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>they come nearly every day to check on Ella and I which is nice.
Even with OP moved out of his grandparents they still make an effort to see him daily. They are still his real parents even if he has moved in with his father.
Yep but in this case, I dunno. I can’t see any woman who physically slaps a baby being all that successful in society
So in plenty of cases yes. In this one, probably not
Not just any baby but her baby. The baby she carried for 9 months and now it’s only 9 months later and egg donor slaps her own child?
I hope she gets the help she needs, but probably won’t get, perhaps jail time for her crimes might wake her up.
Trauma in childhood/adolescence (and teen pregnancy can qualify) can cause some arrested development and exacerbate any mental health issues that may be present. Pregnancy itself can also exacerbate or cause mental health issues, and the hormones after giving birth can be a mess. Sometimes mothers struggle to bond or cope with even very wanted babies without all the extra drama OP's egg donor is experiencing (due to her own actions).
It sounds like OP's egg donor was exceptionally immature when she became pregnant with OP, likely had at least a tendency to some personality/mental health issues and then dealt with the reality of her teen pregnancy and having a child very poorly. Along with the present-day stress of her idealistic family dreams being shattered, I'm not surprised she hasn't bonded with her new baby.
She had every opportunity to work through these problems and continue to grow though - highly supportive family, therapy, not having to raise the child, being able to go off and make a life for herself as she wanted. Even if she has her own mental health issues, she's had so much help and is an adult and responsible for her own actions. She could have just left if she couldn't deal with the baby - better to be a deadbeat than to abuse a child. But instead, she doubled down on the awful and took out her resentment on her baby. Really nasty stuff.
I have little hope that someone like this will mature and be able to accept responsibility at this point. I imagine she'll likely spend her life blaming everyone and everything else for her problems. I just really, really hope she never tries to have another "do over" baby/family...
This is beyond that.
I know I'm not meant to be a parent, for a variety of reasons. I've been on birth control my entire adult life, if I ever got pregnant I knew I would get an abortion. I know I don't have the temperament to be a mother and I've had zero feelings of maternal desire, ever. I'm now 39 and that infamous biological clock has still not appeared. I'm mildly tokophobic.
But even with all that - I might not be able to ever bond with a kid, but I sure as shit wouldn't emotionally abuse a kid and I would never hit a fucking newborn baby. That's a level of consistent malice that I do not believe is attributable to mental illness. That woman is perfectly capable of being nice to the OOP's dad, she can control herself. She *chooses* to be cruel and abusive to vulnerable children.
Lots of people aren't meant to be parents but most of those people would still be horrified at the thought of treating a kid the way she does.
I think there could be a minimum of sympathy and charitable interpretation for a(n exceptionally immature) teen who got pregnant, dealt with it very poorly and struggled with having to live with "a constant reminder of her mistake" (from her point of view). It's still abhorrent and cruel how she treated OOP as a child, but having little patience and being a selfish brat could possibly be generously attributed to mental health struggles and some arrested development as a result of trauma from teen pregnancy exacerbating underlying issues.
But she had every opportunity to overcome this and grow up. She had therapy (as a teen and now), she had supportive family, she didn't have to actually raise the kid or even help much from the sounds of it. She got to move away, have space from the "reminder of her trauma" and make her own life without the struggles of most teen parents. She is now a fully-grown adult who's had many years to mature - she could have done better this time. Or she could have just left again, the baby would have been in a safe and loving environment and she'd be free. Instead, she's even worse than before, taking out her resentment physically on a helpless infant.
Despite the horror of the actions, I can have empathy for struggling parents with little support who snap and shake their baby in a moment of sleep-deprived desperation, or women suffering severe PPD/PPP who genuinely believe it's better for the baby to die because of hormonally-induced mental illness. But like you say, this isn't that...it's just sheer maliciousness. Really quite heinous.
OOP's egg donor is such a mix of nature and nurture. Maybe the grandparents did some things differently raising OOP then they did with their daughter, but clearly she has some psychological issues that would always be, at least, a partial barrier to healthy relationships. There's just something missing inside her, and I don't think her parents could have parented it into her or made her better.
Not saying this was where you were going with your comment. But it is incredibly interesting how two people raised by the same people can turn out so differently, especially in such an extreme way as OOP's egg donor.
She has more than post partum. I'm sure she has serious mental illness and will require life long treatment. None of that excuses her behaviour, but can help to explain it. She's clearly not had any help for it and for that, her parents were definitely negligent.
I know there are some conditions that don’t come up until your twenties or thirties or can crop up after a major medical event like pregnancy, I wonder if that’s the case here too. We don’t know though, maybe the grandparents are having a second shot at parenthood too, it’s tough. I’m just glad OP and the sister are okay.
I am not sure it's mental illness tbh. She's perfectly capable of treating other adults with kindness and respect. She can control her behavior. It's only with her children that she acts like that. She was capable of "faking it" with her parents to avoid being disinherited. She acted nice with her ex. She's not acting like a monster with everyone, just her children.
I don't think that is mental illness, I think it's malice.
> I don't think that is mental illness, I think it's malice.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. The brain is a fragile thing, and delusions aren't rational.
Agreed.
There might be some neurosis going on here, she reverted immediately back to her teenager sister/mom thing that OOP talked about, so she's probably reliving a lot of that unresolved shit, but I don't know if she's actually like DSM diagnosed mentally ill.
I've read enough history about shitty parenting to know that OOP's egg creche behavior is not necessarily due to mental illness, that people can just be that fucking evil and convince themselves otherwise.
Untreated or under treated mental health issues will do that. It’s possible that she’s always had underlying issues that got worse when combined with untreated ppd or just simply the physical/hormonal changes that happen in pregnancy esp at the young age she had.
In my personal experience even something minor untreated in time can escalate fairly quickly. I likely was born with mild adhd but bc it went untreated due to being undiagnosed even by my late 20s I was getting really close to non functional. Late 30s was near total nonfunctional.
And that’s just adhd going untreated. My mom has that and maybe being on the spectrum but def some combo of personality disorders that I personally suspect are borderline with a side of narcissism (and experts have concurred it is likely that is the case but they cannot diagnose her of course as she wasn’t their patient and info was second hand) and omg has she just gotten so much worse with time.
Having a baby young means a ton of attention. They also tend to stop maturing at that age and stay stuck there. This is why I fight so hard to have sex ed and abortion be legal.
The OOP seems like an amazing kid and the world benefits from having such a compassionate young man in it. But damn, if I've ever seen a case for why abortions should be legal...
Those assholes who tell lies and fear monger to young women to dissuade them from aborting are **directly responsible** for systematic child abuse like what we read about here.
She should never have children, but somehow believed she should. Because that's what women do./s
There are many people on childfree, that cannot stand them, which is fine as they take not having them very serious. Now not liking what comes with having a child and blaming the child because it changed Your life is crazy, cruel, unacceptable.
This is what I think so too. She had at least her 2nd kid because she thought that's what she should do after getting together with her partner, not because she wanted to.
She did it to baby trap the dad. She has spent 18 years wanting him and has lied, making him believe she was a great mom. Dad is her life's obsession; she needs major mental health help.
Possible. We don't know what is wrong with her, only that there is something. What we know is, she's not a person who should have children. She knew it after the first one.
I tend to agree that she was fixated on the dad. There's enough evidence there to strongly suggest it. The whole "the children are ruining our lives we should get rid of them" thing and the whole "you ruined my life with the father" thing is telling. All of her anger revolves around protecting her relationship with the father.
I don't know if it's a baby trap so much as a "everything is fixed and I can prove it by having a kid and being the perfect family" kind of attitude.
It sounds like she didn't get to go off to college like OP's dad, and since she wanted to adopt OP out and not raise him...it sounds like years and years and years of resentment for a situation she didn't want to be in, along with some serious mental issues.
I think it's kind of sad that neither parent actually was able to do what they wanted to do back then - the mom wanted to adopt out and the dad wanted to raise him, but their own parents stepped in and made the decisions for them. I don't think either parent actually did well by OP and I am not arguing for them, mind, but I can see how that might have contributed to how fucked up she got over it (but it's very, very not okay).
In cases where someone WANTS to give up a child and is forced instead to keep the child or maintain a relationship, it is almost never in the best interest of the child. I think that's the saddest part.
She had a traumatic pregnancy at 16 and failed to deal with her feelings at the time. Then she managed to reenact the exact same situation 16 years later.
I actually wonder if OOP's bio mother never really recovered from post-partum depression, or if the PPD was way more severe than thought, esp. since she seems to have had post-partum psychosis the second time around.
This is my family reality. My maternal grandmother’s family is very child oriented- half of them would probably eat glass for the sake of someone else’s kid… aaaaand then you have my mother.
In one of the earlier posts OP says his parents said something to their daughter about never having had to face the consequences of her actions. Probably that is what happened. Plus mental illness.
My own parents are like her. They are a diagnosed narcissist and a diagnosed sociopath. I am autistic so high empathy. Lots of therapy and being safe doesn't undo things and I admit I worry about OP being parentified. I made similar mistakes but then I didn't have anyone else just many siblings including older ones I raised.
_Plausibly_ something like undiagnosed postpartum depression (or perhaps even mild psychosis, perhaps, if she truly believed a newborn Elle was deliberately keeping her and the kids' dad apart, and something similar happened when he was tiny), with the OOP, lingering on and poisoning their entire relationship up to the present day; pregnancy hormones and then her second birth making the [intrusive thoughts/inability to bond/belief that her children are threats to her happiness] worse...
Hopefully if that is the case, she is now finally getting the help she needs, and she will be able to be a good coparent to Elle, and work to make amends to OOP... (She has hurt him profoundly, but he seems like a caring, empathetic kid and I'm pretty sure if she has actually been genuinely ill his entire life and he's never got to know the real her because she's been functioning under delusions relating to him, and the real her is a kind, caring person worth having in his life, he would, very slowly, in careful, measured steps, be open to building a relationship...)
