Long Post SD Crisis 2 Electric Boogaloo
SO got a call today from SD25.
(The next paragraph is a recap of how she is problematic, feel free to skip if familiar with past blogs.) The back story on her is that she is his youngest with BM1. She and SD27 were mostly raised out of state and visited SO on holidays. He also has SS14 and SS20 with BM2. SS20 has lived with SO fulltime for the past 8 years and SS14 is 50/50. Just before SD25's senior year of high school, she called SO crying saying BM1 was beating her. SO rushed to their state and picked her up, without consulting BM. He got custody of her because (I think) BM1 was ready to let her go due to major behavior issues, and didn't press kidnapping charges or anything. SD lived with SO a few years but due to drugs and sneaking around, they had a fight and she left home at around age 21. She has bounced around to various relatives' houses and boyfriends/girlfriends since then. She called SO about 2 years ago and needed rescuing due to domestic violence, and I was actually the one who picked her up. SO paid off her payday loans that she took out while with her boyfriend, bought her a car, and paid for her to move back to BM1's state and live with her, but she and BM1 had more physical fights and she bounced around some more. She couldn't care for her cat so she left him with me for what was supposed to be a few weeks and didn't pick him up for over a year. She went to a few semesters of college but dropped or failed most classes and hasn't kept a job for more than 6 months at a time ever. Lives on the brink of homelessness. After another fight with SO about 8 months ago, she ran off to live with the same boyfriend we "rescued" her from and he hasn't heard from her since. Until today.
She calls and he figures it's to ask for money but she says "I'm pregnant." The father is the boyfriend she had to be rescued from and she's 5 months along. They recently moved cities again and are living in a house with several other friends. They are considering moving to BM's state but aren't sure. She says she's got a job at a big box store and is planning to go back to school.
SO listened then said "Well, i'm sort of happy about it. Maybe a baby is what you need to get your priorities straight." After she hung up he said "Wow. She beat all the other grandkids to have the first great grandchild." I have said very little.
This is bad, though. Like hell a baby will help her get her life together. She hasn't been able to care for herself or her pets by age 25. SO and I aren't married and don't live together. My plan was to wait until all kids are out of the house because he still has issues with BM2, but things were improving. I have read on here, though, about DHs going "gaga over grandkids" and SO is a prime candidate for that. 2 steps forward 3 steps back is the story of this relationship. For now i will just watch and wait. But i see the trainwreck coming in the distance. At this point i don't want to influence any of SO's decisions. There will likely come a time where someone will have to take this child and raise her or take them both in. I don't want to stand in the way but it's not going to be me. I went through hell doing that for SD's cat and then giving him up after he became basically a part of the family, and this is an actual human who is getting a very bad start in life.
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You are a very smart woman.
You are a very smart woman.
If i were i would have run 7
If i were i would have run 7 years ago, but i am getting wiser and more cautious with time.
Wait and watch
I think you're reading the situation accurately. At least, she's living out of state. It's her mom's state, right? Maybe she will be motivated to stay near Mom for babysitting.
Yes, some men are enthusiastic about gkids. But many, including my DH, are burnt out though they love kids. With your DH having had his fair share of kids and their issues, he might fall into the burnt out camp.
SD63 moved back here with her baby, C, when she broke up with her ex#1. I think DH must have told her not to expect much from us and I was working full time. So, we never babysat and I was so busy with work and night school, I dont remember much.
I had similar reservations when my step-gd, C, daughter of SD63, got pregnant. The bf was/is unstable tho that didnt stop her from having a second child with him. He's gone now. I could forsee us being designated the only stable figures in case a custody change were needed and I wasnt going to do it. A custody change WAS needed for the oldest but SD63's ex#1 took the child. My Step-GD matured enough to keep the younger child. Regardless, I've kept a firm hands-off policy about both kids. Sometimes I feel bad that I've maintained this distance but no way am I getting involved. DH sometimes wistfully says we should adopt the younger boy "to give him a better life" but I know he doesn't mean it and I told him he'd be doing it alone.
All you can do is keep your eyes open.
SD is in our state now, about
SD is in our state now, about an hour away. She has moved back and forth between here and BM's state maybe 3 times in the past few years. She's thinking of maybe moving back there but doesn't know. SD25 also has some sort of mental illness. I suspect bipolar or a personality disorder. She's been on meds since she was in grade school but is off them for the pregnancy. I have serious concerns about PPD for her, and even moreso for the baby. She has screaming meltdowns over minor things and threatened suicide at least once in the past year. Idk anything about the group of people she and her bf are living with. This is so bad. I fear CPS may get involved at some point.
