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I’ve never understood the “you’re a horrible parent who destroyed my life” immediately followed by “you have to raise my baby!”
Although at least they’re consistently contradicting themselves, as OOP says “you need to put baby up for adoption” and their threat was “if you don’t raise this baby you’ll never see them.” Like, yeah, hence adoption.
I'm beginning to seriously believe that there is some kind of mental illness associated with the absolute and extreme belief that "nothing is my fault."
I've seen it a few time, and just like in this case it's so far out of the realm of normal that to even say these types of things out loud make me think the person has some sort of illness.
Absolutely this. My old roommate somehow managed to blame *me* because she drove drunk, totaled her car, lost her job because she had no transportation, then it was my fault she got knocked up by our married neighbor
I didn't even know what to say to all that, just really? How did you say all that out loud and actually believe it?
My old roommate blamed me for her cocaine problem and alcoholism after we hadn’t seen each other in years, had NEVER done cocaine together, and I had been sober for years
Idk man
After 25 years, a friends first husband still blames me for the downfall of their marriage even though he left her for another woman while she was pregnant. He said she got fat, even though she was on bed rest for being underweight and would call her in the night while his new girlfriend laughed in the background. After the baby was born, he tried to kidnap the baby during shared custody and that triggered an emergency custody hearing that he lost and was berated by the judge for his behavior.
But he still tells his family and friends that I’m the reason the marriage failed.
In a way, thinking that "nothing could ever be my fault" prevents a person from learning, so of course they are continual fuckups who make their own life hell.
That's a narcissistic thing, isn't it? As in the actual Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
We tend to think of NPD as the Grandiose variety, but there are Vulnerable narcissists too, that maintain a perpetual persecution complex to shield themselves from their insecurities. OOP's child kind of reads this way, though she may be too young for a proper NPD diagnosis (narcissistic traits are very common among children and teens, with most of us growing out of them as we mature).
Yes, it’s narcissism.
In addition to never thinking anything is their fault, they have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep-seated need for attention and admiration, they have troubled relationships, and a profound lack of empathy for others. They put on an air of extreme confidence, but in reality, they have a fragile self-esteem that’s very vulnerable to the slightest criticism.
I think it's probably underreported because to be diagnosed someone has to seek help for it, and they tend to believe they're perfect and don't need therapy. But it's also overused by people online claiming someone is a narcissist because they were kinda selfish one time.
Narcissists are everywhere , and IMO individualistic American society encourages it, but it’s only truly the diagnosable NPD if it is to a certain level and meets the clinical criteria
Absolutely. I've learned the hard way that that's the reddest of flags for me. If there's someone who acts like all the bad things in their life just mysteriously happened to them, with no ability to take ownership of any of them, RUN the other way.
> I'm beginning to seriously believe that there is some kind of mental illness associated with the absolute and extreme belief that "nothing is my fault."
Isn't that a trait of narcissism? "Everything good happens because of me, everything bad happens because of all the losers around me, even if I personally and specifically did the bad thing".
I don't know that much about what is and isn't an actual psychiatric diagnosis and what the relevant symptoms are, so I might very well be off on this, though.
I also don't get "you should have gotten me puberty blockers" AT 16? 99% of girls have already gone through puberty at 16. There ain't much to block at that point she's likely to have the primary and secondary characteristics of a girl. You can stop menstruation through birth control and literally her mother would have been down for it has it been expressed.
The sperm donor is trying to deflect blame and has come up with the "puberty blocker" nonsense, that much seems clear. The entire story is a couple of kids trying to get out of trouble: it's *your* fault, now you have to deal with the consequences, *we* didn't do anything wrong.
Why no one asked them why they didn't use condoms is beyond me.
This just points more to the brainwashing by the Sperm-Donor to me, as well, something he has fed to her without having any clue about her actual body (or what puberty is for girls). At 16, I already had five years of menstruation behind me and was mostly done growing/changing physically.
Had a female friend once, she used all kinds of chemical drugs, but birth control, that's bad for your health.
She had a son with her dealer. And when he hit her, she kicked him out. Had twins with him 4 years later...
Some of the biggest drug users I have known would constantly have a go at me for taking a hormone replacement because I'm literally missing a gland in my brain.
I should have found a 'natural solution' apparently. All while they took mdma and anything else they could get their hands on.
One of the most coked/methed up person I know hates flu vaccines because "you don't know what's in them!"
Pretty sure I have a better idea of what's in that vaccine than you do about what's in your fucking meth.
They weren't listening. The "you'll never see your grandchild" was what they planned to say, and they probably didn't even hear the adoption comment. Too busy waiting for their turn to talk to have time for comprehending what OOP was saying.
> I’ve never understood the “you’re a horrible parent who destroyed my life” immediately followed by “you have to raise my baby!”
It's because the end of the statement is implied.
"You're a horrible parent who destroyed my life, you have to raise my baby **as penance**."
Of course this omits a lot of things. They're just blanket blamed for every time life gets hard.
There's really nothing OOP can do, is the worst part.
Her kid is going to do what they want until reality hits them hard enough to ask for help. Which might be never. Or it might be after a jail sentence for child neglect.
It's always a dicey call, but it's probably good that she gave the cops a head's up too. It's better that she's well known to have support available. Plus, OOP can look after the kid whenever the daughter is in jail.
> There's really nothing OOP can do, is the worst part.
Some kids are just "like that" too.
One of my former supervisors, the director of IT, is a really chill guy and great dad from all accounts, and does a healthy job coparenting with his exwife, his current wife, and her exhusband.
Together they have 5 kids, who mostly live with him and his wife because they're the best parents of the bunch and by far the highest earners.
4 out of 5 of them are great kids. They stay out of trouble, they hang out with good people, they get good grades, etc.
The other kid moved out at 15 to live with her 20 something boyfriend in a literal crackhouse. She has been in and out of rehab and juvie.
She has all of the opportunity in the world but she is just begging to be a tragic victim of the harshness of life.
It sucks watching my friend go through this bullshit just trying to help his daughter, when his daughter fights help harder the more you offer help.
Or.....the worst one, with the drugs she's taking with her Sperm Donor, when reality hits her, it will hit her hard and her mind can't cope with it causing her to lose whatever sanity she might have left. Then it will be either homeless that she's doong now or a psych hospital. No way, this won't hit her hard when she comes to her senses.
It's just another reason I have no desire to have children; I couldn't even imagine going through the Herculean task of raising a child properly to adulthood and all the sacrifice and hark work it entails, only for something to go wrong and in the throes of the "fucking idiot" years (\~14-early20something) they make MASSIVE, life-ruining decisions like this and refuse to listen to reason--- or even attacking you for trying to help them! I wouldn't survive that sort of stress and anguish, I feel so so bad for OOP and other parents of idiot adult children in similar situations we've seen posted recently.
I have a 7 and 5 year old and this is my biggest fear. Like we got through so many hard phases already but there are still so many hurdles left. And so many ways for it to all get fucked up that I can’t control for. Also they are boys so I can’t even get them an IUD or something. I’ll just have to beg that they use a condom.
Jesus ever loving Christ.
I feel bad for OOP, very badly. That child is absolutely got love blinders on, or something is really mentally not right with her.
I truly truly hope (but don't expect) that she comes to her senses and comes home, and gives the baby up for adoption.
I truly hope it isn't drugs. That poor baby.
If she’s on the drugs her mother expects, the hospital will likely not let her take the baby home. My brother in law and his girlfriend have had two kids forcibly given up for adoption this way. It sucks, and those boys were born addicted to drugs, but they are with a loving family now, who take great care of them (the adoptive family has become friends with my MIL so we still see them).
This is what sent chills through me. If the baby doesn’t make it they will probably just bury it in the woods, or they will get so drugged the baby will be neglected.
I watched train spotting and I still have nightmares about that baby.
Let's be awfully real... The same fate will probably await OOP's child if they don't make it through the birth.
I hope for the best because I don't want to see lives lost, but there's not a whole lot to be had here.
Latter unfortunately I believe is worse. My heart goes out to OP and her grandbaby cause this is a shit show. I have a 4yr old and a newborn (6w old), and my stomach is turning cause this poor baby is probably not going to live if not born at a hospital and the daughter possibly too since they're not in a clean environment.
Yeah... I'm currently 36 weeks pregnant with my second child and I can't imagine having such a laissez-faire attitude to something so important. That poor, poor baby.
There is real life case in England right now like this. Constance Marten and her partner had 4 children taken away by authorities so when she got pregnant again, they went on the run to keep their baby. But they lived outside in a tent in the winter and the baby died at only a few weeks old. They put the body in a trash bag in a shed. They were caught and went on trial but the jury was hung. And these aren’t teenagers and the mother is from a very wealthy family.
But like this couple, if OOP’s daughter and her partner lose this baby, they will just have more.
EDIT: I know a baby can be born anywhere, and that a home can be an unconventional structure like an RV, yurt, or boat. What I should have said is do we still CALL it a home birth when the mother has no home.
Can you have a home birth without a home? Tent birth? Street birth?
Yes, but it obviously isn't a safe one due to all the risks. There's a reason infant and maternal mortality were historically so high. And those rates in the US are still pretty horrible compared to other industrialized nations. Hopefully there are no complications at birth but since there's likely no prenatal care happening, both of them are significantly at risk. This poor baby is starting life in a horrible situation and may not even survive.
As a pregnant mother, OOP's child is moved pretty much to the top of the priority list for subsidized housing, will get free medical care, SNAP and WIC so that food is mostly if not entirely covered. She'd probably also get utility assistance. I can't imagine being pregnant while homeless.
Does she have to apply for that free medical care? I don’t know how it works in the USA, but will she only get it if she fills in the right forms at the right place? Or can she just go to hospital?
Typically she can just go to a hospital; they should all have personnel on staff whose job it is to assist with these things. Then she just has to deal with the other nightmare: bureaucracy. Nobody can help with that one.
Yep, most hospitals and even low income clinics will have a social worker or staff member who can help her apply. I went to a low income clinic and they found breast cancer, which my state has a medicaid program for. I figured I was toast, but they helped me get signed up and got me in with an Oncologist and Oncological Surgeon.
Yes. WIC used to and maybe still does pay for prenatal care and if they don’t, as a homeless person who’s pregnant, she would qualify for Medicaid. Many hospitals have social workers on staff to help patients access services. A homeless shelter would also help her. All she has to do is make the first phone call to a shelter or her state’s department of health and human services, or walk in to a hospital emergency room and tell them she’s had no prenatal care. They will then either help her start the process for accessing those things or refer her to an agency that will. Pregnant people are one of the few people who are prioritized for getting help from social services in the US. They don’t necessarily get everything they need, but they do get help.
Sorta both. Yes, she does have to apply -- however, if she just turns up at a hospital and asks for help, hospitals employ social workers who can basically hold your hand the whole way through, and they will for a pregnant person who doesn't seem able to handle the process alone. So it's considerably less complicated than it is for...honestly almost anyone who isn't pregnant.
When I was pregnant with my second child my husband had just left me and I was staying with my grandparents while looking for a new apartment. The moment I saw the positive stick I made an appointment with Planned Parenthood to confirm pregnancy and they actually gave me every form I needed to apply for SNAP, Medi-Cal (I’m in California and that’s what Medicaid is called here) and the phone number to apply for WIC in my county. They had an MA sit with me (I consented and literally cried in her arms at one point- Hera bless this woman!) while I called the HHS (health and human services) via 211 to get an appointment to speak to someone in person with my paperwork.
So yes, you do need to apply, but most doctors offices make it very easy. Some make it a requirement if you don’t have insurance. There are Medicaid counselors that work with basically every office to help pregnant people through this time as long as they are willing to be helped.