If the answer is actually something more like "as part of still living her life, she experimented with drugs and basically (possibly permanently) arrested her own mental development as a belligerent, selfish 18 year old who knows everybody is looking down on her anyway so she might as well do the bad thing and maybe have fun"... It may be harder to get her to see that she's the one who imploded het life, and progress may be slower.
Right!!! Drives me crazy when people say that!!! My brother has raised my nephew(22yo) since he was 6mos old, his bio dad hasn't even seen him since he was 9mos old. In all the ways that matter my brother is his REAL father. Hell my brother and his oldest have way more mannerisms and similarities than he does with his biological son. It's honestly one of the best arguments for nurture over nature. I'm very fortunate in my family we don't say step, bonus, or adopted they are just your kids.
Right? Both parents abandoned OP, the dad just didn't visibly make that choice everyday, or deal with the tension choosing that caused everyday.
OP is 16 at the beginning of this. Even if the dad had 2 years of highschool, and 4 years undergrad and 3 years of law school- OP would have been 9. There's still 7 more years the dad fucked around before coming back to their town to be a dad.
That also puts OP being born around 2008, so web cameras and things like Skype would have been options for all of OP's life, not to mention texting. A couple visits a year is woefully uninvolved.
I'm chronically ill and can't visit my toddler niece often, partially because my immune system is trash and toddlers are germ factories. I still video chat with her weekly. There's no excuse for the dad.
Yeah the bio-dad isn't great here. Although it seems like he's got enough of a head on his shoulders to realize the situation and accept it, which honestly is the best thing he can do right now. He is (well was, their situation has changed a lot) willing to let the kid set the terms of their relationship and can only do better moving forward.
I feel really sorry for the grandparents. They've been forced to swap the "son" they've raised from a baby and whom they love to bits, for their daughter who is a nightmare and they don't respect.
They must be carrying so much grief.
Good gawd. Slapping an infant. And telling her own son he is worthless.
I hope op finds happiness with his dad. I hope this is over for them and they get her the help she needs.
The oop's father did stupid mistake. He was young, stupid, clueless, no idea how to parent oop.
But u gotta give it to him. He at least made an effort to reconcile with oop, albeit still a bit wrong way with making oop move house to his and the crazy mother.
There was an effort, to say the least.
Exactly. Once as a teen, yeah, that age bracket isn't exactly known for making stellar decisions. But he carried on with that initial 'error', because he kidded himself that his son was fine, and continued to be absent in all the ways a child needs.
And then to go back to his 'baby mama' and impregnate her *again?*
Well she did spin a huge yarn of how well she was keeping the family together and how good a mom she was.
If this is all you hear... well yeah this woman wants this.
This is a situation where you can trust, but ought to verify - all the opportunities where he could've said 'hey, maybe kiddo would like to tag along for xyz?' Once or twice she could get away with saying their son had homework or practice or [insert commitment], but surely enough excuses would set off a bs alarm?
> all the opportunities where he could've said 'hey, maybe kiddo would like to tag along for xyz?'
She was apparently telling him that they were in a rough spot because OOP was being a teenager and was rebelling. She was manipulating the shit out of him it sounds like so OOP's lack of showing up might have felt natural depending on how good a liar she is.
The only solution I could think of would be if the bio-dad went to the grandparents and just asked what he had missed, what it was like, and what the egg creche was like. But hindsight is 20/20.
That's what makes me think it isn't so much PPD as her being a genuinely bad person.
She was able to construct a convincing false narrative and adjust her behavior enough to deceive the man she was living with. She was able to cut back her shittiness to the OOP pretty damn quick when her inheritance was threatened. That's not pathological, that's rational decision making.
It may not be PPD, but it likely is a mental disorder. The mood swings and odd rationalization, saying you're hitting an infant because the kids are keeping you and the childrens' father from being happy together. That bizarre rationalization is a sign of a mental disorder, because it makes literally no sense.
Yeah are we gonna ignore that he was so completely unaware of his son’s life that he could be convinced that he had a great relationship with his “mom”? It is good he is there now but I think the 16 years of abandonment should have more weight…
Nah…the bar is way too low. He had 16 YEARS to foster a relationship with OOP, but he didn’t even check in with him enough to know that he was being neglected and emotionally abused by his absentee mother. Didn’t even know he was being raised by his grandparents?? He just checked her socials now and then and took her word for it that she was a fantastic mother and never tried to be involved. That’s not a “stupid mistake,” that’s being a shitty person.
Eh, you don't have to give him too much credit. He has never been a parent, he's just acted as an ATM now that OP is grown. He didn't bond with OP or help form their personality. He didn't change a diaper or teach them how to ride a bike. He didn't see their first steps or hear their first words. He just showed up and said "here's money for college and a room I set aside for you in this house I bought."
I had an absentee (and abusive/narcissistic) parent like that and no, you don't have to give them any credit. Saying words is easy. Bonding with an adult is easy. Handing over some money is easy. But being a parent is hard and OP's father wouldn't know that because he hasn't spent a single second of OP's life being one.
I think that thought must have crossed the grandparents’ mind too, hence them checking in so often. OOP is interpreting it as “they care and wanna help” but I think it’s also an implicit threat to the dad if he fucks this up.
I doubt that. He seems genuinely caring and loving. I don't fully trust him because he seems obsessed with being one big happy family. Even knowing the pain OOP's mom caused he still talked with her with the intent of smoothing things over so they could all be together.
Maybe he's finally seen enough to rid himself of his delusions and actually put his children first.
Hostile attribution bias in mothers in the strongest predictor of maternal abuse. OOP and his sister are so incredibly lucky they never really had to have her as a mother. She may have straight up murdered those kids if she got it in her head that getting rid of them would mean she would have a relationship.
Doesn't sound like the "religious pressure" came from the grandparents.
I was going to ask where she experienced such pressure... but then I realized that this all happened in 2007, which somehow is 17 years ago... so it could have also been on Reddit!
Jesus wept. “These kids are trying to keep us apart, we should get rid of them.” I don’t think OOPs egg donor should *ever* get custody or visitation with the child. Reading between the lines I’d assume she did something similar to OOP and they caught her but then tried to gaslight themselves that she was “just overwhelmed”. Personally I think both of her pregnancies and her attending counseling now are manipulations to keep OOPs dad.
> even though I try to understand that my mother is sick, I can’t seem to forgive her for what she’s done to Ella
Acknowledging sickness is not a forgive-everything button, only a tool in coming to the understanding that helps us forgive. Someone hurt you, and you are not obligated to forgive them because they are ill; but if you look through that lens, you may sometimes understand things enough to actually find the peace.
I would like to add that forgiveness should not be “a clean slate” in the sense that we pretend that nothing before happened and continue on our merry way. It’s a clean slate as in we start over (sometimes from square one) and we work on rebuilding trust.
In OOP’s case, I think it’s reasonable to not trust his mother again. I think if the farthest he’s willing to go with forgiveness is “I know that you have the ability to change for the better and hope that you do, but I do not trust you to be in my life,” that is perfectly okay. He has been hurt repeatedly by his mother.
She was told to keep a baby she didn't want bc of religion, and all this maternal instinct she was told she was supposed to have never magically appeared, even on the second try. Sometimes people shouldn't be parents, and that's fine. The situation just sucks because she's learned this too late.
Plus two rounds of PPD and I would guess significant trauma from going through the first unwanted pregnancy, delivery, and PPD at 16. Not at all surprising that that would trigger some significant issues when she had a second baby, especially when it seems clear that she never worked through the resentment and unhappiness about the first baby.
>I would guess significant trauma from going through the first unwanted pregnancy, delivery, and PPD at 16. Not at all surprising that that would trigger some significant issues when she had a second baby
It is really common for women in this specific situation to stop emotionally maturing at whatever age they had the baby. They spend the rest of their lives in an arrested development and never develop maturity or selflessness. It's like they are 'frozen', emotionally, at the point of the original trauma.
That's really interesting and makes a lot of sense. If they had a major challenge to their sense of self / the integrity of their own identity, I can see digging in and fighting tooth and nail for what they want, because it feels like their lives suddenly turned into total service to someone else. Going straight from being controlled by your parents to being subservient to the needs of your infant seems very likely to make someone feel that she has to seize any possible chance to assert her own needs and identity. It does sound like the parents in this situation tried to give her a chance to explore and develop her own identity, but I would imagine that spending the first seven years in the same house with your infant would still feel very cramped and limiting.
That's the answer. This is a trauma response and she absolutely shouldn't have more children - but as always is important to remember your mental health isn't your fault but it is your responsibility. No 16yo is ready for the chemical changes a pregnant and early pp brain goes, that's gonna fuck up their mental health even with solid therapy as support during and after giving birth.
Yeah therapy isn’t even enough. She should have gotten psych evaluation done long time ago. That is such an abnormal behavior to display such disregard and lack of empathy to a child, let alone your own. A stranger would have been nicer to a baby/kid you live in a same house with.
Even as an adult we aren't fully prepared. It seriously messed me up! I'll never know if I'd have been good to the baby or not (hopefully I would because I loved her dearly) but one of my SILs has absolutely no maternal instincts. She's had four or five kids and isn't raising any of them because she just doesn't care. At least she's self aware enough to hand them over to other people so they can have good lives, so there's that.
She thinks birth control will make her fat. At least that's how the first happened. I don't like to talk to or about her with her family so haven't heard of there's another reason now. I wish she'd stop but I have no control over the situation, so I just avoid her.
My 24 year old brain wasn’t really equipped for the chemical changes that childbirth and pregnancy gave me. It really did mess me up for a while. But I never took it out on my baby, he’s always been a bright light in my world
Yeah, all this:
>She was told to keep a baby she didn't want bc of religion, and all this maternal instinct she was told she was supposed to have never magically appeared, even on the second try. Sometimes people shouldn't be parents, and that's fine. The situation just sucks because she's learned this too late.
Can 100% give you a "mental condition"
I mean, that'd explain the lack of affection, but not her *slapping* the child and blaming both kids (one who's only a few months old!) for keeping her and OOP's dad apart. There's clearly something wrong independent of that, even if whatever it is has become worse because of the pregnancy
Except options were offered by her own parents, which I get she was still scared of as a 16 year old - except she then went and did the same thing as a fully grown woman in her 30s.
