[FULL STORY] My mother in law doesn’t believe in allergies and the price I paid for that was...

my mother-in-law doesn't believe in allergies and the price I paid for that was losing my child hello I'm a first-time poster but I discovered this subreddit a few months ago I was talking about this subreddit with my therapist and she gave me the homework of speaking out more about my story to see if it lessened my pain I've written and deleted this post maybe seven times now but I think it's time to get it out I've spoken English for 30 years but it's not my first language and occasionally I use the wrong word because that's what the direct translation is so I apologize in advance if I confuse anyone this is going to be a long post as I'm a rambler and there is a lot of background involved this happened 12 years 2 months and 13 days ago on Wednesday November 2nd 2005 my dear husband got married in 2002 and had our son 10 months later in the same year in May 2004 we welcomed our twin girls my family was beautiful every time I took a picture of us we look like the families in the stock photos you can search for my dear husband is an engineer and I'm a college professor we had a nice house in the city our children were healthy and happy we even had a Golden Retriever named Argo as if we weren't the picture of familial happiness as is I can no longer look at the pictures of us because it makes me too angry when my twin girls were born we had no issues in the hospital they were born right on their due date latched perfectly and passed all their postnatal tests with Stellar stats when we brought them home however we noticed that one of the girls let's call her OD an older daughter since she was a whole 4.5 5 minutes older than her sister was developing a rash I hadn't really dealt with allergies in kids since my son didn't have them and neither did any child or adult in my entire family I wasn't sure what it was I thought that maybe she just had sensitive skin like me I can't tolerate certain Fabrics because I have very dry skin and I'll often break out in rashes if my skin decides that it doesn't like something so I stopped using fabric softener on all the clothes I bought the nicest most comfortable bedding in clothes at one point I even made her clothes myself in the fear that maybe something in the manufacturing process was upsetting my older daughter we went to the doctor several times and they knew that she was having an allergic reaction to something but every test came back negative and we couldn't figure out what it was it took three more months to figure it out during that time her allergic reactions got more and more severe at one point she was the only baby in the history of the hospital who had to be kept in a clean room because she seemed to have a reaction the minute she left when that happened we began an elimination therapy that would rival the lifestyle of Buddhist monks my husband and I moved our son and younger daughter in with his parents because we needed to eliminate everything from our routine to figure out what was causing the reaction in our older daughter we stopped using our soap our shampoo our deodorants and our laundry detergents and that was before we even got to our diet it took us three more months but we figured it out our older daughter was allergic to Coconut the doctors told us that it was a particularly rare allergen so it wasn't on any of the skin test panels they ran when we found out what she was allergic to we were so relieved but in addition to feeling relieved I delved into a bout of hysterical laughter I laughed so hard I cried and to this day my dear husband tells me that he doesn't know if I was crying from relief or pure happiness you see I come from a culture that uses coconut almost religiously it's in our cooking we break a coconut open at religious events it's used in almost all sweets It's in everything the reason I was laughing was because of how much I hated one particular use for coconut when I was a kid pretty much up until I was in the e8th grade my mother would put coconut oil in my hair all the time it looked greasy as hell I hated it and once I was old enough to start doing my own hair I never put that stuff in my hair again I was laughing so hard because of course I had a daughter with a severe allergy to the one thing I hated my entire life we had a lot of fun telling people about her allergy and everyone laughed because they all knew about my hatred for coconut oil we told my mother and she laughed as well she made jokes about how my baby must have heard me talking about my hatred for coconut oil while she was still cooking inside me and decided that she needed to hate it too we all had a good laugh and we left it at that or so I thought my mother and I have always had a contentious relationship at best we got along well enough but we disagreed vehemently on certain topics she wanted a traditional daughter who would be religious get her M's degree marry a man that she and my father picked out common where I'm from have two kids a house in the suburbs near her and be a stay-at-home mom like her I'm not religious in the slightest I got two undergraduate degrees went on to get a master's and a PhD didn't get married until 27 late in my culture and I married a man who was the polar opposite of what my parents wanted as if this wasn't enough I was a working mom who didn't need her to babysit since my husband and I made more than enough for a part-time Nanny essentially the best way I can summarize our relationship is by saying that she was very proud of me and love to talk about my accomplishments but I could always tell that she wished I was something else we have a fair amount of topics that we can talk about but I could never discuss anything too serious with her such as politics or my career not because she'd get mad at me but more so because she just wasn't interested and I hate getting into conversations where I'm passionate about something but the other person could care less as far as raising my kids my mother was a just yes person 99.9% of the time she was hands-off and respected all of my decisions even if she didn't like them sometimes example I chose not to raise my kids religiously but I still took them to community events so they could understand their roots and my mother never pushed them to pray the only thing she continually got on my case about was the coconut oil thing you see my girl has very textured and curly hair we don't really know where they got it from considering my husband and I have pin straight hair that won't even hold a paper clip in it without slipping I loved it it was a little on the rough side and my mother always insisted that a little bit of oil would make the curls soft and more defined I always said no sure we could have used a different type of oil but my girls were still so young and the allergy process had made me terrified of incorporating new things into their routine I made sure I explained why to my mom too she remembered what we'd gone through with her older daughter and her allergy she brought me food and clothes to the hospitals more than a few times she helped me move all of my furniture and clothes out of my house when I was eliminating every possible source of allergens she taught me how to cook from scratch when I was