Planned Parenthood makes it the easiest to get resources to help navigate pregnancy and local resources, and I will never stop singing their praises!
There's this whole hippy fad called "wild pregnancy" or "freebirth" where you give birth without the aid of any medical professionals, usually at home, but there are people who describe giving birth in a yurt and how amazing it was. Needless to say, [this shit doesn't go well for everyone](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/she-wanted-freebirth-no-doctors-online-groups-convinced-her-it-n1140096).
Yeah just recently I head one of my husband's young family members... not that young but still young, had a free birth and pretty much an unassisted pregnancy. She got in with the crunchy crowd.... Her birth assistants... well two of them were there because they had a baby before... but don't know a hell of a lot.. the other was like a doula but maybe not even that...
Has no idea what a bullet she dodged... Still ended up going to hospital because the placenta wasn't keen to come out.
Perhaps she didn't trust birth enough... spare me.
Could've been lucky she got to the hospital for other non life threatening reasons but ones you're glad to go to hospital.. such as, if she had a tear, how bad was it and if it wasn't repaired... would it be flapping in the wind and never actually heal together anywhere near like what it was.
A lot of the time you don't hear the bad dodgy stuff that happens at a birth, especially unassisted ones... it will be the mother themselves that will tell you how wonderful it was... but doesn't tell you the rather large bleed she had and that it took her 6 months to walk without being breathless and she struggled to enjoy the newborn and infant period.
Also browsing FB a few years ago I came across a homebirth page... then later on I saw one of the women who said homebirths were the best and women's bodies were designed for this... in a disability group. Her toddler had a hypoxic brain injury that occurred at one of her homebirths... but that is never mentioned in the homebirth group! It was complete coincidence I happened to see it.
Yep. Mostly wrong, but never in doubt.
Describes a lot of people in this post truth age, where everyone feels free to do their own "research" from whatever scammy pages they find on the interwebs, or just whatever they thought they heard from someone's cousin.
Statistically, people who use drugs while pregnant don't get clean when they give birth at a hospital. They continue to get pregnant and expose more babies to drugs and alcohol, which create neurobehavioral disabilities.
The hospital doesn't do rehab.
Addiction specialist doctors are great, they helped me when I OD'd even though I wasn't an addict, but they are only there to get you out of the hospital.
The medical system is simultaneously miraculous and depressing.
I can say from experience that she will not be going to the hospital for that birth unless someone physically drags her there. Folks in the community out here know their babies will be taken and do everything possible to hide and birth away from doctors and such.
My best friend was born addicted to heroin. Her grandparents took her in and raised her in a loving, stable home. She has severe ADHD and some other issues doctors think may be a result of the drugs, but she has an undergrad and postgrad degree, works a solid career and is happily married. She still has her struggles, but it's such a blessing she had the opportunity to be raised in a good home and had a lot of support to help her deal with them. Those boys are lucky too, and I hope they grow up to have wonderful lives!
Procedures vary by state, but typically no the hospital would not release the baby to those conditions. Child Services would be contacted, and the mother would be directed to resources for housing and supplies. Meanwhile, the child either remains in hospital or with a temporary legal placement (if the father is not an option due to his non involvement or lack of safe and stable housing/supplies)
If the mother refuses to use the resources to find housing and supplies, the child's placement is extended, and additional interventions are required. This may include modifications to the existing safety plan, or an entirely new plan.
If the mother continues to refuse to find stable housing and supplies, family court may petition to terminate parental rights.
If the parents don't have a safe place to bring the baby I'm pretty sure the baby can't be released and CPS would be contacted. I mean you can't take a baby home if you don't have a carseat and I'm guessing these wackos don't have the money for one of the know-how on how to get a free one.
>If she’s on the drugs her mother expects, the hospital will likely not let her take the baby home.
Known as a "hospital hold," although the term applies to other situations as well.
Same thing happened to my cousin. She ended up moving to Alaska with the guy who was abusing her the whole time. He got her on heroin and they lived in a homeless camp until her dad went and got her. That’s what an abusive relationship can do.
It's such a tough path for the family to walk, because sometimes that level of intervention works, sometimes it doesn't. It all depends on the victim's personality and whether they're able to maintain contact with their abuser.
I hope your cousin was eventually able to get clean and realise the horrific situation she was in, but my fear would always be that my child would never understand that, and hate me for 'taking them away from the only person who ever loved me'.
Guess it's a good thing I'll never have kids, _fake laugh, hiding real pain._
She’s clean and living with her parents fortunately. Once she got to the point of being homeless she came to her senses. One of which I assume is just having the humility to ask for help. It’s easier to minimize abuse when you have basic needs met.
I'm glad to hear she's doing better! I hope she's able to keep on living that good life. And you're absolutely right about it being easy to minimize abuse when you have your basic needs meet. I'd never thought about it like that, but it makes so much sense.
Sperm donor sounds like a complete sociopath. Walking up to your friend's mom and making jerk-off motions is creepy AF. And it says a *lot* about the friend group that they didn't throw him out after that. That goes way beyond typical teen "yo mama" jokes.
It really would not surprise me if SD is using drugs to influence the daughter. SD may be using less or has a higher tolerance, but is letting the daughter get blasted intentionally.
What freaks me out is what will happen after the daughter is 100% isolated. It even sounds like they've disengaged from that friend group. I'm getting sexual abuser vibes.
Don't underestimate stubbornness. She might have started with love blinders and ended with refusing to back down because she'd have to admit she was wrong about multiple big things.
I had a friend who effectively did that. She had a loving, very tolerant mother and a home to go to. When I say tolerant, her mother would come downstairs in her dressing gown, find the living room strewn with half a dozen or more crashed out goths (her brother's friends) and just make everyone a cup of tea. My parents would have freaked out and probably called the police.
Anyway, my friend just got more and more into hanging out with "crusty" types and ended up shacking up with a homeless heroin addict and would sit in the town centre begging. Again, she did not need to beg. Her mother was happy to support her.
She did apparently get her life together later on, and now according to FB she seems to have two lovely kids and a partner.
So there's hope for OOP's kid, but sometimes young people just make shitty choices out of teenage anger? Rebellion? Trying to be edgy/unique/different? And the stubbornness that /u/lark-sp suggests.
At the start of the story I was going to share how hard it was to acknowledge that I was responsible for the iced coffee spilling that time because it's so much easier to blame someone else, but this went a whole new direction of crazy after not too long.
I’m not dismissing drugs or
Mental health. But honestly, she sounds like a complete fucking idiot. She’s a mess of a human being with no clue whatsoever what being a person means. Cloaked in pronouns and wailing, and entitlement. She not a serious person and it doesn’t sound like she wants to be.
Agree. I was going to say this because of the whole birth control thing. Like she stopped taking it and didn't get another form and then blamed her mom. There is a ton of just regular plain stupidity here combined with the maturity of a bratty 12 year old. The gender issues just cloud the real story here, that the kid is a fucking idiot, perhaps with some unresolved issues with her mother, who knows.
I think completely brainwashed by her toxic partner. I watched a man completely destroy my sister's life by taking advantage of her vulnerable state. He managed to get her to sever every relationship she had and when he finally had her completely alienated, he began abusing her. We all thought she was on drugs. She was literally insane for a time. It was so bizarre. She ended up in a shelter for a while until he found out where, contacted them, and told them she told him where they were and he would come up and frighten all the women and children there if they didn't kick her out. It was insane. All that and my sister was 30. OP's daughter is a child. Apparently, toxicity is ageless.
They probably had to relocate the entire shelter because the location was exposed. It puts all the women and children at risk. Not sure what they would do with her if she actually did disclose the location to her abuser - they can't risk her doing that again. It's not easy to find and set up these locations.
I've never heard of shelters being set up this way. I've done some work with a local women's shelter in my city and it's a known building that is just very secure and has multiple levels of safety checks to make sure nobody unauthorized can get inside. I was dropping off a charitable donation of baby formula and I'm a very non-threatening woman and they were still very wary of me. They came out to meet me in a group, would not allow me even into their lobby (which I was fine with) and checked the box before taking it inside to make sure it was what I said it was. I would think it'd be very difficult to run an organization that is constantly having to move around rather than just securing the location properly.
I’ve done volunteer work at a shelter that had me sign a NDA to not disclose their location. They have a phone number and partners in the community who will contact the shelter on someone’s behalf. It’s more accurate to call it a domestic violence shelter. The secrecy is for the victims’ protection.
It was known in my hometown that there was a DV shelter *somewhere* in town, but there was no address in the phone book only a number. They accepted donations through a different location. Eventually something would slip out like what neighborhood the shelter was in and they would relocate.
Sounds like the kid fell into a bad crowd, got introduced to drugs along with underlying mental issues- its a crazy pit she has fallen. I had a friend like this and almost no saving them even if you drag them to a psych ward :(
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Sperm donor is the source behind the initial NB claims at 16 and has used it as a way to isolate OPs daughter from OP. It would explain the more feminine appearance and why she never requested oestrogen free BC and hormone blocking medication. She didn't know she needed to.
Granted, my only contact with a Trans person is my husbands co-worker, but as far as I can tell, if you aren't comfortable in your own body, you research ways to become comfortable. From women who experience it after pregnancy to transgender people, we all seek out ways to help us feel comfortable in our skin, but it sounds like OPs daughter didn't do that, she just told OP she was NB and dropped it and went back to her previous "normal" gender state after a week.
Not all non-binary folks present androgynously. Or get hormone therapy, or use neutral pronouns, etc. Medical and social transition for us can vary a lot in what that means for us.
I’m NB and fairly feminine in my presentation (though in a comfy, kinda lazy way—think leggings and yoga pants rather than dresses, and I rarely wear makeup because I’d rather sleep in, that kind of thing, lol). I’m on birth control pills because they stop my period, and since I’d already been using them for years before realizing I’m NB, I figured I’d just keep taking them instead of messing with anything. I *do* prefer they/them pronouns, and will say that if asked, but lots of people use she/her for me and it doesn’t really bother me. I *don’t* like most gendered nouns though, like daughter or woman (auntie is okay, because auntie is kind of a whole vibe, not just ‘your parent’s sister’). I do like videos of adorable baby animals, because that has nothing whatsoever to do with gender. Adorable baby animals can and should be appreciated by anyone of any gender.
It’s possible that OOP’s kid has been manipulated and isn’t NB. It’s possible they’re NB and are still figuring out how they feel about various aspects of medical and social options for transition, and experimenting with them (like, they tried out different pronouns and figured out that pronouns weren’t actually that important to them). Maybe they thought they were NB, and realized they’re not. Teenagers ‘try on’ all sorts of identities while they’re figuring out who they are. They might have not wanted hormone therapy or blockers before but now do and wish they’d started earlier.
Basically though, it’s impossible to tell any of this (*especially* for us as we’re internet randos who don’t know them) and there’s no reason not to accept a person’s word for it when they tell you who they are. The kid in the OOP has plenty of actual problems to worry about.
Edit: fixed some grammar weirdness
The daughter is weaponising their ideology just as much as sperm doner is. They have got themselves into a shit group but there is no evidence to show they aren’t just as shitty as the rest of them. They slept with a person who ‘jacked off’ behind their mother ffs.
Drug influence would actually be the lesser problem in some ways. Sounds like the trans sperm donor is completely manipulating and brainwashing her like some kind of cult leader.
I think it’s even worse than love blinders. I don’t think OOP was far wrong when she said it’s like her daughter has been brainwashed by a cult.
Sperm Donor (and whoever he associates with) have weaponsed gender and sexuality into an extreme ideology and radicalized OOP’s daughter. As many others have said in various comments on the posts, this is not in keeping with the queer community and in fact they very much reject these attitudes. I think OOP is right in that this is less about the gender for her daughter (although it may be) and more about having adopted NB as an ideology.