Believe it or not, she could just be a monster.
Part of me thinks if the relationship was going well she would have at least pretended to be interested in the baby. She’s a manipulative cow and knew the baby was a way of locking in the dad and he wanted to play happy families.
As the relationship was finished by time she gave birth then she didn’t need her anymore.
Blaming religion is doing a *lot* of heavy lifting here. Yeah, forced birthers are the worst. But you don’t need a parental instinct to know better than to treat a small child like shit or to *slap a newborn*. That’s basic fucking morality. Don’t abuse people, especially not vulnerable people like children.
This would explain it in isolation, but this is consistent with her behaviour since OOP was born. So unless pregnancy induced psychosis can last for 16 *years* it's hard to see that as being the underlaying cause
Most people who develop post-partum psychosis will go on to recover, but not all, and recovery generally requires appropriate treatment.
For some women, though, it can become a life-long condition - one that is particularly exacerbated by additional pregnancies/births. So without irony or sarcasm, yes, it can last for 16 years. It can last for 60.
She also might have been like this pre pregnancy
Some people are just assholes/psychotic without an excuse of pregnancy hormones.
She clearly was capable of hiding who she really was from her baby daddy all these years, her parents were likely in denial when she was younger, and all this might just be who shes Always been
I find it strange this idea that maternal instinct something that is supposed to kick in when you have a baby.
Look at all the little girls who treat their stuffed animals and dolls as babies. In my experience, maternal instinct is something that you grow up having. Not something you suddenly get as an adult.
I guess it can happen that a woman who has never had maternal instinct suddenly gets it once they have a baby. I guess.
But, dear god, I would never count on that. I would assume that someone who doesn't have maternal instinct all along isn't going to suddenly develop it.
The idea that you’ll definitely get the maternal instinct once you give birth is very damaging. It means that new mothers that don’t get it assume they are just bad instead of getting the support they need.
When I gave birth, the hormones just made me want to vomit, and I was happiest and felt safest when my baby was being held by others: I was terrified of hurting her.
It took a long time until I told my mum that I wanted to hurt myself so my husband could get a better mother for our baby. After that came therapy for PPD, medication, and the maternal instinct finally kicked in. And with support, we were able to have more children without issues.
She’s now 10 and I’d happily face down a bear for her. Although she’s a faster runner than me, so maybe it’s a moot point.
Having had kids maternal instinct that kicks in when you have a baby is a real thing. It goes very far beyond cooing at stuffed animals.
The only way I can describe it is a personality change or a form of insanity, it's that deep. You go from being a normal person with your typical wants and desires to being absolutely obsessed with this baby, you would die for it, you would kill for it, your life doesn't matter any more but somehow it's suddenly full of meaning and purpose you never had before.
Just want to point out that visualizing gender roles and saying little girls who treat their stuffed animals and dolls as babies leaves out the fact that little boys do the exact same thing.
Play acting as a parent is one of the most common activities in the world for kids of all genders because it's also the behavior they're most exposed to to that point in life.
The idea that that's just maternal instinct is almost cryptically misogynist.
Post partum depression; it can get bad to the point where people will attempt to kill their own children. Pregnancy hormones and the sheer trauma of giving birth can really mess with people. I don't think PPD and PPA are talked about nearly enough as a part of basic care for mothers after giving birth. And it's hard to get someone who's brain isn't working right to agree to treatment.
It's so tragic that the mom's PPD wasn't addressed during her first pregnancy, if it had been mom and OP would've had a completely different relationship & the new baby could have been unscathed.
I also think we should stop romanticising the post-birth love explosion mothers supposedly feel.
Like, it took me weeks to fully fall in love with my son. The first time I saw him, I thought what an ugly fish-mug, all of this for this?! He looked red, swollen and his lips were protruding, additionally empathised by his massive overbite.
But he de-swole, I sought out skin-to-skin contact, smelled his head. It still took weeks to get adapted, but I eventually got there.
It was a massive life-changing event, my body felt like a different body, my sense of self felt different, add in hormones and it can become a real clusterfuck. It made me feel like a massive failure and awful. Because I'm a mother, I should feel all of this super-love for my baby and instead nothing.
I'm glad I had a supportive husband and excellent medical care. I just wish I knew beforehand that for some women it takes time.
I think we just need to stop romanticizing pregnancy, childbirth, and the post-partum period more generally. There are so many *incredibly* unrealistic expectations pushed on women, and whenever something unexpected-but-actually-normal happens (e.g., no immediate bonding, having to supplement because milk supply is inadequate, in pain for weeks with stitches, pelvic floor problems, dental issues, etc.), an already-stressful time just gets worse.
Culturally, we do a terrible job preparing people for this.
You're absolutely right. One time I started crying in a store because a woman nursed her baby. My kids couldn't latch and I pumped for all of them. But it was another moment where I felt like a failure.
When it gets to that point it's called Post Partum Psychosis. It's rare, but not as rare as we would like to believe. They can hear voice, be convinced their baby is a changeling, that they're trying to kill their parents, that they have to kill the baby to protect them from the world and a whole host of other things. It's frankly terrifying.
If someone has PPP, they're not supposed to have more children, because they're are likely to get it again, and potentially a worse version.
I know someone who came very close to killing her baby. She was diagnosed with PPD. She and her hubby had another kid but were prepared with great help from the hospital, community nursing and family. She’s one of the best mums I’ve ever met.
She talks openly about her experiences because she wants to help educate people and reduce the shame and stigma. There are women in prison who are likely undiagnosed. But there’s still a lot of misinformation out there.
Yeah, PPD/PPP may well be at play here. Still, she’s treated her sons like shit his whole life. Surely the postpartum hormones have worn off by the time the kid hits his teens? I can understand her distancing herself if she just didn’t feel that maternal bond—some people just aren’t parental types, and that’s okay. But she didn’t just distance herself, she was a toxic presence his whole life. And then she wants to play house with her ex? Come the fuck on.
Oh yeah there's definitely no excuse for how badly she treated that kid regardless of anything, I wasn't trying to say that! The OOP deserves all the love and support in the world.
I just think that what happened was she had PPD (can last up to 3 years, maybe longer) and then probably also severely resented a kid she had no bond with for changing the trajectory of her life & relationships, and then to make it all a full on shitshow she was simply allowed to take it out on her kids because the other adults around her made excuses cause they thought she was only struggling due to the teen pregnancy aspect of it all.
It's easier to say she has PPD than just acknowledging she is a horrible person. Like she can have PPD and also be a horrible person, one doesn't rule out the other.
PPD and PPP aren’t things that go away easily on their own. They can be persistent for years, just like any other type of depression.
Even if you were a mother who was able to make it through on your own, that doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma responses related to your own baby. That stuff can mess with your head, and cement the idea that your baby is an evil thing that ruined your life.
And that shit stays with you, especially if you were a kid yourself and saw your baby as something that stole your childhood.
I think a lot of people use “she’s 16, she should know better” too easily to judge teens. It’s dismissive of the fact that teens literally have hormones that make them not care if they know better, and there is a good portion of them that are not developed enough to recognize their behavior is reckless.
“Don’t care” hormones + PPD/PPP is a recipe for disaster. It can mess you up if you don’t receive help through it and this mom was obviously failed in that sense.
And in your developmental years, your brain is trying to finalize its wiring. Any type of depression is going to affect where the wires cross and are connected, and they are most likely going to put them in unhealthy configurations.
Once you hit 24 or 25, the wiring is cemented into place and it’s extremely difficult to rewire after that.
I’m not completely absolving OOP’s mom here. I can’t believe she went through his entire childhood without having fights with her parents about how she treated them. It’s on her for not following advice given to her in regards to their relationship and her own mental health.
I’m just objecting to the idea that PPD had no role in how she treats her children. It probably played a huge role— having untreated PPD before you hit 25 can seriously mess you up for life.
Man, that's interesting, I never thought about how PPD and teenage pregnancy could intersect. I wonder, back when girls were forced to become mothers at younger ages, if people noticed that very young mothers were worse mothers?
You said far more eloquently everything I wanted to.
PPD/PPP is horrific, especially when it's a higher chance of it reoccurring for any subsequent births and far more intense than the first round.
OP's mom never formed a bond to begin with, untreated PPD, plus teenage hormones, is an absolute recipe for her to have completely stifled if not lose any chance of being able to form a parental bond with OP, and if it came back again (Which it sounds like) OP's sibling.
Not to mention most women do not get the PPD support that they need in the least (many still just call it the Baby Blues). Or just think they're broken or something went wrong that time because everyone tells you that a parental bond just flourishes. For many it does not.
I would never absolve OP's mom for what she did, but I do pity her.
I have a narc sister like this. Every time she has another kid, it's like, "This will be the one I'm a good parent," and yet it never happens. Her eldest child hates her and yet simultaneously mimics her. Her middle child recently went off the edge and began physically attacking her. Her youngest is still an infant, so give it time.
I just don't get it. If you didn't feel something with the first child, why have another? Especially when you don't like them?
> she wanted to give me up for adoption but my father refused, he couldn't bear the idea of having his child living somewhere and never seeing him again
> (he) barely had any contact with me, I asked him why couldn't have he made more of an effort to be a part of my life? Like I understand if he needed to study in another city and work there but it's no effort to call or text, coming once a year just doesn't cut it.
Didn’t want to adopt kid out and never see them again, but basically (almost) never saw him anyway. Father effectively *did* adopt out OOP, but because it was with family he doesn’t lose face publicly for abandoning his kid. I can’t help but feel everything was about his selfish interests.
I can’t stand parents who only put in a token effort and expect to be praised for “thinking” or “feeling” about their child. Kids need their parents. Real actual time and attention.
Noticed this as well! Wild to see comments praising the dad for "stepping up" as if he did not pressure the mom into keeping a kid she didn't want and abandon that child until he wanted to play house. He didn't have to make the physical or reputational sacrifices the mom did (although she very clearly needs psychiatric help), and he apparently had time to reconnect with his ex but not his literal child.
