Trying Not To Be Ticked at DD **Updated**

My sister always posts about her and her family medical dramas on facebook. I don't think she's ever rang anyone in the family. It's her event to broadcast how she likes.
But she is a drama queen. Maybe your daughter is too? Or maybe the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.
It's good to know that out of everything that's happened - DGD being sick, DD and SIL being worried sick, that the take away for you is how hurt you are about communication
In case you don't know - you are not the center of the universe

ETA: here's the irony also. Your phone was switched off so she wouldn't have got you anyway 

This, exactly, this. i cannot validate on this one, tho i do understand why you're upset and hurt and worried.
Making this about you and your feelings... in your daughter's shoes i would be very angry to be scolded after facing such a terrifying situation. Please don't do that.

Frankly, when stressed, i have used things like FB to put out an announcement of bad news when i just couldn't deal with the individual conversations, even over text.

My first thought is that your daughter does not seem to be that close to you. My 2nd thought was that maybe she was hysterical over her baby being critically I'll and was unable to talk on the phone.

I am sorry you found out about it on facebook. I made the mistake of posting about being in the hospital waiting on X-rays for my ankle before calling my parents. They were totally pissed and called me up immediately and chewed me out in the hospital. I have not done that since then.

I understand the differing points of view here. I would probably not have posted anything on Facebook if it were me, and I don't think that's the way to notify people of important things.

However, I am a private person, and I also might not have called anyone until the crisis was past or we knew what was needed to resolve it. My mom is a worrier, and I hate the added pressure of trying to reassure her or answer questions if I don't know yet what is happening. I've only spent one night in the hospital, and that was after an ER visit - and I didn't call her until after I was home and it was all over. Sometimes I don't want to deal with anyone else while in a crisis.

If you are far away and couldn't have done anything to help, I can see not calling or even texting when things were uncertain. And it sounds like calling a grandparent would have meant making three calls - to you, your ex, and the paternal side. It's NOT just one phone call, unless you're saying that you are the only grandparent who should have been called. Yes, I know you care and want to know what's happening with your grandchildren, but sometimes what we want and what the other people involved want/need are not the same thing. Your daughter is an adult and she gets to decide how to handle things with her children and husband. That may mean you don't find out everything immediately, but learn about things afterwards.

I'm like you, I'm very private and my mom is a worrier. She has diverticulitis that flares up when she is stressed or worried. So I wouldn't want to tell her right away either. I would rather tell her when things calm down or are more under control. 

Yes! I don't see the need to immediately go to social media when you are in an emergency situation. Why not wait until things are under control and you know what's going on?

I will validate you OP. Family first. Then Facebook. Text is ok. But for heavens sake at least text the family first.

Let it go though...things are stressful enough now.

Our DD has no living grandparents and we're not on Facebook, so there's that. One of us would call, text, or email, when things stabilized and we had answers ourselves.

ETA: We probably wouldn't tell anyone in any way until the situation was somewhat under control. When we are faced with situations like that, we don't need any extra family drama on top of the stress of an immediate critical situation with our child.

When my son was admitted to the ICU last week, I messaged a private family group on FB (immediate family members only) first with basic news -- it's an emergency, nobody knows what's going on, please keep us in prayer.

6 to 8 hours later, when I had a moment, I posted to general facebook, which in my case is not a lot of random strangers I met once -- it is people who know and care about our family and who we interact with on a regular basis. Posting to FB allowed my DH to copy that post to his wall and alert co-workers and other people on his bowling team so they had a heads up that his schedule might be impacgted. It also triggered the church prayer team and the team that puts together meals for families dealing with crisis. It was also a clue to my son's classmates as to why he wasn't at school (obviously I emailed with more pertinent detail to his school team.)

Some people use FB as an efficient means of messaging targeted audiences. I don't put a lot of drama out there, and I keep the posts short and informative, but they do serve a real purpose, and it's not about attention seeking in our case. FB allowed me to connect 2 kind neighbors who offered to walk the dog and have them work out a schedule between theselves without making me the constant middleman. The post generated offers for driving my other son to his jazz band practices, an offer to be at the house when lawn workers came by so I didn't have to think about that, etc. FB can be a way to let people help out in ways that are truly helpful, without being an emotional and time (or phone battery) drain on me while I'm so focused on what's happening in the hospital.

To me, making a bunch of phone calls is far more drama-seeking and impractical than simply letting people know on fB, where they can read about it when it fits in their day, and I can respond back when I have time. Would OP really have wanted to have an emotionally charged, tearful, anxious phone call disrupt her dinner out when there was not a single thing in the world that she could do except feel upset? I guess that's how some people roll, but in my family, that would be inconsiderate.

IF you really want to address the incident with your DD, OP, what if you were to offer a potential solution. She's already got the step mother berating her, so you can come out of this smelling like a rose if you suggest something like a family private group on FB where people can touch base first before taking it all public. OR put together a family only text ring on all your phones and make it super easy to text everyone at once. But most of all, give her some positive affirmations for taking care of business when your grand daughter needed mommy most.