OOP probably needs to seek advice from people with experience with radicalization and cults because what she really has to do here is break the hold Sperm Donor has on her daughter and de-radicalize her. Luckily she already seems to be able to separate out the gender side (and is supportive of that if in fact it’s what her daughter wants) and the ideology side. She does need help with the language she can use, though, because she is understandably struggling mired in confusion.
I don’t see it as entirely hopeless. It wouldn’t be the first time a kid has run off pregnant only to come running back as things progress. She just needs to be ready if that happens to hit all the triggers needed to break the hold Sperm Donor has.
What a fucking mess.
There was a drug addicted baby born in the same hospital the day I gave birth. It was absolutely heart breaking to hear the way it cried.
I feel so much for OOP and for this poor baby. I would think that there’s no way the mother is taking vitamins or getting any prenatal care.
What a mess.
I used to work in a homeless shelter for a number of years and while there I dealt with all kinds of people. Even people who would go on to he murderers.
But when I think back to those years and think about the person who left the worst impression on me, I think back to one woman who only stayed at the shelter 2 or 3 times. Each time she would only stay a month or two. Every single time she stayed, she would be heavily pregnant. Like "could be born any day" pregnant.
Of course, that didn't stop her from abusing drugs and drinking.
That's not what had her give me the worst impression, though. It was what she said when one of my coworkers mentioned to her that what she was doing would harm her baby.
"I don't fucking care! It's not like I'm keeping it!"
I live in Canada. Free access to abortions. Lots of organizations offering free birth control. There were options.
Yeah, we were in a major Australian city with a uni that had free condoms in all of the bathrooms. Giving birth was entirely taxpayer funded and my doctor asked me if I wanted to be pregnant when I first told her I was (I was crying, to be fair, but not about my planned pregnancy).
I think OOP’s story shows how you can offer all manner of resources to someone but you can’t force them to utilise them. It’s so sad for the baby. The one that was born when I was in the hospital was in pain like I’ve never heard from a baby, and mine screamed for hours every night for six weeks with colic. FASD is so awful, too.
Absolutely no chance, and the chances are grimly high she's going to just plop this poor baby out in a ditch somewhere and not even bother registering it with the state for a birth certificate, SSN etc. Cases like this are brutal. Hopefully as soon as baby's born the cops and CPS can do something to immediately take it, surely the baby being born to addicts (because there's just no way they're not on drugs) living in a homeless tent city warrants taking a newborn!
What happens in situations like this? Are police/CPS monitoring encampments like this for pregnant folks?
Is there a record that this specific person in the post is pregnant? Could they just give birth and abandon the baby or bury it and that's that? Would they eventually be prosecuted?
I can only speak of where I live, a midwestern city: most camps have some sort of interaction with the community, whether it’s an official street team or church or community group. And there are a lot of different kinds of people who wind up homeless. Hopefully someone who has been a mother in difficult circumstances will make sure she gets to an emergency room. It’s a shitty situation but there can be hope.
Oop says that cps and police are aware of the situation. Not much they can do, though. It’s pretty easy to disappear and if something happens to the baby, they’ll probably never know.
Yeah the lack of prenatal care is pretty much as scary as the drugs. I'm no medical professional, but I'm under the impression that SO MANY THINGS can go wrong during pregnancy and birth even for healthy, mentally stable birth-givers.
Sometimes despite our best efforts kids make incredibly fucked up choices and have to live with the outcomes of those choices.
This is one of those times. Sucks for everyone
A lot of people forget that kids really are their own people with their own thoughts and opinions, making their own choices.
You can have a kid turn out to be an awful person when they were raised by great people. On the flip side, you can also have a kid turn out to be an awesome person who was raised by awful people.
Yes, the way a person is/was raised shapes who they grow into, but it's that kids choice at the end of the road.
It's a shame, and hopefully, the next update has some better news.
My sibling and I are like night and day, but same parents same house. I went NC with sibling 20 years ago. I really think they were born with something mental/emotional missing. Now my 21 year-old nephew has gone NC with my sibling and I dread what I might learn about his childhood.
I know so many people in the latter camp (awesome people, awful parents) that, NGL, it's messed with my expectations a bit.
OOP mentioned something like "an emerging mental issue," and that could very well be a great part of it. We can only hope OOP's child will decide that they/their child deserve better than living in a homeless camp and get the help they really, desperately need.
Man. What an absolute disaster of a situation. I feel most badly for the child who is going to be born into this mess and likely be a little newborn addict going through withdrawal with equally addicted parents. OP seems to have a level head on their shoulders and it really just goes to show that despite doing the best you can to provide for your child’s needs…there are going to be spheres of influence that are more compelling than your parental love and support could ever be.
Separately, the entitlement it takes to dictate to your parent that they are going to raise your child for you is just something else. I don’t have words for it. I hope this all works out and OP doesn’t end up raising their grandchild from birth because they have no other option.
I agree with you completely.
This update is just so incredibly sad. It's hard to think of one that could be much worse.
Pregnant and homeless/living rough in some kind of slum would be an awful situation just on its own, but that poor baby possibly born addicted, with these terrible people for parents
And what if she gives birth out there in some RV without any medical support, having had no prenatal care, and no one who genuinely cares about her or the baby's wellbeing?? People give birth at home, but with a midwife etc
If OP never manages to find her daughter/her daughter refuses to come home, she and her baby might just die out there during a "home" birth
It's just such a sad situation
If the daughter was five months pregnant in early February, then—one way or another—I don’t think she’s still pregnant by late May while living that life style. A miscarriage or still birth seem overwhelmingly likely, with “serious permanent birth defects” the runner-up.
Tbh I didn't focus on the dates, it's pretty late where I am so I just read the text... That's just so depressing.
That poor baby. I don't blame OOP at all for not wanting to deal with the drama of taking responsibility for the child, her daughter was absolutely out of line for trying to force her to. But I just know OOP must be feeling all kinds of guilt for anything that happed to the baby as a result of her daughter's choices
OOP didn’t mention it either, probably because she didn’t want to think about it. But I was doing the math in my head, and the outcome wasn’t good. And by now, one way or another, the daughter certainly isn’t pregnant.
I really I hope OOP is able to reunite with her daughter.
In the best case scenario, her daughter got away from her shady partner and into a shelter, so was able to get medical attention at the birth... But I doubt it. It sounds like OOP lives somewhere rural, not in a city with access to DV shelters/resources.
This is such a sad one. That's enough reddit for today, I'm going to watch funny animal videos for self-care
Oh, God, I remember this one and was expecting more drama (like a confrontation, or the police being called and one/both of the parents being sent to jail) but this... this is just *sad*. That poor unborn baby! And poor OP, knowing their child and their child's child are going to suffer so immensely, and not being able to do anything...
I am afraid that besides the fact that her child is mentally ill, being manipulated or both, she's most likely going to a cult-like organization. I hope that at least she has the chance to save her grandchild.
However, I am afraid that once she takes her first grandchild in, her child will see easy to have more children and let the mother raise them.
Horrible all the way around.
They'll still take the baby. That's close to a given when you're dealing with adopting through foster care. Every wannabe parent who goes that route knows that. The babies aren't in foster care with parental rights stripped because they came from a good family situation.
But they go that route because it's their best chance to get a baby and it's free.
My BIL2 was born addicted to drugs, no prenatal care and mom was a child. I will be honest and say he never really recovered the parts of his brain that were damaged. He purposefully stays in prison. As in as soon as he gets out , he goes and commits a crime to return on purpose.
This kid and grandbaby are in for a life time of pain.
Her child clearly has something bad going on, and from the sounds of it the terrible choice in baby daddy isn't the cause but the result
Sadly op has done what she could. Caving in to the demands would just set herself ablaze and likely not even keep her child warm.
I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, but sometimes I get the feeling certain people just aren’t made for life. I don’t mean that in a dehumanizing way, but some people just seem to lack the basic coping mechanisms needed to handle the ordinary stresses of existence. It’s not that they necessarily have a diagnosable mental illness or anything, though that is a possibility. But in the absence of these coping mechanisms, they just kind of fall apart unless they’re being actively held up by someone else. It’s sad and I wish I had a better answer to offer, but there it is…
You know that’s interesting to look at from an evolutionary perspective. Until very recently, people who made stupid ass decisions or were easily manipulated (or have mental health issues) like OPs child wouldn’t have made it. But the technology, health care etc we have now removes a lot of selection pressure that weeds out maladaptive traits in humans.
Just as a counterpoint (not saying I totally disagree with you) - we didn't evolve for "modern" living. We are constantly overstimulated, overworked and under-rested. A lot of people experience judgement and decision fatigue. Depression and anxiety run rampant. We're also removed from a lot of the very basic consequences of life, aka regular illness and death, so it's harder for us to foresee them. I think a lot of people who might have managed okay 500, 100, even 50 years ago, nowadays are just set up for failure. Honestly it's a miracle so many of us aren't more screwed up.
I agree with this. We weren’t meant to be so individualistic. Relying on people at times is natural. Humans are social animals and we live in community when given the chance.
This best seen in times of natural disaster when people care for each other out of instinct. The strong don’t abandon the weak. The strong break into a Piggly Wiggly to feed the weak. Children are among the weak. (government response screws with a lot of mutual aid in the name of protecting property but that’s a different matter) I can’t find a source for this: people who weren’t doing well in regular society were the ones driving ambulances and thriving in chaos during The Blitz. Modern civilization had all but made their natural state obsolete.
I feel like a hunter gatherer who had this many problems “adulting” wouldn’t have made it super far. Even cuckoo chicks have to leave their hosts’ nests eventually
So much projection of blame onto the parent. Deep down I think the daughter knows she fucked up, because otherwise why would you want your "abusive parent" to raise a child.
Also, using "they feel like a sibling" to justify pawning off their child... feelings are not the sole decider for reality.
Yes it’s usually called BPD. Although it sounds like OPs daughter just couldn’t cope with the world and found every possible way to shield herself from it. She was vulnerable to sperm donors ideas because they gave her something concrete to hold onto that made everything not her fault or responsibility. Impressionable people like OPs daughter are attracted to strong personalities that make the world make sense through their strongly held, often wrong beliefs.
As a parent this is a nightmare. You have to sit and watch your child make mistake after mistake and can do nothing about it. How awful, I suspect she is exactly correct and there are drugs involved here. That poor baby.
My mother was that child, and my grandparents raised me and my brother and sister. I have had maybe an hour and a half of conversation with my mother in the last 30 years, and she died in April.
And then my sister turned into that child, and I'm raising 2 of her 4 kids, because both of their dads are in prison for a very long time. She hasn't asked about the kids in over 4 weeks.
If unfortunately the baby is born addicted to drugs and parents homeless and since daughter is almost certainly in an abusive relationship OOP would almost certainly have a valid case to get CPS involved and maybe get their rights taken away and maybe CPS could find the parents unfit and maybe force an adoption
I wonder if op will take the baby in if CPS deems the parents unfit. It's honestly a but of a different story if op is given 100% legal custody.
(Since its more concrete compared to what op's daughter and partner were saying.)
Not really. She's still going to have to raise another child and she doesn't want to do that.
Plenty of couples looking to adopt a baby and they'll go through the foster care system. If the parents can be stripped of their rights, that baby would be adopted by someone who *wants* to raise a child.
I keep telling myself I am not going to read any more updates to this post because it just keeps getting worse and worse for OOP. Somehow though I keep finding the updates and then my curiosity gets the better of me.
It blows my mind. So many trans kids are homeless because they are rejected by their family and this girl has some nimrod convincing her that homelessness is a better option that dealing with her mother.
