Step daughter is pregnant
Hello, I am new to this page and hoping someone can help me. My step daughter is 17 and just told us she is pregnant .she does not have a good relationship with her mother right now and does not want her to know .she does not have a family Dr and wants me to see if my son's will take her .I have no problem helping her anyway that I can but her mother has her insurance info and I am not sure how to go about everything without her finding out. I know she is her mother and has a right to know but since they divorced she has kind of just given up on her and she is never home because she is always on the road with her boyfriend who is a truck driver and has pretty much abandoned all of the kids right now. If anyone could help me by guiding me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it.
Her mother is going to find
Her mother is going to find out about this sooner or later. I would seriously let your husband handle this with his daughter.
Does that mean that your DH
Does that mean that your DH has custody? Does the mother have joint legal? If so, your DH has to let her know, I would think. I would just have the SD be sure she has decided what she plans to do and then let the mother know.
I have been in the same situation as a 16 year old girl. I was deathly afraid of my mother. I understand why she doesn't want to tell her mom. She could possibly just send a text or email notifying BM about the pregnancy and her plans and then shut off the phone for awhile.
You could just ask BM for the
You could just ask BM for the insurance info because SD has to go to the doctor. I dont know what state you are in but there are laws in many states where providers cannot discuss pregnancy related issues with a parent if the child is over a certain age. In some states that age is as low as 14.
Despite this, I think you should encourage SD to tell her mom. It will eventually come out so your SD needs to talk to her. Honestly, if your SD is old enough to be a mother, she needs to start acting like an adult. This is one of those difficult things she will need to deal with.
They have joint custody of
They have joint custody of all the children. Step daughter says she doesn't want anyone else to know until they know what it is. She is a very good girl. Responsible and a good student .her mother would not give me her info because she is, well, she doesn't like me. We have had to call the cops on her once for breaking in the house and destroying my belongings and a few of his things. She is not a very stable person .I feel she has a right to know to but she turns 18 in a few weeks and can't force her to do anything then and their father is very adamant about letting them be their own person and living their own lives and making their own choices. So I feel like I am stuck in the middle. I want to help but I don't want to step on anyone's toes
Bigger problems
a 17 year old pregnant. Who going to take care of this baby ? Who going to pay for it ? Mother is going to find out anyway. I can’t understa why you are playing this game ? You are not the 17 YO. As a adult you know this girl needs everyone’s support and most likely everyone is going to have to help her. You are going to have to suck it up with BM
baby
My sd16 had a baby as well. My dh have pushed her to continue with her dream of going to college in order to support her child. BM is psychotic so sd lives with us but ironically became pregnant at bm's house because bm has no rules or boundaries. Your sd's bm will find out, this is something that can't really be hidden. Even though we have good insurance, sd and her baby qualified for medicaid simply because of her age that fact that she was still in school. I would encourage you to have your sd reach out to her community resources as far as getting hooked up with medicaid, wic, etc. Ultimately she is the one who will be raising the baby and hopefully she has enough positive mentors in her life that she can look at the fact that she can potentially gain a career as well as raise her child. I would continue to push her to seek a college education with the realization that she may need some extra support from you all while she is trying to achieve that.
I must say your focus is
I must say your focus is vastly different to what mine would be - ie you're worried about insurance and not telling BM I would be worried about what happens when the baby comes. I personally think BM has a right to know (no matter how awful she is) given your SD is under 18 and technically they share custody. That being said, it's not up to you to tell her - it's up to your DH who seems to have washed his hands of the whole thing so there isn't much you can do.
What I can't understand is why you aren't more worried about what happens when baby arrives. No matter how responsible your SD is - she is going to need a lot of support (both physcially, emotionally and financially) when baby comes and I would imagine that will all have to come from you and DH given BM is absent from her life?
That's a lot to take on and not something I would be prepared to do. My SD13 is irresponsible, extremely naive, immature and limited emotionally so it's always been a fear of mine that she will end up pregnant. If she decided to keep the child there is absolutely no way I would allow her to live with us. I've raised (equal custody with BM0 SD since she was 2 and her brother since he was a baby. I've got another decade or so before both are probably off our hands and there is just no way I'm ever going to raise anyone else's kid EVER AGAIN. Nor will I regularly babysit. If SD does get pregnant and wants to keep it then she needs to live with BM and raise the child on her own.
If SD is big enough to breed.
If SD is big enough to breed... she can support herself and her spawn. Pretty simple. Not to say that you and her father shouldn't provide guidance and help her nail the BioDad to the wall for a pile of CS and more importantly keep your collective foot up this young breeders ass to do what you can to keep her from ruining her spawn's life.
She is only going to be able to hide this for so long. This is merely a fact that she needs to deal with rather than hide and avoid.
IMHO of course.