'AITA? Ex-wife called the cops on me after I saved our son from her mistake.' 2 POSTS
"AITA? Ex-wife called the cops on me after I saved our son from her mistake."
I am divorced and I want to make sure I am not being unreasonable against my Ex-wife, but I am feeling a pretty worried about my kid's health. We have a 5 year old type 1 diabetic who was diagnosed on his 1st birthday, so we've been at this for 4 years.
He got the Omnipod system this year and we all went through the training. (insulin pump)
I woke up on Monday morning to texts from his mom saying his blood was 425-525+ (85 is a normal) from 11pm through the night. It was currently 6am and his blood sugar was still too high., she was saying he may need to go to the hospital. She says "maybe change his pump, maybe he needs a new one" (this means change it in an hour and a half when he gets to my home).
My first thought is pump issue as well. I told her "The doctors say to take his pump off, give him insulin from the pen, then put a new pod on when he comes down". (this is mandatory basic understanding to use this system for our son).
Her reply "The doctor said to do that if the pump doesn't work. What doctor told you you that?"
I explain to her that the doctor recommended this at the last endocrinologist appointment I had with him,
Her reply "You can try what you want at your house. If he's not down by noon you'll need to take him in or I will".
I am frustrated by this response. His blood sugar has been high for 7 hours at this point. By the time she drops him off with me (at 7:30am) it will have been 8 and a half hours with blood sugar over 400.
She has clearly communicated she is at a loss and is questioning hospitalization, why would she be okay with waiting until noon? that will be 13 hours with blood sugar over 400 and serious risk/certainty of DKA (his blood turns to acid).
I reply "If you bring him to me ASAP I'll get his blood down quick. If you think he needs a new pump you should not wait on that, especially if you think he's close to hospital level. You need to provide me with all the troubleshooting steps you've already attempted".
Her reply "I don't think there is anything wrong with the pump. I don't think you realize how high his blood sugar is. This is much worse than normal. If this happens at your house a lot then there is a serious problem. Troubleshooting steps? This is our son not a robot. Try to care for him just like I have done all night. If he's not better by noon we will take him in, hospitals help not harm".
To her "I do not think there is anything wrong with the pump" I remind her of the text she sent where she says "Maybe change his pump, maybe he needs a new one".
I ignore the rest of her jabs as I am worried about my son and feel helpless to help him when I know what to do and she isn't following the training. I simply reply "Tell me what steps you've taken throughout the night, did you bolas for phantom carbs, if so to what degree? Did you test for ketones?"
She replies that she did not test for ketones and asks me to do that on my time with him, she explains that she was tricking the pod to give double doses all night, and and she tells me that she just removed the pod and immediately gave long acting insulin". (That is not the insulin he needs, he needs short acting insulin).
I ask "What time did you give long acting insulin?" (I'll need to know for putting the pod on the next day). "What was the dose of insulin from the pen you gave at that time. What was his blood sugar at that time? When did you notice he was first high (the dexcom follow app doesn't show me the exact time), what was his diet yesterday, what did he specifically eat before bed?"
She responds "Calm down. If this is too much for you I'll take the whole day off and take care of him myself if you prefer".
I reply "I am the definition of calm. You are not providing the right details".
Very long story short. She answers none of my questions, I get him and he was never given a shot from the pen. I check his blood manually, give him the correction dosage from the pen, and call the endo team and he was perfectly healthy within 2 hours.
His mom got seemingly defensive that he was healthy so quick with me and demands I take him to the hospital even though he is now healthy. His endo says not to, that he is fine and only has trace ketones so no risk of DKA but to monitor him.
His mom calls the cops on me, the cops say he is fine, she calls the fire department, they show up and say he is fine. I take him to the Emergency Room anyways at her request, he spends 3 hours just getting tests and fluids and they release him showing he was fine all along....
So, check me. I provided the exact quotes from my phone. Am I being a jerk? Does it seem like I was freaking out? I am very worried about my son for future situations with this woman who seems to exude pride and ignorance at the expense of my son.
The hospital sent us a behavior contract saying that if these outbursts continue they can dismiss my son as a patient. I just want to check myself and see if I am part of the problem, because I might need to go back to court with her and fight for medical decision making to protect my son in the future, but if I am part of the problem then I need to check my attitude first.
Here's what people had to say to OP:
NTA. Get everything in there in writing and talk to your lawyer about getting full custody of your child in the longer run.
A person over 400 should have been with urgent care or something immediately not waiting 7-13 hours+ and her general incompetence with a 5 year old scares me. This is a 5 year old and she's going to kill your child.
brycen64 OP responded:
I've spent the rest of my week getting the records from the hospital, conferring with my lawyer, and I'll have to grab the police reports.
It really sounds like she wanted him to be sick enough that she could justify having him in the hospital during your time. Which is insane. NTA, although I’m sure you already know that.
brycen64 OP responded:
Honestly, I've been in therapy for years because it's taken me a lot to unpack how much she gaslit me to think I was the villain. (She left us to be a twitch streamer).
So I really do seek outside voices to check myself from time to time because my internal measurement has been corrupted. I worry sometimes that all the voices next to me are just an echo chamber of confirmation bias so that's why I find online forums useful.
nta but I don't understand what prompted the behavior contract with the hospital. would you please explain?
brycen64 OP responded:
When she called the cops and department they reached out to the hospital. The hospital kept saying my son was fine but his mom kept pushing back with them which caused a lot of disruption.