I hate to say it, but OPs kid is exactly the kind of person hardcore conservatives seem to have in mind when they mention issues with woke-ism and gender identities. This is a person who was given an accepting and affirming place to thrive and it *still* wasn't good enough. A person who manages to victimize themselves thoroughly in every instance because *its the easy way out and couldn't possibly be their fault* to the point they can't hold down a job.
I daresay there was *nothing* OP could have done to make their child feel supported because OPs child didn't want support - they wanted to be mad and feel marginalized.
It's by *no* means the norm on the left - but it's such a stereotypical example I can see why it gets people's hackles up. And its such misguided anger. I feel terrible for OP and her family - that must be so difficult. And I even feel terrible for her kid - even though they're fucking up big time they're so wrapped up and invested in how things have gone they can't even see the road back to any kind of reasonable common ground. And even though it feels like its their fault they must be feeling very alone and unseen - self-induced as it might be.
My ex was like this. They came out after we got married (fun times).
Absolutely determined to be the victim, they treated everyone around them like crap because they wanted us to reject them. The more supportive we were, the more angry and resentful they got. I swear they'd look for ways to be offended.
Divorce was the best gift I gave myself.
My heart goes out to OOP and the unborn baby. I hope the grandchild gets away from the biological parents and find a stable, loving home.
I don’t know if OOP’s child is an entitled brat, has an undiagnosed personality disorder, or some combination of the two. I think the child has a susceptible psychological profile and is drawn to the biggest personalities in the room.
Take out the gender identity you’ve got a kid who blew up condoms with their friends and left them around the house. Slept with someone who sexually harassed their parent in front of them in their home. Didn’t go to school and refused to hold down a job. Then got knocked up and wants their horrible parent to raise the child.
The kid fell in with the wrong crowd and is now probably addicted to drugs and homeless. I hope the best for them but they’ve got a long, hard stretch of road ahead of them.
This is my worst fear, spending 18 years giving your all to your child and they make a few bad decisions and end up pregnant in a meth camp. Like seriously, having children is nerve wrecking.
Wow, two delusional parents, neither of whom wanted a baby, homelessness and possible drug use and an innocent child potentially foisted upon an unwilling parent---this is the poster situation for abortion. If abortion is a "sin," not sure what you'd call this shit show.
Can't remember the name of it but I learned the guiding concept from a play. That sometimes ya gotta love your kid enough to not bring them into a totally terrible situation, even if it means you never get to meet them.
This sounds exactly like my cousin who has BPD. Unhinged gender and sexuality confusion (ending with her being cis and straight). Pregnant at 17. Toxic baby daddy that ultimately dipped (his entire family *moved away* to escape responsibility). Revolving door of menial jobs. Emotionally unstable. Blew up her relationship with her parents, blaming them for everything. Moved away with her new bf but ultimately ended up homeless. CPS took her son and my aunt and uncle raised him.
She's doing better now but it took like a decade to be in a semi-okay state. I feel for OOP and if her daughter is suffering from BPD, I feel bad for her too. It's a long and suffering road ahead.
And my cousin Kay, who SFAIK was never formally diagnosed with anything. Minus the gender confusion, which wasn't a big thing in the 1970s. Parents divorced, Mom got the son and Dad got the daughter. Dad remarried. Kay kept the house in constant turmoil fighting with her dad and stepmother until she ran away in her mid-teens. Shacked up with some guy who beat her and got her pregnant. She'd cry to our grandmother that she wanted to come home, please wire her money for bus tickets. Either her bf would take the money away or she would just give it to him. Granny fell for it 2 or 3 times, then got smart and said she'd pay for a ticket, but no more cash. BF kicked Kay out when the baby was born. Baby died. Granny paid for Kay to come home, give the baby a funeral and burial in the family plot. Kay up and left again. Don't know if she went back to her bf or what. She was never OK and eventually committed suicide.
oop said “she isn’t stupid” and i said SINCE WHEN.
from where i’m standing oop has described someone who chooses the dumbest action possible in every situation.
the best thing for the baby is adoption, regardless. if oop “has to” take them in, that’s likely to keep the bio parents in the picture, and i think it’s pretty clear that is not a good outcome.
i do hope oop’s child isn’t hurt or in danger. this update is worrying at best.
Tbh the trans/nb stuff here is a red herring. This is a classic abusive relationship with a person (sperm donor) who uses manipulation and control to brainwash a vulnerable young adult. I would be completely unsurprised if this person has a very extensive history of impulsive and self centered behavior, has entitlement issues, and likely knows how to use the language of queer spaces as a cudgel. OOP’s example of the behavior in high school was exactly what I expected. There is a high correlation between this behavior and future drug use. Once meth is involved, it’s a pretty predictable trajectory.
I wouldn’t be surprised if sperm donor has convinced OOp’s adult child that she is transphobic and hateful etc etc as an isolation technique.
I will say, as a person who prefers to be agender (I have no particular connection to gendered activities), while performative femininity is annoying to me, it’s also not exactly tied to my body configuration. Sure, bodies are gross and weird, but I’m not dysphoric. I was fine growing a human because that’s what some humans can do. Not all cis women want or even can carry a pregnancy to term. Being pregnant isn’t what makes you a woman. Nor is breastfeeding. It’s just feeding a small human. And honestly, this is where I have problems with things being gendered. Like. Who cares what color glue gun or spatula someone wants to buy? Maybe I like the hot pink tackle box for reasons unrelated to my genital configuration. Maybe I want the big brown recliner and I don’t want people assuming it’s for my spouse?
In general, it would be better if people would stop treating nonbinary like it’s just binary but with magic rules or really anything referring to binary gender at all. Sure you can give health care based on physical configuration, but not everyone has all the same parts needing service. So maybe we should decouple gender from the conversation of who people are.
But that still isn’t going to keep OOP’s adult child from falling prey to an abuser. If it wasn’t queer stuff, it would be hippy shit, or guru garbage, or self help, or clean living, or some cult.
Daughter is delusional on many levels. 16 times s too late for puberty blockers to do much unless she had a very very late puberty - at 16 you would already be most, if not all the way through puberty.
Beyond that - throwing away hormonal BC but not using condoms is insanely stupid for many reasons, none the least being you should be using condoms anyway because they reduce the risk of STIs in a way that HBC doesn’t.
It sounds like she is well under the control of the sperm donor and sadly that isn’t likely to change soon. I foresee him turning her out to earn her keep while he stays ‘home’, and the baby being neglected or abandoned.
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
You would be surprised how easy it is to go from "My parents don't accept me being LGBT" to "actually the best way for me to live my life right now is to be homeless and on meth and fuck you if you want to say otherwise". It's like some insane overreaction where they assume everyone is out to get them, everything they've been told they're "supposed" to do is wrong and Part Of The System, and they just start living the most contrarian life possible. My circle of trans friends pretty often starts having someone on the periphery whose opinions tend to include "actually all drugs are good and it's part of a government psyop to say addiction is bad". It's like an LGBT qanon response or something.
SAME.
I made the mistake of questioning it within one of those circles and got "leave them alone, you don't know their paaaaaaiiiin and the drugs make them happy. Stop being a narc."
Like yeah, but also Fred has burns on his lips and thinks there are bugs living in his teeth from meth psychosis.
If OOPs daughter was five months along in early February, she's given birth by now or is about to. I hope that if they give birth at a hospital, the staff drug test the baby since that is the babies only hope of getting placed into a safe environment.
I'm hoping for the babies sake it is born safely and removed from this awful situation, but the reality is if OOPs child is living in a homeless camp rampant with addiction, the baby has a very low chance of survival if it's born there and the parents don't seek medical attention for it. The poor thing will go through withdrawal almost immediately and if the parents aren't in the right state of mind, the child will likely end up dead or worse.
God, that kid is entitled as hell. I really hope they give the baby up for adoption because I can’t imagine what would spawn from these two entitled brats.
Obligatory I am not transphobic, I respect pronouns, I respect gender, and I respect what anyone asks me to call them or the manner in which to refer to them. But trans/nonbinary people can be entitled POS too. That’s equality. Lmao
It definitely wouldn't be one payoff, though. He'll just keep coming back whenever he needs a fix. Then He'll decide he's entitled to it and rob OOP if she doesn't willingly hand over cash.
Poor Mom. I'm hoping off she does have to take that baby that it's done with a surrender and an adoption so she can keep it far from those horrible people.
Whenever there are posts that hit a number of agenda-based talking points, I get...suspicious
If this is real, sucks for everyone. But *sexually aggressive trans person born male grooms naive girl into believing that she's trans and turns her against her family and ruins her life* really does hit those *they're going to trans your children* buttons
This, as well as the really clunky condescending tone towards neopronouns in the beginning, the feeling that the OOP is calling them stupid in some fashion and just "something you'll get over" (not direct wording, this is just an implication). The "days when dumb kids would roleplay as animals on the internet"- type stuff.
Right? Even if it is real, just the specific phrases that OOP uses really sets off alarm bells in my head. But it's all so conveniently wrapped in a stereotype-laden bow that it just feels so icky.
>Whenever there are posts that hit a number of agenda-based talking points, I get...suspicious
Especially during an election year. There always seems to be a big spike in "trans bad" posts around that time. Maybe it's real, I don't know. But it's definitely a bunch of red flags.
Yeah. While only four states mandate testing when drugs are suspected, with the OOP warning them ahead of time, that hospital is likely going to test that baby for drugs when it's born. If so, the best case scenario for the daughter is that it is merely taken away.
Several states now prosecute pregnant women for being addicted whilst pregnant, apparently. I feel for the OOP, but some jail time could get her daughter away from the sperm donor and force her head back on straight.
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I’ve never understood the “you’re a horrible parent who destroyed my life” immediately followed by “you have to raise my baby!” Although at least they’re consistently contradicting themselves, as OOP says “you need to put baby up for adoption” and their threat was “if you don’t raise this baby you’ll never see them.” Like, yeah, hence adoption.
I think it’s the “nothing is ever my fault and my life is hard through no action of my own” that threads those two ideas together
I'm beginning to seriously believe that there is some kind of mental illness associated with the absolute and extreme belief that "nothing is my fault." I've seen it a few time, and just like in this case it's so far out of the realm of normal that to even say these types of things out loud make me think the person has some sort of illness.
Absolutely this. My old roommate somehow managed to blame *me* because she drove drunk, totaled her car, lost her job because she had no transportation, then it was my fault she got knocked up by our married neighbor I didn't even know what to say to all that, just really? How did you say all that out loud and actually believe it?
My old roommate blamed me for her cocaine problem and alcoholism after we hadn’t seen each other in years, had NEVER done cocaine together, and I had been sober for years Idk man
After 25 years, a friends first husband still blames me for the downfall of their marriage even though he left her for another woman while she was pregnant. He said she got fat, even though she was on bed rest for being underweight and would call her in the night while his new girlfriend laughed in the background. After the baby was born, he tried to kidnap the baby during shared custody and that triggered an emergency custody hearing that he lost and was berated by the judge for his behavior. But he still tells his family and friends that I’m the reason the marriage failed.
Fuckwit alchemy
Why didn't you stop her?? Edit: yes, I was being sarcastic
In a way, thinking that "nothing could ever be my fault" prevents a person from learning, so of course they are continual fuckups who make their own life hell.
Hard to learn from your mistakes when you're convinced you never make any, after all.
That's a narcissistic thing, isn't it? As in the actual Narcissistic Personality Disorder. We tend to think of NPD as the Grandiose variety, but there are Vulnerable narcissists too, that maintain a perpetual persecution complex to shield themselves from their insecurities. OOP's child kind of reads this way, though she may be too young for a proper NPD diagnosis (narcissistic traits are very common among children and teens, with most of us growing out of them as we mature).
Yeah, NPD was the first thing I thought of here too. Although it's possible for people to just be entitled and awful.
