De-Lurking after a few years!

sweet1600s · August 2012

Hi everyone!

I used to lurk here quite a bit when I was pregnant with my DD in 2010. At the time it was clear her father and I would not be getting back together, so I guess I was looking to this board to prepare for my eventual familial situation haha.

Now I'm engaged to the love of my life and pregnant with #2, so I guess we're really becoming a blended family!

A little background on DD and I:

I got pregnant when I was 20 and dating a guy I went to high school with, we were in the same group of friends. We broke up before I even found out I was pregnant, and when I told him, his reaction was Don't Tell Anyone, my parents are going to kill me and I'm getting baptised next month. We had no contact after that, despite being at the same party a few time over the summer, until 2 months before DD was due. I decided I had waited long enough, and his parents (who I had never met) deserved to know they had a granddaughter coming. I wrote them a letter, and decided to give BD one more chance to be involved in his daughter's life, or at least be the one to tell his parents about her. Through a complicated, emotional series of events, he decided that he DID want to be in his daughter's life, and told his parents about her 6 weeks before she was born. After talking a great talk for the first few months of her life, it became apparent that he's still far too immature and selfish to be a good dad. I spent the first year of her life basically begging him to be more involved, and after she turned 1, I let him know that I will never try to keep them apart, I will do whatever I can to support their relationship, but I can't create their relationship by myself. That's up to him. Since her first birthday(last September), he has seen her 5 times. Once at Thanksgiving when I took her to his parents house, once at Christmas at his parents house, and then one afternoon in February, one in April, and one last weekend, all at his parents house when he was there to do yard work for them and they asked me to bring her over. We live 2 hours away from him, and 1 hour 20 minutes away from his parents. My grandparents and a lot of my friends live in the same town as his parents, and we're there almost every weekend.

His family is wonderful, they've embraced DD and I since the moment they found out about her. His parents see her at least three times a month, and both his sisters see her every chance they get. His older sister has a son who is 10 months younger than DD and they just love each other. Both his sisters and I have become great friends. My relationship with his family is a little complicated, as I try very hard not to criticize their son directly to them, but they know that he's not a good dad. In addition to which, I know that his parents were holding out hope that we would end up back together until I got engaged to my fianc? in January. And with the new baby coming, I know things are going to get more complicated!

I'm glad to be joining a group of women with so much more experience navigating blended families than I do, and so many different perspectives. I look forward to everyone's advice and wisdom!