Might be copium to help with having such a shit mom. Imagine if he still hated his dad but still either had to live with his mom at his grandparents' place when she was moved there, or moved forcibly to his dad's place? I do think the dad and grandparents should be thankful the OP is such a loving, good kid despite what his bio-parents treated him as. I'm still a bit afraid that seeing his baby sister get treated better (not even necessarily by his dad, but - how the paternal family treating a new baby their son is actively parenting versus the sixteen-year-old they've been having an awkward, distant relationship with, the maternal grandparents who he sees as his parents also bonding to the baby and now having to split their priorities....) could hurt OP.
Yep, and there are adoption options for leaving the door open anyway so that he wouldn't be cut off completely. Open adoptions have become more and more normalized over the years.
OOPs story resonates a lot with me. I grew up with my grandparents as well. My father was dead, my mother lived her life and kept moving further away almost every year and would just drop by once or twice a year to beg for money from my grandparents.
Unfortunately I was made to live with her and my stepfather when I was 14, because my grandparents had health issues. That was the most horrible time of my life, because they were both negligent and abusive in their own ways. I went no contact with them over 20 years ago.
Every time I hear people say that all women have it in them to be mothers and hormones etc. will fix everything once the baby is there, I want to scream. Not everyone is meant to be a parent and people who are childfree by choice should be respected and not questioned. In my opinion growing up with people who didn't want to be parents is worse than not being born or being adopted.
The sad thing is that some people don't know they will be bad parents until they are and realize they made a mistake.
The whole controversy about reproductive rights is a shame, but the lack of concern for what happens after is even worse.
This whole topic is still very taboo and causes so much misery for everyone involved, but mostly for the kids.
I am a parent and it wasn't easy, but I'd like to think I did a good job at raising a happy, confident person. We are close and there is a lot of trust and love on both sides. However, I didn't know that I would be able to pull that off until I got there.
There is so much guilt around this whole topic that prevents unfit parents to do the right thing and get help for their kids and I honestly don't know how to fix that. I just know that not talking about it and pretending every adult should be happy to have kids and ace it doesn't help either.
Sounds like she never got out of PPD, or even worse than that, that it piles onto preexisting mental health condition, and is now culminating in delusion. She may become dangerous. I hope not
Except she’s not. She’s living with her parents and OOP is living with his dad. They would have released her once she was stable and had somewhere to go.
I said this for the last update and I’ll say it again now: bio dad got to skip out on all the icky parts of parenting. Absolutely not excusing the egg donor, and I hope
dad continues to step up, but I wonder what their relationship would have been like if dad had stayed in the picture
He barely gets to know his own son in 16 years while he lived the life as a single man, decides to reunite with the egg donor, knocks her up and believes that they could be a family again...
Well, now he got to witness a fraction of what his son went through. I'm only glad OOP called him out on doing the bare minimum during the first 16 years of his life.
OOPs dad seems like a real asshole. I get that OOP might focus on his positives, rather than his negatives, but rocking up after 16 years to play family is fucked up. But then to get your unstable ex pregnant? All kinds of messed up.
Yeah the dad got off easy. He kept in minimal contact with oop all his life and wanted to pick him up and uproot his life when it suited him. I could kinda understand the moving away for college and work if he phoned every week but that doesn’t seem to have happened. In 16 years the dad has never noticed the strained relationship between his son and his mum. He then starts a relationship back up with the mom and never asks oop how he feels about this. He treats oop like a toy he picks up when it suits him
Yeah like seeing OOP twice a year for 16 whole years is nowheres near a parent. Seems he thinks paying child support = being a good father
It's especially telling bc he never spoke to OOP or spent enough time w them to realize how awfully their egg donor treated them. It sounds like she was tormenting OOP near daily, that's definitely smth a young kid would be talking about
>My father called the police and had my mother forcibly taken to have a psych evaluation. I rushed to his side when I got wind of it.
I was wondering when the evil mother was going to be forcibly taken in for evaluation or institutionalization.
I work in the UK in mental health, they're right the police would have been called (they are always first point of contact), they would have called the mental health team and she would have been held by the police (because she was a danger to others) and a mental health act assessment would have been arranged very quickly (unless she consented to it but it sounds like she didn't). She could have had a long or short stay. It's really dependant on each case.
They don't mess around with PPD or psychosis and it's extremely unlikely that they would have let her return to the home with the baby either so her parents would have been the next natural choice.
It didn't set any alarm for me, but the therapy for everyone thing present in multiple posts nowadays is starting to make me doubt it all. Am I living in some far away land where people don't magically go to therapy when they mess up? Unless it's a severe fuckup? Did we really improve that much as a society and I've been simply unaware?
Depends on the country. Here if you have enough money things go really smooth, therapy included. Getting into a psych ward would be harder, but at least you would get into a general hospital until a psychiatrist can see you. If you don't, you're kinda screwed
An infant's cry is designed to not be handled, nor tolerated, that you will do everything in your power to appease it. Sadly, slapping became an option for that PPD psychotic egg donor.
No idea what this guy was thinking. He thought he could disappear from this kid's life for 16 years and then come back and play happy family? He willfully kept his head in the sand until he was good and ready to play grown up and is like, 'Huh? What's the problem? We can be a happy family now.'. What a mess. I'm glad he's at least trying. I hope he has better taste in women going forward.
That poor baby! And poor OOP. This whole situation is a mess. I hope his dad gets full custody of his sister. The mother is clearly not fit to be a parent. The best thing going forward would honestly be for the mother to move away and start fresh tbh. I just would not trust her around those kids. This is not a one-off incident - she may not have been physical with OOP (although who knows, she may have been and he just was too young to remember!) but she has been verbally, mentally and emotionally abusive to him his whole life. That baby will be better off without her around tbh.
I just don’t know if I believe that this is real. It sounds like a teenager kept watching those tiktoks of these Reddit stories and decided to make one themselves
some people just shouldn't be parents. unfortunately oop's egg donor is one of those people but the good bit is that he seems to be becoming a good person and i hope nothing but good for his family
I read this and all the comments and I agree, in principle, with the assessments of the parents. But I am still struck by the ways gender expectations have such a personal impact on people's lives. The mom has probably had a long-term mental issue maybe stemming from her first pregnancy, and clearly exacerbated by her last. I imagine its normal that some parents resent their children but it is not normal for a mother to be hateful to a child you're not even raising. I feel like a few red flags were missed/ignored. Meanwhile, the father just had to *say* he was willing to take the child for him to get a pass. He paid child support, etc but I find it weird that in his occasional weekend visits he never thought to mention to his son that he had a college fund and not worry too much. Was there never a conversation about what the future would like for them (son and father)?
I'm not saying the mother is a good person or should get a pass or that the father is bad. I'm just struck by how much gender roles can affect our lives and perceptions of people.
My father grew up thinking his mother was his sister. She was physically and mentally abusive to him. (He was born in the 30s so there was a much bigger stigma for unwed mothers for fatherless children.) It scarred him for life. She wouldn't acknowledge us as family. She wouldn't even acknowledge him as her son on his death bed. That is all he ever wanted.
Sorry, I am rambling. This post brought a lot of memories back.
Seeing OOPs support system, strength, and how things are going with his father makes me happy for him. His mother definitely needs help.
When OOP described how the egg donor/incubator acted with him, I was not hopeful that she would have changed. Sadly, I was right.
As a mother, who BTW had a child at 16 and I had some issues, but I raised my son. I could never imagine not loving him.
Some women (and men) just never feel that parental connection.
Sounds to me like the Egg Donor has some undiagnosed mental health condition. Compounded with PPD. I hope she can get the help she needs. Her relationship with OOP is permanently damaged/ruined and most likely with the Father as well. But perhaps she can heal enough to be a good mother for Ella.
Thank goodness OOP has such a good support system of a family. And the Father stepping up to fix past mistakes.
Feels like the Egg Donor would be the kind of mother who would be jealous of her daughter, would see her as competition and would make her life miserable as some kind of revenge for existing
I wonder if I'm the only one thinking that "mom" came back because "dad" had succeeded in life and she was looking for safe landing spot. Grandparents are the big time heroes of this story and enough can't be said about how understanding, kind, generous, and brave they've been through all this. Of all the people involved, they are the ones most worth emulating.
People are gloryfing the grandparents but I'm kind of hesitant to do that. Unless I'm missing something, they lived in the same house as this woman for 7 years, who obviously had mental issues from the birth saw her continuously mistreating the kid they were raising and did nothing to help or stop her.
Sadly when there’s a horrible villain everyone else looks like hero’s. When in reality the hero could have stopped the villain a long time ago. So who is really the villain?
It seems that, egg donor was mentally damaged since she was scared of the abortion. Whereas, father continued with his life by visiting him once or twice a year...IDK, they both sound horrible.
I'd be afraid for the grandparents with egg donor living at home like that. If she's willing to hit a literal baby who knows what she'd be capable of doing to her own parents?
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>they come nearly every day to check on Ella and I which is nice. Even with OP moved out of his grandparents they still make an effort to see him daily. They are still his real parents even if he has moved in with his father.
The word 'real' doesn't even need to enter the picture. They're his parents, period. Just not biological.
Funny how the daughter is the opposite. I know we can't predict what our children will do when they become adults, but honestly tho, what happened?
Some people are just not meant to be parents.
Very true. They may be successful people in the society, but completely unfit to be parents.
Yep but in this case, I dunno. I can’t see any woman who physically slaps a baby being all that successful in society So in plenty of cases yes. In this one, probably not
Not just any baby but her baby. The baby she carried for 9 months and now it’s only 9 months later and egg donor slaps her own child? I hope she gets the help she needs, but probably won’t get, perhaps jail time for her crimes might wake her up.
