No, you don't need to communicate with her.

no the great thing about being a step parent is the kid is not yours. You are not mommy or daddy. You don't have to do anything you do not want to do. Remember that. I wish someone had told me long ago.

It will make life easier for everyone if you two can have a cordial relationship. If it's YOU that doesn't want to communicate then I'd try and put aside your fears and take a shot at it. If rebuffed then let all communication go through the childs' father.

Be polite, but I would advise you to limit communication between yourself and her for safety's sake. She and your bf need to have necessary communication and I believe it wise to let them handle 99% of it between themselves.

I think that you should just allow bf and his ex to communicate, and you don't be involved in that at all. Sometimes men like to "pass the buck" to the "new mommies" and let them take over. Don't let him do that. It's his kid -- he should do the communicating. This way, you don't get made out to be the bad guy!

No. Don't communicate with the BM at first and/or if she's crazy.

If you do, she will use this to manipulate you, abuse you, and remind you every chance she gets that you are not the mom. Do not ever do her any favors - EVER.

Even though you treat your SS as your own, remember that he is not. It will make your life easier as a stepparent.

Leave all the communication with the BM to your DH.

I would suggest not. I communicated way too much with my husband's ex at first, because he was way too happy to let us communicate and coordinate everything without him, but she is so incredibly stupid it always made my head spin. Now, I make him deal with her himself. HE's the one who knocked up a retarded person, not me.

Good luck, and I hope your new problem isn't as bad as mine. I hate her so much. She never wanted to be a mother to my SS until my husband and I got engaged. Before that day, I was raising my SS with my husband and she wasn't involved and everything was fine. Now, she HAS to be involved, and is turning him into a white-trash replica of herself.

It's so sad

BM over here is really not stable. (dh has residential custody of sks) In the beginning I offered to meet her since, ya know I'm raising her kids. But she said no. She in fact went pyscho and sent nasty emails to me, created a fake fb account for DH and pretended to be him, etc etc. It was quite interesting.

Over the years I have extended an offer again when she got married. DH wanted to meet her husband so we offered a sit down for the four of us. That didnt happen. The only time I have spoken to her or DH to her husband is at court, or DH to her husband when BM goes crazy and starts screaming and cussing into the phone, DH will often ask to speak to her husband so we can figure out what is going on.

We have a mediator, but that doesn't help anything. lol.

My advice to you- if her and your bf have a decent relationship, then yes introduce yourself, offer to meet her. But beyond that, no. Let the father handle all the details of sks lives with BM. If she is crazy, just dont even bother.

In my experience I would say you dont need to. Just like what everyone else is saying if she isnt crazy you should talk it through with your bf to figure out if that something that needs to be done, like if you take the child to doctors visits or anything she would need to know about then you should go from there other then that your already dealing with one parent and there ok is as good as the BM ok.

You don't have to do anything that you are not comfortable with. I am a BM and a Step parent so I am on both sides of the spectrum. My ex's new gf refuses to talk to me and even be near me at our dd events, and it bothers me because we have never even spoken. She hates me based on the information provided to her by my ex. Of course, we each have our own stories. The fact is that I have never given her a reason not to communicate with me since her and I have never spoken. I've said hello to her and she just ignores me and is flat out rude. I dislike this for my dd's sake, and wish that she could at least be cordile.

On the flip side. As a step mom, right as soon as dh and I were married his ex began to sabatage and hasnt quite since we have been married, going on three years. I have always wanted a good co-parenting relationship and it's true that if you start taking on a lot of duties right off the bat, it will be expected of you by both people (BM and DH). That is what happened to me, and I had to back track with some boundaries.

So really, its hard to say if you should communicate with her, it's not really black and white. It depends on each situation, case by case. Some topics I choose to leave in the hands of my dh and some things affect me and I will speak up about, and trust me she does not like that one bit.

It comes down to maintaning healthy boundaries and deciding at the time if it is something that you should/could handle or if it is something better left for your bf to deal with.

You are ultimately the only one who can decide whether it's worth it to talk to BM. As a BM, I'm amicable with XH and his GF, facebook friends and such. I know they aren't perfect, but as long as my kids see us getting along, I'm all for open communication with all parties in regards to the kids. We all interact with them, it only makes the most sense.

That being said, the situation with me as SM, and the BM we deal with, this kind of relationship is not possible. The best thing I can do is stay low key. Every time I try and open my mouth about anything, no matter how small, or insignificant or helpful the topic is, it always comes back to bite me in the ass, and make me feel like the asshole of the situation, when I never really did anything wrong.

I would put some feelers out. If you think you can have an amicable relationship, and your nerves are just getting the best of you, by all means, go for it. In our situation, as soon as I saw the most recent GF was long term, I made no hesitation about welcoming her into our family. And while she's been a little hesitant, I've given her no reason to fear anything of me. If you've been given legitimate reason to fear your BM, just stay out of communications until she comes to you.