They also kept trying to call her and she wasn't answering, once they got her on the phone she disagreed with the nursing staff and demanded to hear from his specific endocrinologist.
Do you think this could be the beginnings of munchhausen's by proxy? It's really worrying that she tried to convince you, then the cops, then the doctors at the hospital, that your son needed some kind of further medical treatment.
brycen64 OP responded:
It definitely turned into that. She showed up at the ER and began to add "details" that she omitted before (or just invented them there). She said he threw up 4-5 times and couldn't stop peeing, and that he looked lethargic.
Call your lawyer, she's incompetent. Updateme!
brycen64 OP responded to a few different questions:
When she demanded emergency room and the doctor told me not to go, I immediately called my lawyer. I was on the phone with my lawyer as she called the cops.
She hasn't been the same since her brother died. That's honestly when I feel the woman I was married to (happily) for 10 years died. Since then she's been a Trainwreck.
I tried to protect her through the divorce process (she filed not me), I always thought she'd snap out of it once she processed her greif but it's been years and she's only gotten worse.
Because I was too soft on her during the divorce she took me for everything.
I'm currently looking to see if I can request a social worker to work with both of us. I have nothing to hide and would welcome DCS (department of child safety) to check us both out. I'm honestly very worried for my children and feeling pretty helpless.
I have 3 kids with her, this is my youngest. We have a 9 and 12 year old as well.
Her fiance has 3 kids as well so there are common times when she's got 6 kids in the home. I'm trying to look into ways to get other advocates for them. Their school doesn't have a counselor there.
A lot of people are asking why I didn't jump in the car immediately and drive to get him, but I've got to say I was just so confused why she didn't just give him a shot. Every time she said no I was literally shocked.
From the time I woke up, to the time they were heading towards me was only 1 hour in my defense. But I still can't believe it. I mean she's been fairly competent for 4 years...
Ambulance would have delayed care sadly.
As lethal as the situation was, the solution was just mere feet away from him. Just stick him with his insulin pen.
What's with the hospital's behavior contract? Was there an argument or some kind of outburst at the hospital?
brycen64 OP responded:
Because the police and fire had to reach out to the staff and the mom continued to argue it got flagged as causing unnecessary problems.
I don't know much about this. Why would she need to leave you to be a twitch streamer?
brycen64 OP responded:
That's a deep rabbit hole. We were married for 10 years. We lost two kids in miscarriage. We both took those pretty hard. We had our third son, she was hit with severe postpartum anxiety, we spent a lot of time, money, and energy in therapy for her, it wasn't going well.
She just snapped. She wouldn't get out of bed, she wouldn't take care of herself. Her friend recommended twitch streaming for fun. I set it up for her and she created her own world in there where she could be anyone she wanted to be. She got a lot of attention from simps, she just ignored her reality. She left me and the kids to "find herself" while starting a relationship with one of her simps.
I got her to come back for her kids which turned out to be a big mistake on my part. We separated, she filed for divorce and struck out on her own to pursue a life of waitressing, twitch streaming, and living off as much of my money as possible (I left her 90k).
She bought an expensive apartment she couldn't afford, faced eviction multiple times, moved in with trashy boyfriends, one of which I'm pretty sure stole money out of my oldest son's wallet.
I actually really like this EMT guy, he seems nice. Definitely better than any of the last guys. She started teaching at this small private school. It seems like a bogus school but my new wife taught for 8 years so we make sure the kids are actually learning.
She's going to marry this new guy next month. I was hoping she'd finally find some stability and happiness. But I think she may be cracking under the pressure of teaching and trying to balance 6 kids (our 3, her fiance's 3).
2 months later OP made a new post: "Ex wife is alienating herself..."
I have 3 boys and we are very very very close. My ex-wife has been trying very hard to alienate me from my kids for years and it's just made my kids resent her. Here's the hard part. I want my kids to have a healed relationship with their mom, but she's not keeping her promises, she's trying to force them into activities she likes but they don't.
Years ago I tried to warn her that her attempts were backfiring but she saw them as threats not warnings.
Then I shifted to letting her know the things the kids were saying about her like "Mommy said we'd do XYZ but she hasn't done it". Or "Mommy promised but she lied". Instead of taking the info and acting on it, it turned into "we'll they say horrible things about you too!" (Which I never believed for a second).
So now I just take my kids on long walks and let them tell me what's going on in their lives. I don't push, I ask simple questions "what makes you happy, what makes you sad". Their descriptions of their mother are getting worse. They describe her as emotionally neglectful, and emotionally volatile. She's starting to express to them that she doesn't trust them.
I'm trying to help them process their emotions about their mother without speaking badly about her. I'm trying to teach them ways to cope with their living situation over there. Her new husband has 3 kids so it it's often 6 kids and I'm telling them things like "a home with 6 kids is just different and really hard for everyone to get one on one time".
But honestly, I think she's drowning and she won't get help. I think because she's drowning she's getting more selfish. I think her resentment is growing from me to the kids. And it's hard to justify her behavior to the kids without gaslighting them. I think the truth is that she's just an unhealthy person spiraling.
As much as it seems like I should just let it play out, let her ruin her relationship with her kids, I know personally how damaging it can be to have a toxic relationship with your mother and how much health comes when you fix that relationship. I don't want my kids to have 30 years of trauma, I'd rather help them process real time.
I've been trying to listen to YouTube videos from psychologists that talk about this but honestly they're few and far between. The best one I heard just said to be as healthy as I can be and share that health with my children.
Does anyone have any experience with this? Any good advice for me? Or maybe just words of encouragement...