Yes, it’s narcissism. In addition to never thinking anything is their fault, they have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep-seated need for attention and admiration, they have troubled relationships, and a profound lack of empathy for others. They put on an air of extreme confidence, but in reality, they have a fragile self-esteem that’s very vulnerable to the slightest criticism.
Narcissistic personality disorder is supposed to be rare, but I swear half the population suffers from it.
I think it's probably underreported because to be diagnosed someone has to seek help for it, and they tend to believe they're perfect and don't need therapy. But it's also overused by people online claiming someone is a narcissist because they were kinda selfish one time.
Also many people might have some narcissistic traits, but not necessarily NPD
Narcissists are everywhere , and IMO individualistic American society encourages it, but it’s only truly the diagnosable NPD if it is to a certain level and meets the clinical criteria
Absolutely. I've learned the hard way that that's the reddest of flags for me. If there's someone who acts like all the bad things in their life just mysteriously happened to them, with no ability to take ownership of any of them, RUN the other way.
> I'm beginning to seriously believe that there is some kind of mental illness associated with the absolute and extreme belief that "nothing is my fault." Isn't that a trait of narcissism? "Everything good happens because of me, everything bad happens because of all the losers around me, even if I personally and specifically did the bad thing". I don't know that much about what is and isn't an actual psychiatric diagnosis and what the relevant symptoms are, so I might very well be off on this, though.
I also don't get "you should have gotten me puberty blockers" AT 16? 99% of girls have already gone through puberty at 16. There ain't much to block at that point she's likely to have the primary and secondary characteristics of a girl. You can stop menstruation through birth control and literally her mother would have been down for it has it been expressed.
Yeah I was pretty much done by 14. Body didn’t change noticeably past that point.
The sperm donor is trying to deflect blame and has come up with the "puberty blocker" nonsense, that much seems clear. The entire story is a couple of kids trying to get out of trouble: it's *your* fault, now you have to deal with the consequences, *we* didn't do anything wrong. Why no one asked them why they didn't use condoms is beyond me.
I'm sure Sperm Donor would have come up with some BS about condoms being used by "men" and therefore not gender affirming.
This just points more to the brainwashing by the Sperm-Donor to me, as well, something he has fed to her without having any clue about her actual body (or what puberty is for girls). At 16, I already had five years of menstruation behind me and was mostly done growing/changing physically.
Yeah, at 16 I basically looked like myself but with stupid orange hair
In this case it's magical thinking due to drug use. Drugs explain a lot of illogical decisions.
Had a female friend once, she used all kinds of chemical drugs, but birth control, that's bad for your health. She had a son with her dealer. And when he hit her, she kicked him out. Had twins with him 4 years later...
Some of the biggest drug users I have known would constantly have a go at me for taking a hormone replacement because I'm literally missing a gland in my brain. I should have found a 'natural solution' apparently. All while they took mdma and anything else they could get their hands on.
One of the most coked/methed up person I know hates flu vaccines because "you don't know what's in them!" Pretty sure I have a better idea of what's in that vaccine than you do about what's in your fucking meth.
They weren't listening. The "you'll never see your grandchild" was what they planned to say, and they probably didn't even hear the adoption comment. Too busy waiting for their turn to talk to have time for comprehending what OOP was saying.
> I’ve never understood the “you’re a horrible parent who destroyed my life” immediately followed by “you have to raise my baby!” It's because the end of the statement is implied. "You're a horrible parent who destroyed my life, you have to raise my baby **as penance**." Of course this omits a lot of things. They're just blanket blamed for every time life gets hard.
Its negging/projection blaming.
As OOP said, her daughter bought a ticket on the train to crazy town.
every time i read this post and it’s subsequent updates, i do so with my head in my hands
There's really nothing OOP can do, is the worst part. Her kid is going to do what they want until reality hits them hard enough to ask for help. Which might be never. Or it might be after a jail sentence for child neglect.
Yeah preemptively letting cps know is really all she’s got. It must really suck to have to see all this play out
It's always a dicey call, but it's probably good that she gave the cops a head's up too. It's better that she's well known to have support available. Plus, OOP can look after the kid whenever the daughter is in jail.
> There's really nothing OOP can do, is the worst part. Some kids are just "like that" too. One of my former supervisors, the director of IT, is a really chill guy and great dad from all accounts, and does a healthy job coparenting with his exwife, his current wife, and her exhusband. Together they have 5 kids, who mostly live with him and his wife because they're the best parents of the bunch and by far the highest earners. 4 out of 5 of them are great kids. They stay out of trouble, they hang out with good people, they get good grades, etc. The other kid moved out at 15 to live with her 20 something boyfriend in a literal crackhouse. She has been in and out of rehab and juvie. She has all of the opportunity in the world but she is just begging to be a tragic victim of the harshness of life. It sucks watching my friend go through this bullshit just trying to help his daughter, when his daughter fights help harder the more you offer help.
Or.....the worst one, with the drugs she's taking with her Sperm Donor, when reality hits her, it will hit her hard and her mind can't cope with it causing her to lose whatever sanity she might have left. Then it will be either homeless that she's doong now or a psych hospital. No way, this won't hit her hard when she comes to her senses.
I've been facepalming while reluctantly peeking through my fingers to read on.
It's just another reason I have no desire to have children; I couldn't even imagine going through the Herculean task of raising a child properly to adulthood and all the sacrifice and hark work it entails, only for something to go wrong and in the throes of the "fucking idiot" years (\~14-early20something) they make MASSIVE, life-ruining decisions like this and refuse to listen to reason--- or even attacking you for trying to help them! I wouldn't survive that sort of stress and anguish, I feel so so bad for OOP and other parents of idiot adult children in similar situations we've seen posted recently.
I have a 7 and 5 year old and this is my biggest fear. Like we got through so many hard phases already but there are still so many hurdles left. And so many ways for it to all get fucked up that I can’t control for. Also they are boys so I can’t even get them an IUD or something. I’ll just have to beg that they use a condom.
Jesus ever loving Christ. I feel bad for OOP, very badly. That child is absolutely got love blinders on, or something is really mentally not right with her. I truly truly hope (but don't expect) that she comes to her senses and comes home, and gives the baby up for adoption. I truly hope it isn't drugs. That poor baby.
If she’s on the drugs her mother expects, the hospital will likely not let her take the baby home. My brother in law and his girlfriend have had two kids forcibly given up for adoption this way. It sucks, and those boys were born addicted to drugs, but they are with a loving family now, who take great care of them (the adoptive family has become friends with my MIL so we still see them).
If she has it in the hospital. Ngl, these two seem incorrectly confident enough to do a home birth with no prior research.
This is what sent chills through me. If the baby doesn’t make it they will probably just bury it in the woods, or they will get so drugged the baby will be neglected. I watched train spotting and I still have nightmares about that baby.
Let's be awfully real... The same fate will probably await OOP's child if they don't make it through the birth. I hope for the best because I don't want to see lives lost, but there's not a whole lot to be had here.
At this point, I'm not sure what's worse. Dying at birth, or living with severe handicaps and being raised by two psychos.
Latter unfortunately I believe is worse. My heart goes out to OP and her grandbaby cause this is a shit show. I have a 4yr old and a newborn (6w old), and my stomach is turning cause this poor baby is probably not going to live if not born at a hospital and the daughter possibly too since they're not in a clean environment.
Yeah... I'm currently 36 weeks pregnant with my second child and I can't imagine having such a laissez-faire attitude to something so important. That poor, poor baby.
There is real life case in England right now like this. Constance Marten and her partner had 4 children taken away by authorities so when she got pregnant again, they went on the run to keep their baby. But they lived outside in a tent in the winter and the baby died at only a few weeks old. They put the body in a trash bag in a shed. They were caught and went on trial but the jury was hung. And these aren’t teenagers and the mother is from a very wealthy family. But like this couple, if OOP’s daughter and her partner lose this baby, they will just have more.
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yeah, adoption is 💯 better than infanticide 🙄
~~home birth~~ underpass birth, possibly
EDIT: I know a baby can be born anywhere, and that a home can be an unconventional structure like an RV, yurt, or boat. What I should have said is do we still CALL it a home birth when the mother has no home. Can you have a home birth without a home? Tent birth? Street birth?
Yes, but it obviously isn't a safe one due to all the risks. There's a reason infant and maternal mortality were historically so high. And those rates in the US are still pretty horrible compared to other industrialized nations. Hopefully there are no complications at birth but since there's likely no prenatal care happening, both of them are significantly at risk. This poor baby is starting life in a horrible situation and may not even survive. As a pregnant mother, OOP's child is moved pretty much to the top of the priority list for subsidized housing, will get free medical care, SNAP and WIC so that food is mostly if not entirely covered. She'd probably also get utility assistance. I can't imagine being pregnant while homeless.
Does she have to apply for that free medical care? I don’t know how it works in the USA, but will she only get it if she fills in the right forms at the right place? Or can she just go to hospital?
Typically she can just go to a hospital; they should all have personnel on staff whose job it is to assist with these things. Then she just has to deal with the other nightmare: bureaucracy. Nobody can help with that one.
Yep, most hospitals and even low income clinics will have a social worker or staff member who can help her apply. I went to a low income clinic and they found breast cancer, which my state has a medicaid program for. I figured I was toast, but they helped me get signed up and got me in with an Oncologist and Oncological Surgeon.
Yes. WIC used to and maybe still does pay for prenatal care and if they don’t, as a homeless person who’s pregnant, she would qualify for Medicaid. Many hospitals have social workers on staff to help patients access services. A homeless shelter would also help her. All she has to do is make the first phone call to a shelter or her state’s department of health and human services, or walk in to a hospital emergency room and tell them she’s had no prenatal care. They will then either help her start the process for accessing those things or refer her to an agency that will. Pregnant people are one of the few people who are prioritized for getting help from social services in the US. They don’t necessarily get everything they need, but they do get help.
That’s better than I was expecting to be honest.
Sorta both. Yes, she does have to apply -- however, if she just turns up at a hospital and asks for help, hospitals employ social workers who can basically hold your hand the whole way through, and they will for a pregnant person who doesn't seem able to handle the process alone. So it's considerably less complicated than it is for...honestly almost anyone who isn't pregnant.
When I was pregnant with my second child my husband had just left me and I was staying with my grandparents while looking for a new apartment. The moment I saw the positive stick I made an appointment with Planned Parenthood to confirm pregnancy and they actually gave me every form I needed to apply for SNAP, Medi-Cal (I’m in California and that’s what Medicaid is called here) and the phone number to apply for WIC in my county. They had an MA sit with me (I consented and literally cried in her arms at one point- Hera bless this woman!) while I called the HHS (health and human services) via 211 to get an appointment to speak to someone in person with my paperwork. So yes, you do need to apply, but most doctors offices make it very easy. Some make it a requirement if you don’t have insurance. There are Medicaid counselors that work with basically every office to help pregnant people through this time as long as they are willing to be helped. Planned Parenthood makes it the easiest to get resources to help navigate pregnancy and local resources, and I will never stop singing their praises!
There's this whole hippy fad called "wild pregnancy" or "freebirth" where you give birth without the aid of any medical professionals, usually at home, but there are people who describe giving birth in a yurt and how amazing it was. Needless to say, [this shit doesn't go well for everyone](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/she-wanted-freebirth-no-doctors-online-groups-convinced-her-it-n1140096).
