents should respect that.

The wife in this case to me acted with grace, she could have very easily put up walls, but she didn’t, she tried to shield her H from the BS while keeping the parents in the loop. It is telling that when the wife told the parents not to come when her H was recovering, they were immediately getting ready to override her wishes, it talks of assuming something they shouldn’t assume IMO, parents as much as they love their kids, as much as they want to be there for them, have to respect that their kid is not a child, but a mature man with grown kids of his own has the right to set his own boundaries along with his wife and while they may not like them, understand that is his right.

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Apologies @musicprnt, but I have trouble getting through long posts. Can you summarize?

We all have nuts in our family trees. But to have some massive # of relatives with such boorish behavior is surprising.

And when families get together for holidays and such, they tend to fall into old patterns of behaviors. That why those who want to change this dynamic are in therapy. As I tell my patients, you cant change them, but you can change your response to them.