More family problems

I'm feeling bitchy today. Usually on my walk in to work I'm smiling and happy and looking at the colour of the sky and the sun on the water and things like that. This morning, I was grumpy and thinking nasty thoughts about my fellow walkers. I didn't say any of them, but that's not really the point. The point is that I'm tired and emotionally strung out and I may just snap. Not a pleasant feeling. And I still have two days of work to cope through until I can get pissed on the weekend. *sigh*

I went up to the hospital again last night. I've been up every night this week to try and give S a bit of a break from my niece as she's been up there on her own for most of the week. She looks exhausted and my niece was being a complete brat last night. S hadn't had a shower all day, hadn't eaten, hadn't been able to leave her for even 5 minutes or she'd crack. When I got up there, S was completely disorganised and hadn't worked out anything about food or anything like that (again - she did the same thing last night and ended up having to eat baked beans on toast for dinner as it was all she could get). It's so frustrating! I had told her last night that if she wasn't able to get something in, to let me know by 6pm and I would grab a microwave dinner or something from Coles before I jumped on the bus.

Anyway, my niece had managed to hurt her knee during the day - she just doesn't understand that if she throws herself around, she's likely to hurt herself. She's a bright kid, but a 4yo isn't that good on understanding that even fun things can have consequences (especially when every other kid can do exactly what she was doing without hurting themselves). So S was up there rubbing her leg and as soon as she tried to even hop off the bed, my niece would start whining.

Anyway, we eventually ordered pizza - tried Dominos first but they wouldn't deliver to the hospital, so went for Pizza Hut instead. While we were waiting for it to arrive, S headed off to have a shower. As soon as she left the room, my niece started yelling. I told S to just go, I'd look after it. And she obviously needed time out, because she did. Anyway, I did my usual thing, which was to tell my niece that Mum wouldn't be long, but she needed to have a shower and that I could do anything for her that Mum could. When she just kept on yelling, I gave her the ultimatum - stop it, or you have to have time out. Which I then did - count to ten (holding up my fingers so she could see the countdown), then took her off to a room that wasn't being used and let her yell it out. Unfortunately, being in the hospital, I couldn't just leave her the way we usually do for her time outs. Initially, I was holding her and talking to her and telling her that as soon as she stopped throwing a tantrum, we could go back in and play with the toys and watch cartoons on tv and do all of those fun things. But when she tried to bite and scratch me, I put her on the floor and then talked to her from there. I didn't yell at her and I didn't smack her. I just talked to her calmly and told her about the fun stuff she can do as soon as she stops throwing a tantrum.

Eventually, S came back from her shower and took over. My niece still didn't stop though and she kicked S as soon as S picked her up. She got a smack on the bum for that one, so she actually got worse from Mum than she did from me. I went downstairs to wait for the pizza guy, grabbed the pizza off him, and came upstairs and we had started eating by the time my niece eventually stopped throwing her tantrum. God it was exhausting.

But I think the worst thing was that when S first came back from the shower, she gave me this look as if I was mistreating her child. And she went to comfort her. Which of course, made me feel about this big. I think I know what the fight between her and Mum was over now. I'm betting she did the same thing to Mum and Mum's a lot more sensitive to that sort of thing than I am.

S also managed to drop a clanger on me as I was about to leave. Apparently she's pregnant. And the doctors have recommended an abortion because she's less than 2 months and has been exposed to all sorts of nasty drugs and radiation and stuff from the tests with my niece. She doesn't want either set of grandparents to know, because she's probably going to go through with the abortion. But I don't think she has any idea how emotionally upsetting this is going to be for her. She's going to need a support network, and at this stage, her support network basically consists of my family. It's a bit of a worry.

But anyway, it does explain why she's been so disorganised and distracted lately. She always goes a bit blonde when she's pregnant - it's like the energy all goes from her head to her belly or something.

So right now I'm wondering if it's a good idea for me to go back up again tonight. On the one hand, she probably needs a break and obviously needs to talk about the pregnancy (we didn't have time to talk as she told me right on visiting hours ending and the nurses were trying to get my niece to take her drugs). But on the other hand, I'm just not sure I'll be able to produce the appropriate response at the moment. And I just feel like I need a night off.

Ah well, I'll see how I feel by the end of the day.

Listening to: Sarah McLachlan - Surfacing