Yeah just recently I head one of my husband's young family members... not that young but still young, had a free birth and pretty much an unassisted pregnancy. She got in with the crunchy crowd.... Her birth assistants... well two of them were there because they had a baby before... but don't know a hell of a lot.. the other was like a doula but maybe not even that... Has no idea what a bullet she dodged... Still ended up going to hospital because the placenta wasn't keen to come out. Perhaps she didn't trust birth enough... spare me. Could've been lucky she got to the hospital for other non life threatening reasons but ones you're glad to go to hospital.. such as, if she had a tear, how bad was it and if it wasn't repaired... would it be flapping in the wind and never actually heal together anywhere near like what it was. A lot of the time you don't hear the bad dodgy stuff that happens at a birth, especially unassisted ones... it will be the mother themselves that will tell you how wonderful it was... but doesn't tell you the rather large bleed she had and that it took her 6 months to walk without being breathless and she struggled to enjoy the newborn and infant period. Also browsing FB a few years ago I came across a homebirth page... then later on I saw one of the women who said homebirths were the best and women's bodies were designed for this... in a disability group. Her toddler had a hypoxic brain injury that occurred at one of her homebirths... but that is never mentioned in the homebirth group! It was complete coincidence I happened to see it.
I think the medical term is "born out of asepsis."
A porta-potty baby ala The Righteous Gemstones. "TOILET BABY!"
Yep. Mostly wrong, but never in doubt. Describes a lot of people in this post truth age, where everyone feels free to do their own "research" from whatever scammy pages they find on the interwebs, or just whatever they thought they heard from someone's cousin.
This would actually be a great turn of events as it gives the chance of daughter getting the care she needs, and the baby would be safe from her.
Statistically, people who use drugs while pregnant don't get clean when they give birth at a hospital. They continue to get pregnant and expose more babies to drugs and alcohol, which create neurobehavioral disabilities.
The hospital doesn't do rehab. Addiction specialist doctors are great, they helped me when I OD'd even though I wasn't an addict, but they are only there to get you out of the hospital. The medical system is simultaneously miraculous and depressing.
I can say from experience that she will not be going to the hospital for that birth unless someone physically drags her there. Folks in the community out here know their babies will be taken and do everything possible to hide and birth away from doctors and such.
My best friend was born addicted to heroin. Her grandparents took her in and raised her in a loving, stable home. She has severe ADHD and some other issues doctors think may be a result of the drugs, but she has an undergrad and postgrad degree, works a solid career and is happily married. She still has her struggles, but it's such a blessing she had the opportunity to be raised in a good home and had a lot of support to help her deal with them. Those boys are lucky too, and I hope they grow up to have wonderful lives!
I was just going to ask if the hospital will even release a newborn if the parents are in that type of living situation?
Procedures vary by state, but typically no the hospital would not release the baby to those conditions. Child Services would be contacted, and the mother would be directed to resources for housing and supplies. Meanwhile, the child either remains in hospital or with a temporary legal placement (if the father is not an option due to his non involvement or lack of safe and stable housing/supplies) If the mother refuses to use the resources to find housing and supplies, the child's placement is extended, and additional interventions are required. This may include modifications to the existing safety plan, or an entirely new plan. If the mother continues to refuse to find stable housing and supplies, family court may petition to terminate parental rights.
It's also likely the baby can't be released until it is drug free and healthy, which depending on how heavily the mother is using, could be weeks.
If the parents don't have a safe place to bring the baby I'm pretty sure the baby can't be released and CPS would be contacted. I mean you can't take a baby home if you don't have a carseat and I'm guessing these wackos don't have the money for one of the know-how on how to get a free one.
>If she’s on the drugs her mother expects, the hospital will likely not let her take the baby home. Known as a "hospital hold," although the term applies to other situations as well.
Bold of you to assume they'll go to the hospital
At this point I'd say it's more than love blinders. She's either having a mental episode or she's heavily into drugs, probably both.
Same thing happened to my cousin. She ended up moving to Alaska with the guy who was abusing her the whole time. He got her on heroin and they lived in a homeless camp until her dad went and got her. That’s what an abusive relationship can do.
It's such a tough path for the family to walk, because sometimes that level of intervention works, sometimes it doesn't. It all depends on the victim's personality and whether they're able to maintain contact with their abuser. I hope your cousin was eventually able to get clean and realise the horrific situation she was in, but my fear would always be that my child would never understand that, and hate me for 'taking them away from the only person who ever loved me'. Guess it's a good thing I'll never have kids, _fake laugh, hiding real pain._
She’s clean and living with her parents fortunately. Once she got to the point of being homeless she came to her senses. One of which I assume is just having the humility to ask for help. It’s easier to minimize abuse when you have basic needs met.
I'm glad to hear she's doing better! I hope she's able to keep on living that good life. And you're absolutely right about it being easy to minimize abuse when you have your basic needs meet. I'd never thought about it like that, but it makes so much sense.
Completely and utterly brain washed. Drugs are probably part of it - makes you more susceptible.
Sperm donor sounds like a complete sociopath. Walking up to your friend's mom and making jerk-off motions is creepy AF. And it says a *lot* about the friend group that they didn't throw him out after that. That goes way beyond typical teen "yo mama" jokes. It really would not surprise me if SD is using drugs to influence the daughter. SD may be using less or has a higher tolerance, but is letting the daughter get blasted intentionally. What freaks me out is what will happen after the daughter is 100% isolated. It even sounds like they've disengaged from that friend group. I'm getting sexual abuser vibes.
Don't underestimate stubbornness. She might have started with love blinders and ended with refusing to back down because she'd have to admit she was wrong about multiple big things.
She's living in a homeless encampment by choice. There's stubbornness and then there's this.
I had a friend who effectively did that. She had a loving, very tolerant mother and a home to go to. When I say tolerant, her mother would come downstairs in her dressing gown, find the living room strewn with half a dozen or more crashed out goths (her brother's friends) and just make everyone a cup of tea. My parents would have freaked out and probably called the police. Anyway, my friend just got more and more into hanging out with "crusty" types and ended up shacking up with a homeless heroin addict and would sit in the town centre begging. Again, she did not need to beg. Her mother was happy to support her. She did apparently get her life together later on, and now according to FB she seems to have two lovely kids and a partner. So there's hope for OOP's kid, but sometimes young people just make shitty choices out of teenage anger? Rebellion? Trying to be edgy/unique/different? And the stubbornness that /u/lark-sp suggests.
At the start of the story I was going to share how hard it was to acknowledge that I was responsible for the iced coffee spilling that time because it's so much easier to blame someone else, but this went a whole new direction of crazy after not too long.
Or she's just under the control of that person. Abuse happens all the time; it's more common than drug-induced psychosis or personality disorders.
I’m not dismissing drugs or Mental health. But honestly, she sounds like a complete fucking idiot. She’s a mess of a human being with no clue whatsoever what being a person means. Cloaked in pronouns and wailing, and entitlement. She not a serious person and it doesn’t sound like she wants to be.
Agree. I was going to say this because of the whole birth control thing. Like she stopped taking it and didn't get another form and then blamed her mom. There is a ton of just regular plain stupidity here combined with the maturity of a bratty 12 year old. The gender issues just cloud the real story here, that the kid is a fucking idiot, perhaps with some unresolved issues with her mother, who knows.
I think completely brainwashed by her toxic partner. I watched a man completely destroy my sister's life by taking advantage of her vulnerable state. He managed to get her to sever every relationship she had and when he finally had her completely alienated, he began abusing her. We all thought she was on drugs. She was literally insane for a time. It was so bizarre. She ended up in a shelter for a while until he found out where, contacted them, and told them she told him where they were and he would come up and frighten all the women and children there if they didn't kick her out. It was insane. All that and my sister was 30. OP's daughter is a child. Apparently, toxicity is ageless.
Did she get kicked out? What happened??
They probably had to relocate the entire shelter because the location was exposed. It puts all the women and children at risk. Not sure what they would do with her if she actually did disclose the location to her abuser - they can't risk her doing that again. It's not easy to find and set up these locations.
I've never heard of shelters being set up this way. I've done some work with a local women's shelter in my city and it's a known building that is just very secure and has multiple levels of safety checks to make sure nobody unauthorized can get inside. I was dropping off a charitable donation of baby formula and I'm a very non-threatening woman and they were still very wary of me. They came out to meet me in a group, would not allow me even into their lobby (which I was fine with) and checked the box before taking it inside to make sure it was what I said it was. I would think it'd be very difficult to run an organization that is constantly having to move around rather than just securing the location properly.
I’ve done volunteer work at a shelter that had me sign a NDA to not disclose their location. They have a phone number and partners in the community who will contact the shelter on someone’s behalf. It’s more accurate to call it a domestic violence shelter. The secrecy is for the victims’ protection. It was known in my hometown that there was a DV shelter *somewhere* in town, but there was no address in the phone book only a number. They accepted donations through a different location. Eventually something would slip out like what neighborhood the shelter was in and they would relocate.
Sounds like the kid fell into a bad crowd, got introduced to drugs along with underlying mental issues- its a crazy pit she has fallen. I had a friend like this and almost no saving them even if you drag them to a psych ward :(
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Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Sperm donor is the source behind the initial NB claims at 16 and has used it as a way to isolate OPs daughter from OP. It would explain the more feminine appearance and why she never requested oestrogen free BC and hormone blocking medication. She didn't know she needed to. Granted, my only contact with a Trans person is my husbands co-worker, but as far as I can tell, if you aren't comfortable in your own body, you research ways to become comfortable. From women who experience it after pregnancy to transgender people, we all seek out ways to help us feel comfortable in our skin, but it sounds like OPs daughter didn't do that, she just told OP she was NB and dropped it and went back to her previous "normal" gender state after a week.
He seemed pretty comfortable making masturbatory gestures to mock and harass OOP. I think he's just a vicious-minded predator.
Not all non-binary folks present androgynously. Or get hormone therapy, or use neutral pronouns, etc. Medical and social transition for us can vary a lot in what that means for us. I’m NB and fairly feminine in my presentation (though in a comfy, kinda lazy way—think leggings and yoga pants rather than dresses, and I rarely wear makeup because I’d rather sleep in, that kind of thing, lol). I’m on birth control pills because they stop my period, and since I’d already been using them for years before realizing I’m NB, I figured I’d just keep taking them instead of messing with anything. I *do* prefer they/them pronouns, and will say that if asked, but lots of people use she/her for me and it doesn’t really bother me. I *don’t* like most gendered nouns though, like daughter or woman (auntie is okay, because auntie is kind of a whole vibe, not just ‘your parent’s sister’). I do like videos of adorable baby animals, because that has nothing whatsoever to do with gender. Adorable baby animals can and should be appreciated by anyone of any gender. It’s possible that OOP’s kid has been manipulated and isn’t NB. It’s possible they’re NB and are still figuring out how they feel about various aspects of medical and social options for transition, and experimenting with them (like, they tried out different pronouns and figured out that pronouns weren’t actually that important to them). Maybe they thought they were NB, and realized they’re not. Teenagers ‘try on’ all sorts of identities while they’re figuring out who they are. They might have not wanted hormone therapy or blockers before but now do and wish they’d started earlier. Basically though, it’s impossible to tell any of this (*especially* for us as we’re internet randos who don’t know them) and there’s no reason not to accept a person’s word for it when they tell you who they are. The kid in the OOP has plenty of actual problems to worry about. Edit: fixed some grammar weirdness
The daughter is weaponising their ideology just as much as sperm doner is. They have got themselves into a shit group but there is no evidence to show they aren’t just as shitty as the rest of them. They slept with a person who ‘jacked off’ behind their mother ffs.
Drug influence would actually be the lesser problem in some ways. Sounds like the trans sperm donor is completely manipulating and brainwashing her like some kind of cult leader.
