Mum furious after husband refused to stay off work to help with children while she was sick
Joe Harker
Featured Image Credit: Olga Rolenko / Alamy Stock Photo / The Photolibrary Wales / Alamy Stock Photo
The winter lurgy is doing the rounds at the moment and it's not a fun thing to come down with, especially since it's such a busy time of the year.
There's never a good moment to get ill but it's the first couple of weeks of the new year and everything is starting up again after Christmas.
While people might have enjoyed a break over the festive period (even if that's a unique brand of busy) and stumbling about in the weird hazy time of Betwixtmas (or whatever you like to call that period between Christmas and New Year's Eve), normal life has resumed.
That means work is expecting you back in and school is expecting your kids to show up again, no matter how much they might protest.
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It's a lot to deal with, especially if you're under the weather, and one mum trying to deal with it all was left furious when her husband wouldn't take time off work to help out when she got ill.
Posting her dilemma to Mumsnet's 'Am I Being Unreasonable?' forum, the mum explained that on the day she was going back to work she was so ill she could 'hardly move' and 'couldn't talk without coughing'.
To top it all off her 'temperature was sky high', so she asked her husband if he could take a bit of time off work to help look after their children.
She wrote: "I asked him to stay off and look after the kids but he wouldn't. He doesn't work in a particularly important job and they sell themselves as a flexible and family friendly company.
"My only other option was to ask my mother, who is also a carer for my father. I seriously wanted to avoid this in case either of them catch it from us. She came and got them happily."
"When he got home yesterday and I stewed and stewed and eventually lost it with him (as best I could between coughs). Apparently I am unreasonable expecting him to look after his own kids when I am unable."
Throwing the question out there to other mums, she received plenty of people supporting her point of view and telling her he should be taking time off to look after their children when she was too ill to do it.
Someone said 'employers have to give emergency dependants leave' and suggested that was a way the woman's husband could get time off to help out.
Others suggested 'your mistake was to hitch up with him', which sounds like a bit of a leap regardless which side of this debate you come down on.
Then again this is the internet, pretty much anyone asking a question about their relationship is likely to get at least one response telling them they should break up.