THIS. Coming out of lurking because I can't help commenting on this.
We (my ex-husband and I) moved together to a new city 6 years ago. He'd gotten a new, really good job and we'd talked about it at length and decided we didn't want the kids so far away from either of us, so we both moved. I started temping at a firm that was providing temps to law firms so it paid well and felt like a win-win. My ex had the kids during the day while I was at work for those first few weeks while he was settling into his new house. At one point he decided it was too difficult to get much moving work done with our two kids running about so he decided to take them to a local kids organization. We had a big argument about this because it wasn't an actual daycare, there was not a good teacher-kid ratio (in fact, there were no teachers per se, mostly just teenage and young adult volunteers) and everything seemed really disorganized. At any rate, he thought it was perfectly fine for a few hours in the day. Well, our 6 year old daughter had a 16 year old kid fall on her while one of these teenage 'teachers' was throwing footballs and had all ages of kids running to catch them. Her leg was broken in the most hideous way, but thankfully she ended up not needing surgery.
At any rate, I was so furiously angry at the ex for taking our daughter to this place after I'd pointed out everything that was wrong with it, I nearly physically attacked him right there in the hospital. It took weeks before I felt I could be civilized around him. It's been 6 years and still, if I think about how that whole incident happened, I could strangle him. And I care deeply about him and believe he is a good father. But that sort of mistake-making, which I still believe was entirely preventable, is a difficult thing for me to accept. I know nobody's perfect, but still. It was just so much unnecessary suffering for our daughter. And I understand it was an accident and I know he feels awful about it.
So I'm really unable to understand how LH is saying she's not upset, and how she appears so calm, nevermind the fact she asked to see RH and not her baby. If it were me, I know that someone would have had to protect RH from me. I'm not proud of that, but I know that's how visceral it would feel - how visceral it did feel when I ran up to that ambulance and saw my daughter's leg all askew. It was so visceral, that rage I felt when I saw my daughter hurt, that I am not sure I could fathom how much worse it would be to have a dead child. Her reactions, to me, are completely counterintuitive.