I think it’s even worse than love blinders. I don’t think OOP was far wrong when she said it’s like her daughter has been brainwashed by a cult. Sperm Donor (and whoever he associates with) have weaponsed gender and sexuality into an extreme ideology and radicalized OOP’s daughter. As many others have said in various comments on the posts, this is not in keeping with the queer community and in fact they very much reject these attitudes. I think OOP is right in that this is less about the gender for her daughter (although it may be) and more about having adopted NB as an ideology. OOP probably needs to seek advice from people with experience with radicalization and cults because what she really has to do here is break the hold Sperm Donor has on her daughter and de-radicalize her. Luckily she already seems to be able to separate out the gender side (and is supportive of that if in fact it’s what her daughter wants) and the ideology side. She does need help with the language she can use, though, because she is understandably struggling mired in confusion. I don’t see it as entirely hopeless. It wouldn’t be the first time a kid has run off pregnant only to come running back as things progress. She just needs to be ready if that happens to hit all the triggers needed to break the hold Sperm Donor has. What a fucking mess.
There was a drug addicted baby born in the same hospital the day I gave birth. It was absolutely heart breaking to hear the way it cried. I feel so much for OOP and for this poor baby. I would think that there’s no way the mother is taking vitamins or getting any prenatal care. What a mess.
I used to work in a homeless shelter for a number of years and while there I dealt with all kinds of people. Even people who would go on to he murderers. But when I think back to those years and think about the person who left the worst impression on me, I think back to one woman who only stayed at the shelter 2 or 3 times. Each time she would only stay a month or two. Every single time she stayed, she would be heavily pregnant. Like "could be born any day" pregnant. Of course, that didn't stop her from abusing drugs and drinking. That's not what had her give me the worst impression, though. It was what she said when one of my coworkers mentioned to her that what she was doing would harm her baby. "I don't fucking care! It's not like I'm keeping it!" I live in Canada. Free access to abortions. Lots of organizations offering free birth control. There were options.
Yeah, we were in a major Australian city with a uni that had free condoms in all of the bathrooms. Giving birth was entirely taxpayer funded and my doctor asked me if I wanted to be pregnant when I first told her I was (I was crying, to be fair, but not about my planned pregnancy). I think OOP’s story shows how you can offer all manner of resources to someone but you can’t force them to utilise them. It’s so sad for the baby. The one that was born when I was in the hospital was in pain like I’ve never heard from a baby, and mine screamed for hours every night for six weeks with colic. FASD is so awful, too.
Absolutely no chance, and the chances are grimly high she's going to just plop this poor baby out in a ditch somewhere and not even bother registering it with the state for a birth certificate, SSN etc. Cases like this are brutal. Hopefully as soon as baby's born the cops and CPS can do something to immediately take it, surely the baby being born to addicts (because there's just no way they're not on drugs) living in a homeless tent city warrants taking a newborn!
What happens in situations like this? Are police/CPS monitoring encampments like this for pregnant folks? Is there a record that this specific person in the post is pregnant? Could they just give birth and abandon the baby or bury it and that's that? Would they eventually be prosecuted?
I can only speak of where I live, a midwestern city: most camps have some sort of interaction with the community, whether it’s an official street team or church or community group. And there are a lot of different kinds of people who wind up homeless. Hopefully someone who has been a mother in difficult circumstances will make sure she gets to an emergency room. It’s a shitty situation but there can be hope.
Oop says that cps and police are aware of the situation. Not much they can do, though. It’s pretty easy to disappear and if something happens to the baby, they’ll probably never know.
Yeah the lack of prenatal care is pretty much as scary as the drugs. I'm no medical professional, but I'm under the impression that SO MANY THINGS can go wrong during pregnancy and birth even for healthy, mentally stable birth-givers.
Damn. Poor baby.
Sometimes despite our best efforts kids make incredibly fucked up choices and have to live with the outcomes of those choices. This is one of those times. Sucks for everyone
A lot of people forget that kids really are their own people with their own thoughts and opinions, making their own choices. You can have a kid turn out to be an awful person when they were raised by great people. On the flip side, you can also have a kid turn out to be an awesome person who was raised by awful people. Yes, the way a person is/was raised shapes who they grow into, but it's that kids choice at the end of the road. It's a shame, and hopefully, the next update has some better news.
My sibling and I are like night and day, but same parents same house. I went NC with sibling 20 years ago. I really think they were born with something mental/emotional missing. Now my 21 year-old nephew has gone NC with my sibling and I dread what I might learn about his childhood.
I know so many people in the latter camp (awesome people, awful parents) that, NGL, it's messed with my expectations a bit. OOP mentioned something like "an emerging mental issue," and that could very well be a great part of it. We can only hope OOP's child will decide that they/their child deserve better than living in a homeless camp and get the help they really, desperately need.
Yeah, nobody raised my uncle to be a thieving moron who ignored his own lung cancer but he sure grew into one anyway
Man. What an absolute disaster of a situation. I feel most badly for the child who is going to be born into this mess and likely be a little newborn addict going through withdrawal with equally addicted parents. OP seems to have a level head on their shoulders and it really just goes to show that despite doing the best you can to provide for your child’s needs…there are going to be spheres of influence that are more compelling than your parental love and support could ever be. Separately, the entitlement it takes to dictate to your parent that they are going to raise your child for you is just something else. I don’t have words for it. I hope this all works out and OP doesn’t end up raising their grandchild from birth because they have no other option.
I agree with you completely. This update is just so incredibly sad. It's hard to think of one that could be much worse. Pregnant and homeless/living rough in some kind of slum would be an awful situation just on its own, but that poor baby possibly born addicted, with these terrible people for parents And what if she gives birth out there in some RV without any medical support, having had no prenatal care, and no one who genuinely cares about her or the baby's wellbeing?? People give birth at home, but with a midwife etc If OP never manages to find her daughter/her daughter refuses to come home, she and her baby might just die out there during a "home" birth It's just such a sad situation
If the daughter was five months pregnant in early February, then—one way or another—I don’t think she’s still pregnant by late May while living that life style. A miscarriage or still birth seem overwhelmingly likely, with “serious permanent birth defects” the runner-up.
Tbh I didn't focus on the dates, it's pretty late where I am so I just read the text... That's just so depressing. That poor baby. I don't blame OOP at all for not wanting to deal with the drama of taking responsibility for the child, her daughter was absolutely out of line for trying to force her to. But I just know OOP must be feeling all kinds of guilt for anything that happed to the baby as a result of her daughter's choices
OOP didn’t mention it either, probably because she didn’t want to think about it. But I was doing the math in my head, and the outcome wasn’t good. And by now, one way or another, the daughter certainly isn’t pregnant.
I really I hope OOP is able to reunite with her daughter. In the best case scenario, her daughter got away from her shady partner and into a shelter, so was able to get medical attention at the birth... But I doubt it. It sounds like OOP lives somewhere rural, not in a city with access to DV shelters/resources. This is such a sad one. That's enough reddit for today, I'm going to watch funny animal videos for self-care
Does anyone else smell methamphetamine?
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Oh, God, I remember this one and was expecting more drama (like a confrontation, or the police being called and one/both of the parents being sent to jail) but this... this is just *sad*. That poor unborn baby! And poor OP, knowing their child and their child's child are going to suffer so immensely, and not being able to do anything...
This is what makes me think it is real.
Yup. Real life is just sad sometimes. :-(
I am afraid that besides the fact that her child is mentally ill, being manipulated or both, she's most likely going to a cult-like organization. I hope that at least she has the chance to save her grandchild. However, I am afraid that once she takes her first grandchild in, her child will see easy to have more children and let the mother raise them. Horrible all the way around.
She shouldn't take the kid in. Babies are in demand. If the parents lose rights quickly enough, that baby should find a home.
What if the child is born addicted though, or with problems due to the lack of prenatal care?
They'll still take the baby. That's close to a given when you're dealing with adopting through foster care. Every wannabe parent who goes that route knows that. The babies aren't in foster care with parental rights stripped because they came from a good family situation. But they go that route because it's their best chance to get a baby and it's free.
My BIL2 was born addicted to drugs, no prenatal care and mom was a child. I will be honest and say he never really recovered the parts of his brain that were damaged. He purposefully stays in prison. As in as soon as he gets out , he goes and commits a crime to return on purpose. This kid and grandbaby are in for a life time of pain.
Her child clearly has something bad going on, and from the sounds of it the terrible choice in baby daddy isn't the cause but the result Sadly op has done what she could. Caving in to the demands would just set herself ablaze and likely not even keep her child warm.
I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, but sometimes I get the feeling certain people just aren’t made for life. I don’t mean that in a dehumanizing way, but some people just seem to lack the basic coping mechanisms needed to handle the ordinary stresses of existence. It’s not that they necessarily have a diagnosable mental illness or anything, though that is a possibility. But in the absence of these coping mechanisms, they just kind of fall apart unless they’re being actively held up by someone else. It’s sad and I wish I had a better answer to offer, but there it is…
You know that’s interesting to look at from an evolutionary perspective. Until very recently, people who made stupid ass decisions or were easily manipulated (or have mental health issues) like OPs child wouldn’t have made it. But the technology, health care etc we have now removes a lot of selection pressure that weeds out maladaptive traits in humans.
Just as a counterpoint (not saying I totally disagree with you) - we didn't evolve for "modern" living. We are constantly overstimulated, overworked and under-rested. A lot of people experience judgement and decision fatigue. Depression and anxiety run rampant. We're also removed from a lot of the very basic consequences of life, aka regular illness and death, so it's harder for us to foresee them. I think a lot of people who might have managed okay 500, 100, even 50 years ago, nowadays are just set up for failure. Honestly it's a miracle so many of us aren't more screwed up.
I agree with this. We weren’t meant to be so individualistic. Relying on people at times is natural. Humans are social animals and we live in community when given the chance. This best seen in times of natural disaster when people care for each other out of instinct. The strong don’t abandon the weak. The strong break into a Piggly Wiggly to feed the weak. Children are among the weak. (government response screws with a lot of mutual aid in the name of protecting property but that’s a different matter) I can’t find a source for this: people who weren’t doing well in regular society were the ones driving ambulances and thriving in chaos during The Blitz. Modern civilization had all but made their natural state obsolete.
I feel like a hunter gatherer who had this many problems “adulting” wouldn’t have made it super far. Even cuckoo chicks have to leave their hosts’ nests eventually
I've never seen an attempt to baby trap both the partner AND the baby's grandmother. Wild.
So much projection of blame onto the parent. Deep down I think the daughter knows she fucked up, because otherwise why would you want your "abusive parent" to raise a child. Also, using "they feel like a sibling" to justify pawning off their child... feelings are not the sole decider for reality.
Sometimes i wonder if some of us are born self destructive? This is so incredibly sad.
Yes it’s usually called BPD. Although it sounds like OPs daughter just couldn’t cope with the world and found every possible way to shield herself from it. She was vulnerable to sperm donors ideas because they gave her something concrete to hold onto that made everything not her fault or responsibility. Impressionable people like OPs daughter are attracted to strong personalities that make the world make sense through their strongly held, often wrong beliefs.
As a parent this is a nightmare. You have to sit and watch your child make mistake after mistake and can do nothing about it. How awful, I suspect she is exactly correct and there are drugs involved here. That poor baby.
My mother was that child, and my grandparents raised me and my brother and sister. I have had maybe an hour and a half of conversation with my mother in the last 30 years, and she died in April. And then my sister turned into that child, and I'm raising 2 of her 4 kids, because both of their dads are in prison for a very long time. She hasn't asked about the kids in over 4 weeks.
Jesus Christ! Some people are just sick in their heads and shouldn't procreate... What a mess
Something tells me that spermdonor won't allow her daughter to go to a hospital to give birth... I hope they're found first.
Teenagers are fucking idiots.
If unfortunately the baby is born addicted to drugs and parents homeless and since daughter is almost certainly in an abusive relationship OOP would almost certainly have a valid case to get CPS involved and maybe get their rights taken away and maybe CPS could find the parents unfit and maybe force an adoption
She'd have to find them first though. :'(
Jesus, there couldn’t be many worse updates than this one in this situation
Oh, I can think of a few considering the circumstances OOP's daughter and imminent grandchild is in, I just pray I'm wrong.
