Dear All,
I have had a lot of support from this site in the past, I'm always grateful for that.
Mother-in-Law, nearly 94, no serious chronic illnesses, managing generally on her own but with my Husband staying with her every day at lunchtime for 2 hours but more and more often he is needed 2 or 3 times a day and sometimes he stays overnight. Her place is within walking distance, the personal alarm does its job.
She is recovering from a chest infection that made her really frail. She had a fall and yesterday she told OH that she needed somebody to stay with her for the night permanently
Tough stuff. Her behaviour towards me is hurtful. On the other hand, I can see that OH is close to burnout. For now, I decided to stay with her 1 night a week. But to spend each night and effectively mornings apart does not seem to be good either for our marriage or for our children. Big change and I'm scared of it.
I try to negotiate:
1) one night a week we need to be together
2) the "night shift" starts at 9pm, not at 8pm so we could do proper bedtime routine with kids. But at 8pm MIL would expect to have her sandwiches for dinner. I said to OH: can you leave sandwiches covered on a plate after lunch so she could have them later? Can you buy her a thermal cup so she could have her tea warm by the evening? But even such small things are very difficult to negotiate with MIL.
She's got her strong opinions and my OH struggles to set out his boundaries. I'm struggling because I can see I need to be "the bad one" here to fight for some normality for our closest family.
We are also thinking about employing one of our friends to stay with her one night but the budget is tight.
I have had a lot of support from this site in the past, I'm always grateful for that.
Mother-in-Law, nearly 94, no serious chronic illnesses, managing generally on her own but with my Husband staying with her every day at lunchtime for 2 hours but more and more often he is needed 2 or 3 times a day and sometimes he stays overnight. Her place is within walking distance, the personal alarm does its job.
She is recovering from a chest infection that made her really frail. She had a fall and yesterday she told OH that she needed somebody to stay with her for the night permanently

I try to negotiate:
1) one night a week we need to be together
2) the "night shift" starts at 9pm, not at 8pm so we could do proper bedtime routine with kids. But at 8pm MIL would expect to have her sandwiches for dinner. I said to OH: can you leave sandwiches covered on a plate after lunch so she could have them later? Can you buy her a thermal cup so she could have her tea warm by the evening? But even such small things are very difficult to negotiate with MIL.

We are also thinking about employing one of our friends to stay with her one night but the budget is tight.