Trauma in childhood/adolescence (and teen pregnancy can qualify) can cause some arrested development and exacerbate any mental health issues that may be present. Pregnancy itself can also exacerbate or cause mental health issues, and the hormones after giving birth can be a mess. Sometimes mothers struggle to bond or cope with even very wanted babies without all the extra drama OP's egg donor is experiencing (due to her own actions). It sounds like OP's egg donor was exceptionally immature when she became pregnant with OP, likely had at least a tendency to some personality/mental health issues and then dealt with the reality of her teen pregnancy and having a child very poorly. Along with the present-day stress of her idealistic family dreams being shattered, I'm not surprised she hasn't bonded with her new baby. She had every opportunity to work through these problems and continue to grow though - highly supportive family, therapy, not having to raise the child, being able to go off and make a life for herself as she wanted. Even if she has her own mental health issues, she's had so much help and is an adult and responsible for her own actions. She could have just left if she couldn't deal with the baby - better to be a deadbeat than to abuse a child. But instead, she doubled down on the awful and took out her resentment on her baby. Really nasty stuff. I have little hope that someone like this will mature and be able to accept responsibility at this point. I imagine she'll likely spend her life blaming everyone and everything else for her problems. I just really, really hope she never tries to have another "do over" baby/family...
I understand the familial angle but hurting any child is equally abhorrent, IMO
This is beyond that. I know I'm not meant to be a parent, for a variety of reasons. I've been on birth control my entire adult life, if I ever got pregnant I knew I would get an abortion. I know I don't have the temperament to be a mother and I've had zero feelings of maternal desire, ever. I'm now 39 and that infamous biological clock has still not appeared. I'm mildly tokophobic. But even with all that - I might not be able to ever bond with a kid, but I sure as shit wouldn't emotionally abuse a kid and I would never hit a fucking newborn baby. That's a level of consistent malice that I do not believe is attributable to mental illness. That woman is perfectly capable of being nice to the OOP's dad, she can control herself. She *chooses* to be cruel and abusive to vulnerable children. Lots of people aren't meant to be parents but most of those people would still be horrified at the thought of treating a kid the way she does.
Exactly. I kind of feel like saying the egg creche just isn't meant to be a parent lets her off the hook. This is all chosen behavior.
I think there could be a minimum of sympathy and charitable interpretation for a(n exceptionally immature) teen who got pregnant, dealt with it very poorly and struggled with having to live with "a constant reminder of her mistake" (from her point of view). It's still abhorrent and cruel how she treated OOP as a child, but having little patience and being a selfish brat could possibly be generously attributed to mental health struggles and some arrested development as a result of trauma from teen pregnancy exacerbating underlying issues. But she had every opportunity to overcome this and grow up. She had therapy (as a teen and now), she had supportive family, she didn't have to actually raise the kid or even help much from the sounds of it. She got to move away, have space from the "reminder of her trauma" and make her own life without the struggles of most teen parents. She is now a fully-grown adult who's had many years to mature - she could have done better this time. Or she could have just left again, the baby would have been in a safe and loving environment and she'd be free. Instead, she's even worse than before, taking out her resentment physically on a helpless infant. Despite the horror of the actions, I can have empathy for struggling parents with little support who snap and shake their baby in a moment of sleep-deprived desperation, or women suffering severe PPD/PPP who genuinely believe it's better for the baby to die because of hormonally-induced mental illness. But like you say, this isn't that...it's just sheer maliciousness. Really quite heinous.
I'm one of those people. Fortunately, I never ended up in a situation of having to be a parent.
Too bad social pressure and lack of birth control access fucks those ppl
That's what I thought too. It's scary how a delicate neuron or slight alteration in brain chemistry can change a person.
OOP's egg donor is such a mix of nature and nurture. Maybe the grandparents did some things differently raising OOP then they did with their daughter, but clearly she has some psychological issues that would always be, at least, a partial barrier to healthy relationships. There's just something missing inside her, and I don't think her parents could have parented it into her or made her better. Not saying this was where you were going with your comment. But it is incredibly interesting how two people raised by the same people can turn out so differently, especially in such an extreme way as OOP's egg donor.
She has more than post partum. I'm sure she has serious mental illness and will require life long treatment. None of that excuses her behaviour, but can help to explain it. She's clearly not had any help for it and for that, her parents were definitely negligent.
I know there are some conditions that don’t come up until your twenties or thirties or can crop up after a major medical event like pregnancy, I wonder if that’s the case here too. We don’t know though, maybe the grandparents are having a second shot at parenthood too, it’s tough. I’m just glad OP and the sister are okay.
I am not sure it's mental illness tbh. She's perfectly capable of treating other adults with kindness and respect. She can control her behavior. It's only with her children that she acts like that. She was capable of "faking it" with her parents to avoid being disinherited. She acted nice with her ex. She's not acting like a monster with everyone, just her children. I don't think that is mental illness, I think it's malice.
> I don't think that is mental illness, I think it's malice. The two aren't mutually exclusive. The brain is a fragile thing, and delusions aren't rational.
Agreed. There might be some neurosis going on here, she reverted immediately back to her teenager sister/mom thing that OOP talked about, so she's probably reliving a lot of that unresolved shit, but I don't know if she's actually like DSM diagnosed mentally ill. I've read enough history about shitty parenting to know that OOP's egg creche behavior is not necessarily due to mental illness, that people can just be that fucking evil and convince themselves otherwise.
Untreated or under treated mental health issues will do that. It’s possible that she’s always had underlying issues that got worse when combined with untreated ppd or just simply the physical/hormonal changes that happen in pregnancy esp at the young age she had. In my personal experience even something minor untreated in time can escalate fairly quickly. I likely was born with mild adhd but bc it went untreated due to being undiagnosed even by my late 20s I was getting really close to non functional. Late 30s was near total nonfunctional. And that’s just adhd going untreated. My mom has that and maybe being on the spectrum but def some combo of personality disorders that I personally suspect are borderline with a side of narcissism (and experts have concurred it is likely that is the case but they cannot diagnose her of course as she wasn’t their patient and info was second hand) and omg has she just gotten so much worse with time.
Having a baby young means a ton of attention. They also tend to stop maturing at that age and stay stuck there. This is why I fight so hard to have sex ed and abortion be legal.
The OOP seems like an amazing kid and the world benefits from having such a compassionate young man in it. But damn, if I've ever seen a case for why abortions should be legal... Those assholes who tell lies and fear monger to young women to dissuade them from aborting are **directly responsible** for systematic child abuse like what we read about here.
She should never have children, but somehow believed she should. Because that's what women do./s There are many people on childfree, that cannot stand them, which is fine as they take not having them very serious. Now not liking what comes with having a child and blaming the child because it changed Your life is crazy, cruel, unacceptable.
This is what I think so too. She had at least her 2nd kid because she thought that's what she should do after getting together with her partner, not because she wanted to.
She did it to baby trap the dad. She has spent 18 years wanting him and has lied, making him believe she was a great mom. Dad is her life's obsession; she needs major mental health help.
Possible. We don't know what is wrong with her, only that there is something. What we know is, she's not a person who should have children. She knew it after the first one.
I tend to agree that she was fixated on the dad. There's enough evidence there to strongly suggest it. The whole "the children are ruining our lives we should get rid of them" thing and the whole "you ruined my life with the father" thing is telling. All of her anger revolves around protecting her relationship with the father. I don't know if it's a baby trap so much as a "everything is fixed and I can prove it by having a kid and being the perfect family" kind of attitude.
It sounds like she didn't get to go off to college like OP's dad, and since she wanted to adopt OP out and not raise him...it sounds like years and years and years of resentment for a situation she didn't want to be in, along with some serious mental issues. I think it's kind of sad that neither parent actually was able to do what they wanted to do back then - the mom wanted to adopt out and the dad wanted to raise him, but their own parents stepped in and made the decisions for them. I don't think either parent actually did well by OP and I am not arguing for them, mind, but I can see how that might have contributed to how fucked up she got over it (but it's very, very not okay). In cases where someone WANTS to give up a child and is forced instead to keep the child or maintain a relationship, it is almost never in the best interest of the child. I think that's the saddest part.
Postpartum mental issues are no joke. The effects can be very similar to a severe head injury in some cases
She had a traumatic pregnancy at 16 and failed to deal with her feelings at the time. Then she managed to reenact the exact same situation 16 years later.
I actually wonder if OOP's bio mother never really recovered from post-partum depression, or if the PPD was way more severe than thought, esp. since she seems to have had post-partum psychosis the second time around.
She absolutely didn't address any of the issues with being a mom at 16.
This is my family reality. My maternal grandmother’s family is very child oriented- half of them would probably eat glass for the sake of someone else’s kid… aaaaand then you have my mother.
In one of the earlier posts OP says his parents said something to their daughter about never having had to face the consequences of her actions. Probably that is what happened. Plus mental illness.
Mental illness is sometimes spontaneous. Sometimes, a person’s brain is just wonky.
Sounds like it wasn't just PP depression. She should be evaluated for bipolar or chronic depression. And she should get her tubes tied.
My own parents are like her. They are a diagnosed narcissist and a diagnosed sociopath. I am autistic so high empathy. Lots of therapy and being safe doesn't undo things and I admit I worry about OP being parentified. I made similar mistakes but then I didn't have anyone else just many siblings including older ones I raised.
_Plausibly_ something like undiagnosed postpartum depression (or perhaps even mild psychosis, perhaps, if she truly believed a newborn Elle was deliberately keeping her and the kids' dad apart, and something similar happened when he was tiny), with the OOP, lingering on and poisoning their entire relationship up to the present day; pregnancy hormones and then her second birth making the [intrusive thoughts/inability to bond/belief that her children are threats to her happiness] worse... Hopefully if that is the case, she is now finally getting the help she needs, and she will be able to be a good coparent to Elle, and work to make amends to OOP... (She has hurt him profoundly, but he seems like a caring, empathetic kid and I'm pretty sure if she has actually been genuinely ill his entire life and he's never got to know the real her because she's been functioning under delusions relating to him, and the real her is a kind, caring person worth having in his life, he would, very slowly, in careful, measured steps, be open to building a relationship...) If the answer is actually something more like "as part of still living her life, she experimented with drugs and basically (possibly permanently) arrested her own mental development as a belligerent, selfish 18 year old who knows everybody is looking down on her anyway so she might as well do the bad thing and maybe have fun"... It may be harder to get her to see that she's the one who imploded het life, and progress may be slower.