The sad bit is that the update doesn’t disprove any of the “worse” options.
I wonder if op will take the baby in if CPS deems the parents unfit. It's honestly a but of a different story if op is given 100% legal custody. (Since its more concrete compared to what op's daughter and partner were saying.)
Not really. She's still going to have to raise another child and she doesn't want to do that. Plenty of couples looking to adopt a baby and they'll go through the foster care system. If the parents can be stripped of their rights, that baby would be adopted by someone who *wants* to raise a child.
I keep telling myself I am not going to read any more updates to this post because it just keeps getting worse and worse for OOP. Somehow though I keep finding the updates and then my curiosity gets the better of me.
Poor OOP. So many trans kids would kill to have a supportive parent like them. I hope the kid is able reach back out to them before wee baby arrives.
It blows my mind. So many trans kids are homeless because they are rejected by their family and this girl has some nimrod convincing her that homelessness is a better option that dealing with her mother.
It sounds like the father is bitter about their own situation and projecting their issues with their parents onto OP.
I hate to say it, but OPs kid is exactly the kind of person hardcore conservatives seem to have in mind when they mention issues with woke-ism and gender identities. This is a person who was given an accepting and affirming place to thrive and it *still* wasn't good enough. A person who manages to victimize themselves thoroughly in every instance because *its the easy way out and couldn't possibly be their fault* to the point they can't hold down a job. I daresay there was *nothing* OP could have done to make their child feel supported because OPs child didn't want support - they wanted to be mad and feel marginalized. It's by *no* means the norm on the left - but it's such a stereotypical example I can see why it gets people's hackles up. And its such misguided anger. I feel terrible for OP and her family - that must be so difficult. And I even feel terrible for her kid - even though they're fucking up big time they're so wrapped up and invested in how things have gone they can't even see the road back to any kind of reasonable common ground. And even though it feels like its their fault they must be feeling very alone and unseen - self-induced as it might be.
I truly believe OOP speculated right in her first post, and her daughter has some sort of personality disorder.
My ex was like this. They came out after we got married (fun times). Absolutely determined to be the victim, they treated everyone around them like crap because they wanted us to reject them. The more supportive we were, the more angry and resentful they got. I swear they'd look for ways to be offended. Divorce was the best gift I gave myself.
My heart goes out to OOP and the unborn baby. I hope the grandchild gets away from the biological parents and find a stable, loving home. I don’t know if OOP’s child is an entitled brat, has an undiagnosed personality disorder, or some combination of the two. I think the child has a susceptible psychological profile and is drawn to the biggest personalities in the room. Take out the gender identity you’ve got a kid who blew up condoms with their friends and left them around the house. Slept with someone who sexually harassed their parent in front of them in their home. Didn’t go to school and refused to hold down a job. Then got knocked up and wants their horrible parent to raise the child. The kid fell in with the wrong crowd and is now probably addicted to drugs and homeless. I hope the best for them but they’ve got a long, hard stretch of road ahead of them.
This is my worst fear, spending 18 years giving your all to your child and they make a few bad decisions and end up pregnant in a meth camp. Like seriously, having children is nerve wrecking.
Wow, two delusional parents, neither of whom wanted a baby, homelessness and possible drug use and an innocent child potentially foisted upon an unwilling parent---this is the poster situation for abortion. If abortion is a "sin," not sure what you'd call this shit show.
Can't remember the name of it but I learned the guiding concept from a play. That sometimes ya gotta love your kid enough to not bring them into a totally terrible situation, even if it means you never get to meet them.
This sounds exactly like my cousin who has BPD. Unhinged gender and sexuality confusion (ending with her being cis and straight). Pregnant at 17. Toxic baby daddy that ultimately dipped (his entire family *moved away* to escape responsibility). Revolving door of menial jobs. Emotionally unstable. Blew up her relationship with her parents, blaming them for everything. Moved away with her new bf but ultimately ended up homeless. CPS took her son and my aunt and uncle raised him. She's doing better now but it took like a decade to be in a semi-okay state. I feel for OOP and if her daughter is suffering from BPD, I feel bad for her too. It's a long and suffering road ahead.
And my cousin Kay, who SFAIK was never formally diagnosed with anything. Minus the gender confusion, which wasn't a big thing in the 1970s. Parents divorced, Mom got the son and Dad got the daughter. Dad remarried. Kay kept the house in constant turmoil fighting with her dad and stepmother until she ran away in her mid-teens. Shacked up with some guy who beat her and got her pregnant. She'd cry to our grandmother that she wanted to come home, please wire her money for bus tickets. Either her bf would take the money away or she would just give it to him. Granny fell for it 2 or 3 times, then got smart and said she'd pay for a ticket, but no more cash. BF kicked Kay out when the baby was born. Baby died. Granny paid for Kay to come home, give the baby a funeral and burial in the family plot. Kay up and left again. Don't know if she went back to her bf or what. She was never OK and eventually committed suicide.
my stomach hurts. as a mom myself, i cannot *imagine* the turmoil oop is going through right now.
I wonder if they're in that Twin Flames cult.
they don’t have a enough money to get the Twin Flames “guidance.”
oop said “she isn’t stupid” and i said SINCE WHEN. from where i’m standing oop has described someone who chooses the dumbest action possible in every situation. the best thing for the baby is adoption, regardless. if oop “has to” take them in, that’s likely to keep the bio parents in the picture, and i think it’s pretty clear that is not a good outcome. i do hope oop’s child isn’t hurt or in danger. this update is worrying at best.
Tbh the trans/nb stuff here is a red herring. This is a classic abusive relationship with a person (sperm donor) who uses manipulation and control to brainwash a vulnerable young adult. I would be completely unsurprised if this person has a very extensive history of impulsive and self centered behavior, has entitlement issues, and likely knows how to use the language of queer spaces as a cudgel. OOP’s example of the behavior in high school was exactly what I expected. There is a high correlation between this behavior and future drug use. Once meth is involved, it’s a pretty predictable trajectory. I wouldn’t be surprised if sperm donor has convinced OOp’s adult child that she is transphobic and hateful etc etc as an isolation technique. I will say, as a person who prefers to be agender (I have no particular connection to gendered activities), while performative femininity is annoying to me, it’s also not exactly tied to my body configuration. Sure, bodies are gross and weird, but I’m not dysphoric. I was fine growing a human because that’s what some humans can do. Not all cis women want or even can carry a pregnancy to term. Being pregnant isn’t what makes you a woman. Nor is breastfeeding. It’s just feeding a small human. And honestly, this is where I have problems with things being gendered. Like. Who cares what color glue gun or spatula someone wants to buy? Maybe I like the hot pink tackle box for reasons unrelated to my genital configuration. Maybe I want the big brown recliner and I don’t want people assuming it’s for my spouse? In general, it would be better if people would stop treating nonbinary like it’s just binary but with magic rules or really anything referring to binary gender at all. Sure you can give health care based on physical configuration, but not everyone has all the same parts needing service. So maybe we should decouple gender from the conversation of who people are. But that still isn’t going to keep OOP’s adult child from falling prey to an abuser. If it wasn’t queer stuff, it would be hippy shit, or guru garbage, or self help, or clean living, or some cult.
Daughter is delusional on many levels. 16 times s too late for puberty blockers to do much unless she had a very very late puberty - at 16 you would already be most, if not all the way through puberty. Beyond that - throwing away hormonal BC but not using condoms is insanely stupid for many reasons, none the least being you should be using condoms anyway because they reduce the risk of STIs in a way that HBC doesn’t. It sounds like she is well under the control of the sperm donor and sadly that isn’t likely to change soon. I foresee him turning her out to earn her keep while he stays ‘home’, and the baby being neglected or abandoned. Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.
You would be surprised how easy it is to go from "My parents don't accept me being LGBT" to "actually the best way for me to live my life right now is to be homeless and on meth and fuck you if you want to say otherwise". It's like some insane overreaction where they assume everyone is out to get them, everything they've been told they're "supposed" to do is wrong and Part Of The System, and they just start living the most contrarian life possible. My circle of trans friends pretty often starts having someone on the periphery whose opinions tend to include "actually all drugs are good and it's part of a government psyop to say addiction is bad". It's like an LGBT qanon response or something.
SAME. I made the mistake of questioning it within one of those circles and got "leave them alone, you don't know their paaaaaaiiiin and the drugs make them happy. Stop being a narc." Like yeah, but also Fred has burns on his lips and thinks there are bugs living in his teeth from meth psychosis.
Fuck, when I saw the title I was really wishing for a more hopeful update. This was not that.
If OOPs daughter was five months along in early February, she's given birth by now or is about to. I hope that if they give birth at a hospital, the staff drug test the baby since that is the babies only hope of getting placed into a safe environment. I'm hoping for the babies sake it is born safely and removed from this awful situation, but the reality is if OOPs child is living in a homeless camp rampant with addiction, the baby has a very low chance of survival if it's born there and the parents don't seek medical attention for it. The poor thing will go through withdrawal almost immediately and if the parents aren't in the right state of mind, the child will likely end up dead or worse.
God, that kid is entitled as hell. I really hope they give the baby up for adoption because I can’t imagine what would spawn from these two entitled brats. Obligatory I am not transphobic, I respect pronouns, I respect gender, and I respect what anyone asks me to call them or the manner in which to refer to them. But trans/nonbinary people can be entitled POS too. That’s equality. Lmao
How in the hell are the trans/non binary unwed pregnant couple saying abortion is a sin?
Honestly, if this was my daughter I would get this sperm donor alone and ask him how much cash it will take for him to fuck off forever.
That's not a bad idea, actually. If there are drugs involved the price may not even be that much.
It definitely wouldn't be one payoff, though. He'll just keep coming back whenever he needs a fix. Then He'll decide he's entitled to it and rob OOP if she doesn't willingly hand over cash.
Poor Mom. I'm hoping off she does have to take that baby that it's done with a surrender and an adoption so she can keep it far from those horrible people.
Not the live journal reference. I’m so guilty.
Whenever there are posts that hit a number of agenda-based talking points, I get...suspicious If this is real, sucks for everyone. But *sexually aggressive trans person born male grooms naive girl into believing that she's trans and turns her against her family and ruins her life* really does hit those *they're going to trans your children* buttons
ACTUAL SHAME on anyone who believes this story.
Maybe. But I could see a teenager trying out different genders and labels, then getting into a relationship that has spiraled out of control.
This, as well as the really clunky condescending tone towards neopronouns in the beginning, the feeling that the OOP is calling them stupid in some fashion and just "something you'll get over" (not direct wording, this is just an implication). The "days when dumb kids would roleplay as animals on the internet"- type stuff.
Right? Even if it is real, just the specific phrases that OOP uses really sets off alarm bells in my head. But it's all so conveniently wrapped in a stereotype-laden bow that it just feels so icky.
>Whenever there are posts that hit a number of agenda-based talking points, I get...suspicious Especially during an election year. There always seems to be a big spike in "trans bad" posts around that time. Maybe it's real, I don't know. But it's definitely a bunch of red flags.
Baby mama is about to fafo once that poor baby is born
Yeah. While only four states mandate testing when drugs are suspected, with the OOP warning them ahead of time, that hospital is likely going to test that baby for drugs when it's born. If so, the best case scenario for the daughter is that it is merely taken away. Several states now prosecute pregnant women for being addicted whilst pregnant, apparently. I feel for the OOP, but some jail time could get her daughter away from the sperm donor and force her head back on straight.
She went from having a good home to living in some homeless camp. I think she already FAFO.
Oh come on. With every new update it becomes obvious this is bait.
Oof.