eliminating certain foods from the kids diet she knew everything about older daughter's struggles to this day I cannot understand how she did what happened next November 2nd 2005 I was giving a midterm that day to my students and I had to be at my research lab late that night my dear husband was away at some conference and our Nanny was down with the flu so she couldn't watch the kids that day so I had my mom come take them for the day my son was almost 3 years old and the girls were a year and a half old overnight visits with my parents weren't exactly common but they weren't unusual either they had always come back from these visits very happy and well taken care of so I had no second thoughts about leaving them with my parents they spoke to me on the phone after their lunch and then around 5:00 p.m. we video chatted the kids were all so happy and healthy I got home around 10:30 p.m. that night and called my mom to see if the kids were up by any chance and I could say good night I missed the kids by about 20 minutes they'd already gone to bed so I talked to my mom for a little bit but she's a pretty early sleeper too so we hung up and went to bed I woke up around 5:00 a.m. the next morning to go pick up my husband from the airport at 600 we were going to get breakfast together and then go pick up the kids I picked up dear husband and neither one of us was very hungry yet so we thought it'd be a nice treat to pick up the kids first and go to breakfast or brunch with my parents we got to my parents house at 7:45 a.m. my parents weren't there my son was at the neighbor's house and ran outside with the neighbor as soon as he saw his dad and I pull up he was hysterical and crying and I couldn't calm him down my blood pressure was Rising because now I'm thinking that something horrible has happened to my parents my my neighbor tells me that she isn't sure what's happening but there was an ambulance at my parents house at 6:00 a.m. and my dad had run over and woken them up to see if they could watch my son for a few hours until he got back of course they'd said yes I'm calling my parents non-stop at this point and I'm getting frantic because I don't know what's happened my son was still crying but he was calmer he still couldn't really explain to me what had happened though I honestly don't remember the details of what happened next but somehow we figured out that the ambulance was from ex hospital nearby and we broke sever driving laws trying to get there we got to the hospital pulled into the emergency entrance that was for ambulances only left the car and bolted inside a few nurses took notice of us immediately and were asking us what was wrong I was calmer than my dear husband at this point so I explained that I didn't know but my twin girls and my parents were here somewhere I'll never forget the look on that nurse's face she knew exactly who I was in that moment and she was about to cry another nurse took me and my dear husband to an EMP y room and asked us to calm down and listen to the doctor before we went to find my family my mother had put coconut oil in both my daughter's hairs when they were playing the previous day before bed the girls loved it when my mom did their hair so they asked for braids and my mom was doing their hair she put coconut oil in both their hairs because it would make for smoother braids according to my son my older daughter started to get a little dizzy and itchy when my mom was doing her hair so my mom gave her some kids badril which made her sleepy since it was close to bedtime anyway the kids then went to bed giving her benad dril was something we did whenever she had a mild reaction since it usually meant she accidentally came across some coconut from a secondary source we also showered her from head to toe immediately to erase any lingering traces of it my mother simply gave her some badril kept the coconut oil in her hair and put her to sleep benad dril made her sleepy and unable to wake up or be conscious enough to wake up her brother or cry she vomited in her sleep and the rash spread all over her little body was swollen to twice the size she had asphyxiated in her sleep she died painfully and slowly in the early hours of the morning my mother had found her when she went to check on the kids in the morning around 7:00 a.m. she was already dead by then my mother screamed and called for my dad and that's when they'd gone to the hospital my dad hadn't known about the coconut oil until my mom explained and to this day I've never seen my father so angry he was still unable to look at my mother out of Fury or at me out of Shame when I saw him at the hospital they had rushed to the to the hospital hoping there was some way to save my older daughter and get my younger daughter checked out immediately since he thought she might have a mild allergy as well I can't even explain to you the emotions my husband and I felt I remember seeing my little girl and just being in denial there was no way that she was gone this had to be a horrible horrible nightmare the following days the funeral and explaining to my other kids what had happened are events I still can't talk about because it just breaks a part of me my mother was investigated as was my ire family I almost lost my kids to my country's version of CPS once because they thought my kids were in danger my dear husband and I had to fight tooth and nail to show that uprooting them during this time would be the worst thing for them at the moment my mother was never arrested my father did leave her though they're not officially divorced the majority of my mother's family refuses to speak to her and the few that do speak to her only do so on a limited basis she currently lives on her own in a small town and every couple months I'll get a call from her telling me how sorry she is and how she just wasn't thinking and can I please find a way to forgive her she wants to come see me the only thing I can find to ever say to her is you can come see me when you bring my daughter with you it's been 13 years the older son just got his license this year and the younger daughter is going to start high school soon both of them are healthy and they're turning into amazing adults but neither one has been the same since the older daughter passed the older son is extremely protective of the younger sister and doesn't allow anyone to breathe rudely in his presence my younger sister used to be so bubbly and such a talkative little child but she's quiet now when she does speak it takes some effort to hear her because she's so quiet she told me a few years ago that she knows she was only a baby when it happened but she feels incomplete all the time like a part of her is missing I didn't know what to say to her if it weren't for my dear husband I don't think I could have ever recovered from the loss of my daughter we have helped each other through the loss it's taken over a decade of therapy to even get to this point I don't know what I expect to get out of typing all of this out but I've seen how much comfort this subreddit brings other posters so hopefully I find some of the same piece thank you for reading

Channel: InkSpillers

Views: 126,392

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Id: R1SYBBCSNU4

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 02 2024