Manipulation

Mother in law is ill at the moment and she has had to come to stay. She has some problem where she cannot walk and she cannot keep food down. I don’t know what it’s called, hypochondria or something.

So anyway, she came to stay on Tuesday, and every day I have woken her up in the morning, bathed her and changed her clothes, fed her breakfast, made her comfortable, fed her lunch, changed her clothes again (unfortunately she is pissing herself all the time at the moment), and the day sort of follows that pattern until night time finally arrives.

The days are not a problem, it’s the nights. I cannot cope without my sleep and the woman is awake every hour. I can hear her sobbing now.

On the first night when she cried I went to her, changed her soaking clothes, gave her a snack, gave her a cuddle – I mean the poor woman must be scared and lonely. I assumed she was sad because it was her first night with us so she was out of her comfort zone.

On the second night she continued the hourly waking, I could hear her sobbing but I left her for a while before I went to her, I thought she might snap out of it eventually.

On the third day when my husband got home from work he said that he was worried about her crying at night. Perhaps she needed something, and she couldn’t do it on her own. The problem is, he gets up to go to work so he wasn’t going to see to her. And I wasn’t either, she was trying to manipulate me. If I keep going to her, she would keep crying and she would never learn. I decided she needed to be sleep trained.

So, on the third night, I made sure she was full, changed her clothes and made her comfortable. Then I put her into bed, tucked her in and turned out the light. I shut the door and went to bed myself.
About an hour later I was woken by her crying, and calling me. I left her. She must have been crying for an hour straight, so I went in to her, tucked her back in, patted her on the tummy and told her to go back to sleep. Her face was blotchy and puffy from the crying. Silly woman. I told her if she was going to continue acting like a baby I would continue to treat her like one.

I left and went back to bed. Another hour passed and her cries had turned into sobs. At last, she was giving in. Another hour later and she had given up and gone to sleep.

We did this for another 3 nights before I could eventually just put her to bed and leave her to it. I got a blissful 8 hours sleep every night until now, the silly woman doesn’t disturb me anymore.