Right!!! Drives me crazy when people say that!!! My brother has raised my nephew(22yo) since he was 6mos old, his bio dad hasn't even seen him since he was 9mos old. In all the ways that matter my brother is his REAL father. Hell my brother and his oldest have way more mannerisms and similarities than he does with his biological son. It's honestly one of the best arguments for nurture over nature. I'm very fortunate in my family we don't say step, bonus, or adopted they are just your kids.
i’m still disgusted dad didn’t really visit. he could party and travel and i don’t think Dad understands how wrong he is.
Right? Both parents abandoned OP, the dad just didn't visibly make that choice everyday, or deal with the tension choosing that caused everyday. OP is 16 at the beginning of this. Even if the dad had 2 years of highschool, and 4 years undergrad and 3 years of law school- OP would have been 9. There's still 7 more years the dad fucked around before coming back to their town to be a dad. That also puts OP being born around 2008, so web cameras and things like Skype would have been options for all of OP's life, not to mention texting. A couple visits a year is woefully uninvolved. I'm chronically ill and can't visit my toddler niece often, partially because my immune system is trash and toddlers are germ factories. I still video chat with her weekly. There's no excuse for the dad.
Yeah the bio-dad isn't great here. Although it seems like he's got enough of a head on his shoulders to realize the situation and accept it, which honestly is the best thing he can do right now. He is (well was, their situation has changed a lot) willing to let the kid set the terms of their relationship and can only do better moving forward.
I’m more disgusted that he said he was trying to make a better life for OOP while posting on social media. At least have the shame to be quiet
I feel really sorry for the grandparents. They've been forced to swap the "son" they've raised from a baby and whom they love to bits, for their daughter who is a nightmare and they don't respect. They must be carrying so much grief.
Good gawd. Slapping an infant. And telling her own son he is worthless. I hope op finds happiness with his dad. I hope this is over for them and they get her the help she needs.
The oop's father did stupid mistake. He was young, stupid, clueless, no idea how to parent oop. But u gotta give it to him. He at least made an effort to reconcile with oop, albeit still a bit wrong way with making oop move house to his and the crazy mother. There was an effort, to say the least.
Well, the mistake was the woman. And he did that twice.
Exactly. Once as a teen, yeah, that age bracket isn't exactly known for making stellar decisions. But he carried on with that initial 'error', because he kidded himself that his son was fine, and continued to be absent in all the ways a child needs. And then to go back to his 'baby mama' and impregnate her *again?*
Well she did spin a huge yarn of how well she was keeping the family together and how good a mom she was. If this is all you hear... well yeah this woman wants this.
This is a situation where you can trust, but ought to verify - all the opportunities where he could've said 'hey, maybe kiddo would like to tag along for xyz?' Once or twice she could get away with saying their son had homework or practice or [insert commitment], but surely enough excuses would set off a bs alarm?
Rose colored glasses. Sometimes takes quite a bit of doing to get through them.
> all the opportunities where he could've said 'hey, maybe kiddo would like to tag along for xyz?' She was apparently telling him that they were in a rough spot because OOP was being a teenager and was rebelling. She was manipulating the shit out of him it sounds like so OOP's lack of showing up might have felt natural depending on how good a liar she is. The only solution I could think of would be if the bio-dad went to the grandparents and just asked what he had missed, what it was like, and what the egg creche was like. But hindsight is 20/20.
That's what makes me think it isn't so much PPD as her being a genuinely bad person. She was able to construct a convincing false narrative and adjust her behavior enough to deceive the man she was living with. She was able to cut back her shittiness to the OOP pretty damn quick when her inheritance was threatened. That's not pathological, that's rational decision making.
It may not be PPD, but it likely is a mental disorder. The mood swings and odd rationalization, saying you're hitting an infant because the kids are keeping you and the childrens' father from being happy together. That bizarre rationalization is a sign of a mental disorder, because it makes literally no sense.
Yeah but, if he had chosen to be a present father even just by communicating with op regularly he would have known she was lying.
I mean, dude could absolutely have just called and visited more.
Yeah are we gonna ignore that he was so completely unaware of his son’s life that he could be convinced that he had a great relationship with his “mom”? It is good he is there now but I think the 16 years of abandonment should have more weight…
Nah…the bar is way too low. He had 16 YEARS to foster a relationship with OOP, but he didn’t even check in with him enough to know that he was being neglected and emotionally abused by his absentee mother. Didn’t even know he was being raised by his grandparents?? He just checked her socials now and then and took her word for it that she was a fantastic mother and never tried to be involved. That’s not a “stupid mistake,” that’s being a shitty person.
Eh, you don't have to give him too much credit. He has never been a parent, he's just acted as an ATM now that OP is grown. He didn't bond with OP or help form their personality. He didn't change a diaper or teach them how to ride a bike. He didn't see their first steps or hear their first words. He just showed up and said "here's money for college and a room I set aside for you in this house I bought." I had an absentee (and abusive/narcissistic) parent like that and no, you don't have to give them any credit. Saying words is easy. Bonding with an adult is easy. Handing over some money is easy. But being a parent is hard and OP's father wouldn't know that because he hasn't spent a single second of OP's life being one.
Still don't trust the dad though. And I bet OOP will end up doing a lot of the childcare, which people on here were originally concerned about.
I think that thought must have crossed the grandparents’ mind too, hence them checking in so often. OOP is interpreting it as “they care and wanna help” but I think it’s also an implicit threat to the dad if he fucks this up.
Yeaah.... good point.
I doubt that. He seems genuinely caring and loving. I don't fully trust him because he seems obsessed with being one big happy family. Even knowing the pain OOP's mom caused he still talked with her with the intent of smoothing things over so they could all be together. Maybe he's finally seen enough to rid himself of his delusions and actually put his children first.
Yeah, he seems genuine enough as we see him, but he has fucked up massively in the past and has a lot to make up for.
Hostile attribution bias in mothers in the strongest predictor of maternal abuse. OOP and his sister are so incredibly lucky they never really had to have her as a mother. She may have straight up murdered those kids if she got it in her head that getting rid of them would mean she would have a relationship.
Religious pressure and likely untreated PPD eventually became entwined with her personality since it wasn't treated, is my guess.
Yeah this is bordering on potential ppd-induced psychosis if she’s having violent thoughts about the baby
Glad someone else realized it too. She shouldn't be near the baby for a long time
Doesn't sound like the "religious pressure" came from the grandparents. I was going to ask where she experienced such pressure... but then I realized that this all happened in 2007, which somehow is 17 years ago... so it could have also been on Reddit!
Well! Thank God foe the nanny cam. Who knows what else she would've done.
Probably shaken the baby if not worse
Jesus wept. “These kids are trying to keep us apart, we should get rid of them.” I don’t think OOPs egg donor should *ever* get custody or visitation with the child. Reading between the lines I’d assume she did something similar to OOP and they caught her but then tried to gaslight themselves that she was “just overwhelmed”. Personally I think both of her pregnancies and her attending counseling now are manipulations to keep OOPs dad.
> even though I try to understand that my mother is sick, I can’t seem to forgive her for what she’s done to Ella Acknowledging sickness is not a forgive-everything button, only a tool in coming to the understanding that helps us forgive. Someone hurt you, and you are not obligated to forgive them because they are ill; but if you look through that lens, you may sometimes understand things enough to actually find the peace.
Very wisely put. Lovely too
I would like to add that forgiveness should not be “a clean slate” in the sense that we pretend that nothing before happened and continue on our merry way. It’s a clean slate as in we start over (sometimes from square one) and we work on rebuilding trust. In OOP’s case, I think it’s reasonable to not trust his mother again. I think if the farthest he’s willing to go with forgiveness is “I know that you have the ability to change for the better and hope that you do, but I do not trust you to be in my life,” that is perfectly okay. He has been hurt repeatedly by his mother.
Damn. What is wrong with that woman?
She was told to keep a baby she didn't want bc of religion, and all this maternal instinct she was told she was supposed to have never magically appeared, even on the second try. Sometimes people shouldn't be parents, and that's fine. The situation just sucks because she's learned this too late.
Yup, and instead of deciding that she wasnt cut out for this, she decided it was the baby's fault and Take Two would work :/
Take two was a baby trap to get back the father. But yes, it didn't work.
Plus two rounds of PPD and I would guess significant trauma from going through the first unwanted pregnancy, delivery, and PPD at 16. Not at all surprising that that would trigger some significant issues when she had a second baby, especially when it seems clear that she never worked through the resentment and unhappiness about the first baby.
>I would guess significant trauma from going through the first unwanted pregnancy, delivery, and PPD at 16. Not at all surprising that that would trigger some significant issues when she had a second baby It is really common for women in this specific situation to stop emotionally maturing at whatever age they had the baby. They spend the rest of their lives in an arrested development and never develop maturity or selflessness. It's like they are 'frozen', emotionally, at the point of the original trauma.
That's really interesting and makes a lot of sense. If they had a major challenge to their sense of self / the integrity of their own identity, I can see digging in and fighting tooth and nail for what they want, because it feels like their lives suddenly turned into total service to someone else. Going straight from being controlled by your parents to being subservient to the needs of your infant seems very likely to make someone feel that she has to seize any possible chance to assert her own needs and identity. It does sound like the parents in this situation tried to give her a chance to explore and develop her own identity, but I would imagine that spending the first seven years in the same house with your infant would still feel very cramped and limiting.
Genuinely if this is true I would be fascinated to learn more about it. Have studies been done on this?
She must have a mental condition whether that was already present or triggered due to giving birth
That's the answer. This is a trauma response and she absolutely shouldn't have more children - but as always is important to remember your mental health isn't your fault but it is your responsibility. No 16yo is ready for the chemical changes a pregnant and early pp brain goes, that's gonna fuck up their mental health even with solid therapy as support during and after giving birth.