I understand your DD not calling from the hospital both due to the need to be focused on my child, the prohibition on cell phone calls and because if I called my mom, I'd have to be on the phone for an hour or more. One of the reasons I don't call much. I don't usually have large chunks of time for phone calls, and especially not if I was in the hospital ER.

Phone Calls/Texting/Internet don't work the same in hospitals. Even with WiFi. Each hospital can decide what wifi features they include for guest use. Different areas of the hospital have different rules.

My iPhone rarely works inside the hospital. I could get on the internet or facebook with my phone by using the hospital WiFi, but I can't text without a signal. I don't have a wifi enabled text program. 

I've dealt with the whole "but-you-called-her-first-and-I'm-you're-PRECIOUS-and-should've-been-told-first" My mom would even get upset if I told my dh something first. All of that narcissism put a bad taste in my mouth as well as dh's. He's worried enough about me without having to deal with my mom's nastyness because dh breathed wrong or wanted to call his own mother first because he needed a kind word and understanding. I support my dh completely. My mom isn't kept in the loop like she once was. I got tired of having to deal with her being hysterical and whining about how inconvenienced my illness is for her. I'm incredibly ill to even go to the hospital, and dh and I need support instead of having to reassure my mom that I'm not going to die, she won't be left alone, etc. 

My mom also enjoyed hearing that my stepmom was upset at me. She tried to make things as difficult as possible when my dad died. My stepmom got tired of my mom badmouthing me to try to make things more difficult for me, so she told her to knock it off. 

Dealing with a loved one who's had a serious health scare and surgery in the hospital is difficult enough without all this other crap. I don't think the OP's daughter tried to hurt anyone. 

Her little girl's lung collapsed! That is INCREDIBLY painful--I only had half a lung collapse when I was an adult and was already on pain meds. I couldn't breathe at all, my dh freaked out, I was so sick and took a long time to recover. Thankfully I didn't need surgery on my lung, but I did have to have an abscess of bile drained off my diaphragm. 

 I had been on oxygen and was having a hard time breathing before the collapse. Then dh went out to get some coffee, and the cleaning crew insisted on using a very strong detergent on my floor even though the smell made it hard for me to breathe. There was a language barrier. I tried to make the person leave. Then I couldn't breathe at all and couldn't talk. The cleaning person had their back turned to me. I had to throw my tissue boxes on the floor to get his attention. He hit the code blue button and everyone rushed in. The man was very upset, but he was just following the rules and didn't try to hurt me on purpose. 

When you're in the bowels of the hospital, you can't get a signal without walking 15 minutes to get to the outside. The internet could be all you have. I wouldn't want to leave my loved one in that situation, but I would DEFINITELY not leave a child that sick. The poor girl would have wanted Mommy and Daddy. 

The son did call the next morning when they found out that surgery would be needed. Most of the time in the hospital is watching and waiting. There's not going to be any updates in the middle of the night. 


The Emergency Department can be divided into different areas. Minor injuries like sprains, cuts, simple fractures, etc. can be triaged off to an area staffed with doctors that order xrays to be taken while you're waiting for your turn in the procedure room. Some larger hospitals have nurse practitioners on staff to help those that need the ED to be their family doctor. 

Some of those areas do allow telephones because that's not where the specialized equipment or the seriously ill patients are located. Phones, WiFi, and TV help keep people entertained and calm while they wait for hours.

The rooms set aside for seriously ill patients that need specialized equipment have different rules. While a lot of electronic devices have been proven to not cause interference, the risk of a family member's device causing interference is just not worth the hassle. 

I have electrical problems with my heart, so anytime I'm hospitalized the telemetry team hooks me up to their monitoring system. I've had team members come check on me when I was sitting in the nuclear medicine waiting room--my monitor was picking up interference from everyone's devices, and no one had notified the team that I had been taken to the waiting room to wait for additional tests.

Concrete buildings are notorious for limiting cell phone range. Hospitals don't want to encourage people to chat on phones anyway. Hospitals used to be quiet, private places that helped people heal. Now hospitals increase the stress levels of the patient and family members. 

There are lots of logical reasons why calls and texts don't go through. Even if the daughter just forgot to call, I don't understand why she can't be given a pass. When she finally did get to sit down and post on Facebook, she was probably in an area where she couldn't make calls. Or she might not have wanted to talk on the phone because the poor kid finally calmed down and fell asleep. 

Dealing with family stress on top of serious illness is just so frustrating and heartbreaking. You're trying to do the right thing for everyone in an extremely stressful situation, and when you need the most love and understanding, your family decides to pick you to death like a chicken because you didn't do everything exactly right. 

I also think it's very interesting that the OPs husband didn't try to call the daughter or SIL to make sure they were ok, nor did he call the OP to let her know that the daughter and family were in the ER. 

Just let this go. Be there for your daughter and granddaughter. Don't delight in the fact that stepmom will be upset. If you want to be more involved, then be your daughter's ally instead of another problem.