I'd be concerned, too
I see why you are concerned, I would be, too.
I am dealing with something
I am dealing with something similar. My SO's daughter ("SOD") got knocked up by a bad boy loser who was mooching off of her. But, but, hes the love of her life. So, even thogh he is a piece of shit, SOD keeps him around.
Rather than take this opportunity to allow SOD to deal with the consequences of her irresponsible decisions, SO does everything to prop up and enable SOD. Pays around 60% of the expenses of SOD's household (consisting of SOD, bad boy, and the baby). Babysits multiple days a week for free. Structures her entire life (and mine, by extension) around enabling SOD.
So guess what? SOD got pregnant again because bad boy "wanted another kid." Even though he pays for almost nothing, and does virtually none of the domestic labor or babysitting. SO was upset at first, but now she is full-steam ahead on the enabling train.
SOD likely has personality disorders (all of the Cluster B boxes are checked), but there is no way SO will check her on this. Or check her on anything. She just blithely goes on with pampering and pandering. SOD will never grow up, will never be self-sufficient, and she will go on to have children who are just as dysfunctional as she is. I'm not saying its 100% SO's fault, but it is mostly her fault. Probably 85% or more.
SO wonders why I haven't proposed. I tell her it's because she has cheated on me before, and that I don't want to jeopardize my resources, but right now the biggest issue is the potentially unending responsibilities related to her kids. If we were married, I'd be on the hook for any financial or legal situations that SO might get in due to her enabling. So we are, in a sense, living apart together, because I can't bring myself to gamble on that level of legal and financial connection.
What you describe is my
What you describe is my nightmare scenario. I know i won't be able to live that way.
Somebody who made a difference
When my step-gd, C, lost her oldest child to her dad, then got pregnant again, her dad, SD's ex#1, apparently took action. He got custody of child #1. He monitored visits by C and her mom, SD63. He made C undergo random drug tests. If she failed, no visitation. He couldn't do that with SD63 but he put a tracking device on the child's carseat. So, if either of them took him someplace suspicious, like the bf's dangerous neighborhood, he knew.
He also applied some kind of pressure, I dont know what, to make C get her tubes tied. On the other hand, he helped C a lot, including getting her a car. He has repeatedly offered to have C live on his family's compound where she could see her older boy more but she resists cuz it's rural and she prefers her Section 8 apartment nearer the city. He still helps her tho she hates to ask, and frequently sees the boy who lives with her.
All this has cost him his marriage. I dont know if they're divorced but I hear she lives separately from him in the family compound. He once called me, asked my opinion of SD63's grandparenting abilities, whether the boy would be safe with her. He said he knew DH would lie to cover SD63 but I'd tell the truth. I took the opportunity to explain why I'd kept my distance and he understood. I told her she did well with the boy but her driving was questionable.
Stepfamily, don't you just love it
"All this has cost him his
"All this has cost him his marriage."
Yeah, that's a lot for someone to deal with. That poor woman also has your SD63 as the "BM" in her life! The choice to have kids with an unstable woman has lifelong effects. It doesn't end at 18, not hardly.
I was getting a lot more positive about things, too. BM2 was staying mostly in her lane, and the SSs are both doing well and i get along with them. BM1 and the SDs have mostly been at a distance except for SD25's antics, and SO finally set boundaries with her. But now. A baby! And SD25 is already laying it on thick, naming the baby after SO (but in girl form for the first name but the middle and last will be SO's.) She's getting another ultrasound tomorrow and sending pics. People change when they become grandparents and the boundaries SO set may fly out the window. Back to square fking one. And who knows how BM1 will figure into this. She is married to one guy but has a younger kid by the guy she was with before him. I doubt she will take SD25 in again.
This is ostensibly an adult.
This is ostensibly an adult. She can either figure it out or rot. Her choice. Sadly, rescuing the spawn of a shit subhuman is extremely rare. Courts will doom a child to a shit life by keeping them with someone who has no business controling any child including their own.
If your SO does not hold his kidult accountable for supporting herself and her child, I would not flush my life down his toilet of a cesspool family if I were you.
Take care of you.
Live well. You owe yourself that.
" Courts will doom a child to
" Courts will doom a child to a shit life by keeping them with someone who has no business controling any child including their own."