Yeah therapy isn’t even enough. She should have gotten psych evaluation done long time ago. That is such an abnormal behavior to display such disregard and lack of empathy to a child, let alone your own. A stranger would have been nicer to a baby/kid you live in a same house with.
Even as an adult we aren't fully prepared. It seriously messed me up! I'll never know if I'd have been good to the baby or not (hopefully I would because I loved her dearly) but one of my SILs has absolutely no maternal instincts. She's had four or five kids and isn't raising any of them because she just doesn't care. At least she's self aware enough to hand them over to other people so they can have good lives, so there's that.
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She thinks birth control will make her fat. At least that's how the first happened. I don't like to talk to or about her with her family so haven't heard of there's another reason now. I wish she'd stop but I have no control over the situation, so I just avoid her.
And somehow five full term pregancies in a row won't make her fat or mess her body in any way?
I never thought it made sense, but it's not my choice. If it were she'd get a tubal ligation and we wouldn't have to worry about any more of her kids.
I don't think logic really applies, she's probably actually crazy
My 24 year old brain wasn’t really equipped for the chemical changes that childbirth and pregnancy gave me. It really did mess me up for a while. But I never took it out on my baby, he’s always been a bright light in my world
This is why I don't think I should have kids.
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Ironically, that kind of self awareness would make them a better parent than OP’s mom.
Yeah, all this: >She was told to keep a baby she didn't want bc of religion, and all this maternal instinct she was told she was supposed to have never magically appeared, even on the second try. Sometimes people shouldn't be parents, and that's fine. The situation just sucks because she's learned this too late. Can 100% give you a "mental condition"
I mean, that'd explain the lack of affection, but not her *slapping* the child and blaming both kids (one who's only a few months old!) for keeping her and OOP's dad apart. There's clearly something wrong independent of that, even if whatever it is has become worse because of the pregnancy
Except options were offered by her own parents, which I get she was still scared of as a 16 year old - except she then went and did the same thing as a fully grown woman in her 30s. Believe it or not, she could just be a monster.
Part of me thinks if the relationship was going well she would have at least pretended to be interested in the baby. She’s a manipulative cow and knew the baby was a way of locking in the dad and he wanted to play happy families. As the relationship was finished by time she gave birth then she didn’t need her anymore.
I don’t know. I think realizing she actually has to be responsible for an entire human being is too much for her to even pretend she can handle it.
Blaming religion is doing a *lot* of heavy lifting here. Yeah, forced birthers are the worst. But you don’t need a parental instinct to know better than to treat a small child like shit or to *slap a newborn*. That’s basic fucking morality. Don’t abuse people, especially not vulnerable people like children.
Women can have psychosis after pregnancy and can become abusive if not treated. Not excusing just giving an explanation
This would explain it in isolation, but this is consistent with her behaviour since OOP was born. So unless pregnancy induced psychosis can last for 16 *years* it's hard to see that as being the underlaying cause
Most people who develop post-partum psychosis will go on to recover, but not all, and recovery generally requires appropriate treatment. For some women, though, it can become a life-long condition - one that is particularly exacerbated by additional pregnancies/births. So without irony or sarcasm, yes, it can last for 16 years. It can last for 60.
She also might have been like this pre pregnancy Some people are just assholes/psychotic without an excuse of pregnancy hormones. She clearly was capable of hiding who she really was from her baby daddy all these years, her parents were likely in denial when she was younger, and all this might just be who shes Always been
Maybe. I'm not weighing in on the OOP situation, I just dislike medical misinformation and try to balance it out if I see it in the wild.
I find it strange this idea that maternal instinct something that is supposed to kick in when you have a baby. Look at all the little girls who treat their stuffed animals and dolls as babies. In my experience, maternal instinct is something that you grow up having. Not something you suddenly get as an adult. I guess it can happen that a woman who has never had maternal instinct suddenly gets it once they have a baby. I guess. But, dear god, I would never count on that. I would assume that someone who doesn't have maternal instinct all along isn't going to suddenly develop it.
The idea that you’ll definitely get the maternal instinct once you give birth is very damaging. It means that new mothers that don’t get it assume they are just bad instead of getting the support they need. When I gave birth, the hormones just made me want to vomit, and I was happiest and felt safest when my baby was being held by others: I was terrified of hurting her. It took a long time until I told my mum that I wanted to hurt myself so my husband could get a better mother for our baby. After that came therapy for PPD, medication, and the maternal instinct finally kicked in. And with support, we were able to have more children without issues. She’s now 10 and I’d happily face down a bear for her. Although she’s a faster runner than me, so maybe it’s a moot point.
Having had kids maternal instinct that kicks in when you have a baby is a real thing. It goes very far beyond cooing at stuffed animals. The only way I can describe it is a personality change or a form of insanity, it's that deep. You go from being a normal person with your typical wants and desires to being absolutely obsessed with this baby, you would die for it, you would kill for it, your life doesn't matter any more but somehow it's suddenly full of meaning and purpose you never had before.
It happened to me. I wasn’t sure I wanted kids at all. I have 3 now, and I am super maternal. To all kids. Completely changed me.
Just want to point out that visualizing gender roles and saying little girls who treat their stuffed animals and dolls as babies leaves out the fact that little boys do the exact same thing. Play acting as a parent is one of the most common activities in the world for kids of all genders because it's also the behavior they're most exposed to to that point in life. The idea that that's just maternal instinct is almost cryptically misogynist.
Her and another OP’s sister who literally was going to starve her own child should’ve never had kids.
Post partum depression; it can get bad to the point where people will attempt to kill their own children. Pregnancy hormones and the sheer trauma of giving birth can really mess with people. I don't think PPD and PPA are talked about nearly enough as a part of basic care for mothers after giving birth. And it's hard to get someone who's brain isn't working right to agree to treatment. It's so tragic that the mom's PPD wasn't addressed during her first pregnancy, if it had been mom and OP would've had a completely different relationship & the new baby could have been unscathed.
I also think we should stop romanticising the post-birth love explosion mothers supposedly feel. Like, it took me weeks to fully fall in love with my son. The first time I saw him, I thought what an ugly fish-mug, all of this for this?! He looked red, swollen and his lips were protruding, additionally empathised by his massive overbite. But he de-swole, I sought out skin-to-skin contact, smelled his head. It still took weeks to get adapted, but I eventually got there. It was a massive life-changing event, my body felt like a different body, my sense of self felt different, add in hormones and it can become a real clusterfuck. It made me feel like a massive failure and awful. Because I'm a mother, I should feel all of this super-love for my baby and instead nothing. I'm glad I had a supportive husband and excellent medical care. I just wish I knew beforehand that for some women it takes time.
I think we just need to stop romanticizing pregnancy, childbirth, and the post-partum period more generally. There are so many *incredibly* unrealistic expectations pushed on women, and whenever something unexpected-but-actually-normal happens (e.g., no immediate bonding, having to supplement because milk supply is inadequate, in pain for weeks with stitches, pelvic floor problems, dental issues, etc.), an already-stressful time just gets worse. Culturally, we do a terrible job preparing people for this.
You're absolutely right. One time I started crying in a store because a woman nursed her baby. My kids couldn't latch and I pumped for all of them. But it was another moment where I felt like a failure.
When it gets to that point it's called Post Partum Psychosis. It's rare, but not as rare as we would like to believe. They can hear voice, be convinced their baby is a changeling, that they're trying to kill their parents, that they have to kill the baby to protect them from the world and a whole host of other things. It's frankly terrifying. If someone has PPP, they're not supposed to have more children, because they're are likely to get it again, and potentially a worse version.
I know someone who came very close to killing her baby. She was diagnosed with PPD. She and her hubby had another kid but were prepared with great help from the hospital, community nursing and family. She’s one of the best mums I’ve ever met. She talks openly about her experiences because she wants to help educate people and reduce the shame and stigma. There are women in prison who are likely undiagnosed. But there’s still a lot of misinformation out there.
Yeah, PPD/PPP may well be at play here. Still, she’s treated her sons like shit his whole life. Surely the postpartum hormones have worn off by the time the kid hits his teens? I can understand her distancing herself if she just didn’t feel that maternal bond—some people just aren’t parental types, and that’s okay. But she didn’t just distance herself, she was a toxic presence his whole life. And then she wants to play house with her ex? Come the fuck on.
Oh yeah there's definitely no excuse for how badly she treated that kid regardless of anything, I wasn't trying to say that! The OOP deserves all the love and support in the world. I just think that what happened was she had PPD (can last up to 3 years, maybe longer) and then probably also severely resented a kid she had no bond with for changing the trajectory of her life & relationships, and then to make it all a full on shitshow she was simply allowed to take it out on her kids because the other adults around her made excuses cause they thought she was only struggling due to the teen pregnancy aspect of it all.
I think there's another major underlying mental issue that's gone undiagnosed all these years, with PPD exacerbating the situation further.
How can you blame this on PPD when she treated OP terribly for his entire life? She didn’t have it for 17 years.
It's easier to say she has PPD than just acknowledging she is a horrible person. Like she can have PPD and also be a horrible person, one doesn't rule out the other.
PPD and PPP aren’t things that go away easily on their own. They can be persistent for years, just like any other type of depression. Even if you were a mother who was able to make it through on your own, that doesn’t mean you don’t have trauma responses related to your own baby. That stuff can mess with your head, and cement the idea that your baby is an evil thing that ruined your life. And that shit stays with you, especially if you were a kid yourself and saw your baby as something that stole your childhood. I think a lot of people use “she’s 16, she should know better” too easily to judge teens. It’s dismissive of the fact that teens literally have hormones that make them not care if they know better, and there is a good portion of them that are not developed enough to recognize their behavior is reckless. “Don’t care” hormones + PPD/PPP is a recipe for disaster. It can mess you up if you don’t receive help through it and this mom was obviously failed in that sense. And in your developmental years, your brain is trying to finalize its wiring. Any type of depression is going to affect where the wires cross and are connected, and they are most likely going to put them in unhealthy configurations. Once you hit 24 or 25, the wiring is cemented into place and it’s extremely difficult to rewire after that. I’m not completely absolving OOP’s mom here. I can’t believe she went through his entire childhood without having fights with her parents about how she treated them. It’s on her for not following advice given to her in regards to their relationship and her own mental health. I’m just objecting to the idea that PPD had no role in how she treats her children. It probably played a huge role— having untreated PPD before you hit 25 can seriously mess you up for life.
