I understand how you are feeling. I feel that a lot also. And to make it worse, I never know really how to express what I am feeling to DH to make him understand.

I do things for my kids because I am their mother. I provide for them because it's my obligation, and yes, because I want to, because I love them. I am not SD's mother. She has a mother. She has a mother who buys her everything and anything she wants. I just want to go about my life and do for my kids as I wish without someone holding up a measuring stick to all my actions to make sure they are fair and equal to a child that IS NOT MINE.

I do nice things for SD (most often unaknowledged). I include her on all family events. Why do I need to think of her as my child?

And then SD is always talking about everything she has and gets and my kids don't necessarily have all that.

I can only imagine how scary those feelings are for you right now with your baby not even here yet. You should not have to justify wanting to provide for your child or wanting good things for your child. I wish I could say that it will get better but my kids were already school age when DH and I married and it still is an issue for me.

Yes, I remember when my dh told me that his family were "disappointed" in me because I had told dh(who promptly passed it on to his parents)that I did not enjoy ss's visits. Yeah, like I am really going to enjoy a kid who pretends to be psychotic, threatens to burn my home down, plots how to murder my son, steals my panties and takes them to school,and either completely ignores me or yells at me. I told dh that I'd have to have a 0 IQ in order to enjoy something like that.

fuck them all!! focus should be on your health and new baby... don't stress about, it won't change a thing....

july is right around the corner and once you have your baby in your arms, you will probably feel like telling fil and whoever else worships sd to bite your ass!

i understand you "should" be fair to both children, but one is an infant and requires more attention for safety reasons ALONE...

worry about all this later, it may work itself out. if not, we'll tackle it them!!!

stay healthy and postive for you and new baby!!

NDM ~ i sure the hell hope that fucking post wasn't to me.

1st: please note "should".

2nd: i didn't say treat them the same ~ i said FAIR. i'm not even a skid fan ~ ask around ~ but i do believe in FAIRness

Try not to worry too much, how your DH and his family will behave towards your own child is all hypothetical until your daughter arrives. Once she arrives and is a real person to them she will be just as much their grandchild as SD. I know you feel defensive about your child, it's a natural instinct, and I well remember my own defensiveness when I was pregnant with my first and feeling worried about how my baby and my new role as a mother would be accepted by my husband and his 5 existing children, and then feeling resentful of them for having to worry about it!

Your husband has reacted oversensitively and tactlessly to your dreams and plans about things you will do with your daughter because he's feeling insecure and nervous about how the arrival of your baby together will affect his existing daughter. I know that's frustrating when you just want to revel in the happiness and anticipation of having your own child together, but the best thing you can do is neutralise his anxiety by explaining that you understand he doesn't want SD to feel left out and you take that on board and will try to include her where appropriate, but you also need him to understand that you will need some special time with your baby, just as SD had that one-on-one time with her parents when she was a baby.

In all liklihood the issue will probably never arise - I don't know how old SD is but even if she's young she's unlikely to want to do the same things as a baby. So try not to cross those bridges until you come to them, because the more defensive and ringfencing you become about your baby the more it will play on his anxiety, and in any cae when your daughter arrives he will ADORE her.

He does need to work with you to address his concerns about how SD feels though, rather than feeding back negative comments from his family - who can blame you for feeling angry when his family interfere in that way and he is daft enough to repeat it to you! You can't order somebody to be more affectionate and attentive, and you certainly can't bully them into it with threats, they're just making you resent SD more which is completely counterproductive.

The question about to what extent you treat SD 'the same' as your daughter is about balance I think. You can't be expected or required to feel about his daughter the same way you will feel about your own, but as long as you try to make his daughter feel cared for and welcome (unless she makes this impossible!), and try to achieve some measure of fairness and consistency in terms of rules and treats, then that's about as much as can be hoped for. I do know that my credibility in terms of commenting on and managing my SKids behaviour increased hugely after I had my own children because everyone could see that I had exactly the same standards and rules for my own children as I did for my SKids. I wish you lots of luck and happiness with your baby.

I feel your concerns. I am having a baby in 4 weeks. I made the decision to leave my SO once I am strong enough to deal with the break-up (in about 3 months from now).

My SO started this "fairness" thing long ago. He's got a son from a previous relationship, FSS7 whom lives with his mother and sees my SO EOWE. Not my problem that his son decided to be an evil psychopathic creep at the tender age of 7, so gues what, i never really took to him, and it became worse when he started hitting my BD3.

Wehn my BD3 was 6 months old, I put her on a waiting list at a good private school closeby. His son goes to a free government school in a really bad neighbourhood. So my SO looks to me to be his sons ticket out of hell.... I was like HUH? You expect ME to pay private school fees for a child who has both his parents. I reminded him that he CHOSE to date a woman in the scruffiest part of town, and go ahead and procreate with her. HE had that choice. Surely he should have known that even with his contribution, that child will have less than most kids because of his mothers inability to provide for him at all.

Now I am pregnant, and bought all the things for OUR baby, and I am expectign HIM to be fair to his TWO children, mine and his son from the "projects". That's the only time you hould be fair, with your own biological kids. He cannot provide less for mine because the other one needs more. People should think before they have kids with dubious characters.