I agree. And I went through it with the cat. "Can you watch him for a few weeks?" then nothing for a year and a half. Then she breezes back and takes him, only to want to drop him off again for an undetermined time a few months later. After a year, i had just accepted the cat as part of the household and really loved him. I was fine with keeping him forever. Once i realized she wanted to keep dropping him off/coming back for him at her convenience i noped out. It was too painful and too disruptive.
That was a cat. Cats basically take care of themselves. No way am i accepting responsibility for an actual child under those terms, but the way the courts are today, that's exactly what they allow these dysfunctional BMs to do. Breeze in and out fking things up in their paths. SD has lived with housing instability and homelessness, food insecurity, and she is mentally ill. SO tried housing her and putting her through school but she would drop classes and not tell him, disappear for days at a time, etc. I have little hope a baby will fix her.
Those that breed minions to love them sadly destroy the minions.
At best the kid they creates gets out. Sadly, even when they get out they they tend to have to wallow through a lifetime of baggage.
Even when a kid has only lost half of the parent lottery and is raised exceptionally well by the quality side, they don't always escape completely the shallow and polluted end of their gene pool without baggage.
Deleted duplicate.
Deleted duplicate.
Coming back to post to keep
Coming back to post to keep myself accountable. I'm trying my damnedest to remain neutral and supportive in my talks with SO. It's early and the baby won't even be born for 4 months but i won't be the reason an innocent child ends up in foster care if there's a grandparent willing to take her in. I'm not going to try to influence SO at all. I'm expecting BM1 to reach out to him any day now. Their daughters just can't function as adults. The older one needed car repairs and food money and it was a big ordeal between SO and BM1 last year and ended with him shelling out thousands. Watch and wait. Keep mouth shut. I'm going to repeat that to myself until it sinks in.
WOW!!!!
Well thats my worst nightmare, that SD25 Feral Forger gets impregnated...
Right now, at 25 she maintains that she doesnt want any children ever, due to not liking her sister (nice right?)
But you never know. Shes been in a relationship for a year now...
Hopefully SO keeps his boundaries strong.
"Hopefully SO keeps his
"Hopefully SO keeps his boundaries strong."
Just the day before I had asked him if he has heard from SD25. He said no, not since she stormed out 8 months ago. He said, "I'm just about done with her BS." He has paid off her loansharks, bought her a car, offered to have her live with him and either pay for school or learn his parents' business and they would GIVE IT TO HER. She couldn't follow extremely basic rules and ran off with the guy she first said was her gay BFF then said he was her boyfriend she had to be rescued from because he abused her. A cop actually came to SO's house after she said that with some sort of summons, though SD never shared the details of the case.
But now. A BABY. SO loves babies and is very serious about "his progeny." Much like your DH, he loves having kids around as long as someone else does the actual work. I'm all "woe is me" because the progress i felt he and i were making is under a very real threat. But i'm also like "Woe is this poor baby who is fk'ed from before birth."
I think your Dh has his head
I think your Dh has his head in the sand if he thinks a baby will help her get her priorities straight. What I anticipate is that she'll latch on to whoever she can for support so she can do less work herself. I would be worried /stressed in your situation too. Boundaries will have to be a good thing that are established...
It's also a bad sign that the
It's also a bad sign that the dad is the person she needed to be rescued from. Is she still with him? Will he be involved?
Oh yeah, SD is still with him
Oh yeah, SD is still with him. She ran back to him after I risked my safety to pick her up from the apartment she shared with him an hour away from my city because my SO was working. After my SO paid off her loan sharks, flew her to her BM in another state, and bought her a car. Which, after maybe 6 months with BM where she kept getting in trouble, she drove back to SO's house to stay for a few months while she waited on an apartment that she was going to share with her "friend" in our state. A lie, of course, she was waiting to move in with her abuser. She moved back with him 8 months ago and went no contact with SO until she called to say she's having the abuser's baby in 4 months and he's just been great. But now she's sending SO ultrasound pics and naming the baby after him to butter him up.
Update (mostly to keep my
Update (mostly to keep my sanity as i have noone irl to vent to.)
SO got the ultrasound pics (yay!) and he seems more somber about the whole thing. His biggest concern is the health of the baby. SD promises she quit all drugs when she found out, but 90% of what she says is BS so who knows. To my knowledge she was a heavy pot smoker, took amphetamines, and several psychiatric meds. She claims to be off all of them. If she stopped early enough and is being honest (lol) there shouldn't be much effect, but i also worry about her being unmedicated and getting PPD. Time will tell.