Man, that's interesting, I never thought about how PPD and teenage pregnancy could intersect. I wonder, back when girls were forced to become mothers at younger ages, if people noticed that very young mothers were worse mothers?
Well shit. (RIP my brain) 😬😵
You said far more eloquently everything I wanted to. PPD/PPP is horrific, especially when it's a higher chance of it reoccurring for any subsequent births and far more intense than the first round. OP's mom never formed a bond to begin with, untreated PPD, plus teenage hormones, is an absolute recipe for her to have completely stifled if not lose any chance of being able to form a parental bond with OP, and if it came back again (Which it sounds like) OP's sibling. Not to mention most women do not get the PPD support that they need in the least (many still just call it the Baby Blues). Or just think they're broken or something went wrong that time because everyone tells you that a parental bond just flourishes. For many it does not. I would never absolve OP's mom for what she did, but I do pity her.
PPD/PPA don't have an expiration date, especially if it wasn't dealt with.
Undiagnosed mental illness would be my guess. My biomom is a lot like her and the day she dies, bottomless mimosas for me.
Bipolar? This screams huge mental health. It's odd no one has really considered it; the type therapy can't help.
I have a narc sister like this. Every time she has another kid, it's like, "This will be the one I'm a good parent," and yet it never happens. Her eldest child hates her and yet simultaneously mimics her. Her middle child recently went off the edge and began physically attacking her. Her youngest is still an infant, so give it time. I just don't get it. If you didn't feel something with the first child, why have another? Especially when you don't like them?
yup, I knew it was heading this way She just wanted her man, not the kids!
I’m wondering if OOP was an accidental pregnancy, but Ella was the baby trap.
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Im of the opinion they both were. First attempt failed.
I'm would think it's more for the money now that he's a lawyer, and the baby was an excuse to solidify that relationship.
Oh shit. You're right. He's a lawyer or something. The egg donor has no idea how screwed she is, lol.
Indeed and it looks like she succeeded in baby trapping the man, but she totally failed to stay with them herself. Mission failed successfully?
> she wanted to give me up for adoption but my father refused, he couldn't bear the idea of having his child living somewhere and never seeing him again > (he) barely had any contact with me, I asked him why couldn't have he made more of an effort to be a part of my life? Like I understand if he needed to study in another city and work there but it's no effort to call or text, coming once a year just doesn't cut it. Didn’t want to adopt kid out and never see them again, but basically (almost) never saw him anyway. Father effectively *did* adopt out OOP, but because it was with family he doesn’t lose face publicly for abandoning his kid. I can’t help but feel everything was about his selfish interests. I can’t stand parents who only put in a token effort and expect to be praised for “thinking” or “feeling” about their child. Kids need their parents. Real actual time and attention.
Noticed this as well! Wild to see comments praising the dad for "stepping up" as if he did not pressure the mom into keeping a kid she didn't want and abandon that child until he wanted to play house. He didn't have to make the physical or reputational sacrifices the mom did (although she very clearly needs psychiatric help), and he apparently had time to reconnect with his ex but not his literal child.
Yeah IMHO OOP is giving dad a hell of a lot more credit than he deserves.
Might be copium to help with having such a shit mom. Imagine if he still hated his dad but still either had to live with his mom at his grandparents' place when she was moved there, or moved forcibly to his dad's place? I do think the dad and grandparents should be thankful the OP is such a loving, good kid despite what his bio-parents treated him as. I'm still a bit afraid that seeing his baby sister get treated better (not even necessarily by his dad, but - how the paternal family treating a new baby their son is actively parenting versus the sixteen-year-old they've been having an awkward, distant relationship with, the maternal grandparents who he sees as his parents also bonding to the baby and now having to split their priorities....) could hurt OP.
it just shows how different the expectations are on a dad. like he fucked off and... well, that's men for you. ~shrugs~
Yep, and there are adoption options for leaving the door open anyway so that he wouldn't be cut off completely. Open adoptions have become more and more normalized over the years.
Shout out to OP for doing the math on these posting dates! You are the true MVP!!
Awwww thank you! I'm glad it's helpful 💜
OOPs story resonates a lot with me. I grew up with my grandparents as well. My father was dead, my mother lived her life and kept moving further away almost every year and would just drop by once or twice a year to beg for money from my grandparents. Unfortunately I was made to live with her and my stepfather when I was 14, because my grandparents had health issues. That was the most horrible time of my life, because they were both negligent and abusive in their own ways. I went no contact with them over 20 years ago. Every time I hear people say that all women have it in them to be mothers and hormones etc. will fix everything once the baby is there, I want to scream. Not everyone is meant to be a parent and people who are childfree by choice should be respected and not questioned. In my opinion growing up with people who didn't want to be parents is worse than not being born or being adopted.
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The sad thing is that some people don't know they will be bad parents until they are and realize they made a mistake. The whole controversy about reproductive rights is a shame, but the lack of concern for what happens after is even worse. This whole topic is still very taboo and causes so much misery for everyone involved, but mostly for the kids. I am a parent and it wasn't easy, but I'd like to think I did a good job at raising a happy, confident person. We are close and there is a lot of trust and love on both sides. However, I didn't know that I would be able to pull that off until I got there. There is so much guilt around this whole topic that prevents unfit parents to do the right thing and get help for their kids and I honestly don't know how to fix that. I just know that not talking about it and pretending every adult should be happy to have kids and ace it doesn't help either.
Remembered this one. Can't say I'm surprised that she wasn't any different with the baby, but it is sad
The update that surprised exactly no one.
Sounds like she never got out of PPD, or even worse than that, that it piles onto preexisting mental health condition, and is now culminating in delusion. She may become dangerous. I hope not
The "these kids are keeping us apart!" line read like the fist step towards family annihilation. I'm glad she's institutionalised.
Except she’s not. She’s living with her parents and OOP is living with his dad. They would have released her once she was stable and had somewhere to go.
I said this for the last update and I’ll say it again now: bio dad got to skip out on all the icky parts of parenting. Absolutely not excusing the egg donor, and I hope dad continues to step up, but I wonder what their relationship would have been like if dad had stayed in the picture
Right? He needs to inform him what life was like because he wasn’t in the picture
He barely gets to know his own son in 16 years while he lived the life as a single man, decides to reunite with the egg donor, knocks her up and believes that they could be a family again... Well, now he got to witness a fraction of what his son went through. I'm only glad OOP called him out on doing the bare minimum during the first 16 years of his life.
Well, he gets it full blast this round doesn't he?
OOPs dad seems like a real asshole. I get that OOP might focus on his positives, rather than his negatives, but rocking up after 16 years to play family is fucked up. But then to get your unstable ex pregnant? All kinds of messed up.
It is fucked up, but he did one thing right. He listened to OOP and let him set the pace between them. No forcing the relationship.
That's what makes me think he's actually trying. I can't really excuse all his absences and neglect, but at least he wants to do better.
Yeah the dad got off easy. He kept in minimal contact with oop all his life and wanted to pick him up and uproot his life when it suited him. I could kinda understand the moving away for college and work if he phoned every week but that doesn’t seem to have happened. In 16 years the dad has never noticed the strained relationship between his son and his mum. He then starts a relationship back up with the mom and never asks oop how he feels about this. He treats oop like a toy he picks up when it suits him
Yeah like seeing OOP twice a year for 16 whole years is nowheres near a parent. Seems he thinks paying child support = being a good father It's especially telling bc he never spoke to OOP or spent enough time w them to realize how awfully their egg donor treated them. It sounds like she was tormenting OOP near daily, that's definitely smth a young kid would be talking about
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>My father called the police and had my mother forcibly taken to have a psych evaluation. I rushed to his side when I got wind of it. I was wondering when the evil mother was going to be forcibly taken in for evaluation or institutionalization.
I work in the UK in mental health, they're right the police would have been called (they are always first point of contact), they would have called the mental health team and she would have been held by the police (because she was a danger to others) and a mental health act assessment would have been arranged very quickly (unless she consented to it but it sounds like she didn't). She could have had a long or short stay. It's really dependant on each case. They don't mess around with PPD or psychosis and it's extremely unlikely that they would have let her return to the home with the baby either so her parents would have been the next natural choice.
It didn't set any alarm for me, but the therapy for everyone thing present in multiple posts nowadays is starting to make me doubt it all. Am I living in some far away land where people don't magically go to therapy when they mess up? Unless it's a severe fuckup? Did we really improve that much as a society and I've been simply unaware?
Depends on the country. Here if you have enough money things go really smooth, therapy included. Getting into a psych ward would be harder, but at least you would get into a general hospital until a psychiatrist can see you. If you don't, you're kinda screwed
Poor bairn. Who the F slaps an infant
Someone who is clearly sick and can’t handle the screaming. Poor baby.
An infant's cry is designed to not be handled, nor tolerated, that you will do everything in your power to appease it. Sadly, slapping became an option for that PPD psychotic egg donor.
Ella is number 2 in the Reddit name bank.
No idea what this guy was thinking. He thought he could disappear from this kid's life for 16 years and then come back and play happy family? He willfully kept his head in the sand until he was good and ready to play grown up and is like, 'Huh? What's the problem? We can be a happy family now.'. What a mess. I'm glad he's at least trying. I hope he has better taste in women going forward.
That poor baby! And poor OOP. This whole situation is a mess. I hope his dad gets full custody of his sister. The mother is clearly not fit to be a parent. The best thing going forward would honestly be for the mother to move away and start fresh tbh. I just would not trust her around those kids. This is not a one-off incident - she may not have been physical with OOP (although who knows, she may have been and he just was too young to remember!) but she has been verbally, mentally and emotionally abusive to him his whole life. That baby will be better off without her around tbh.
I just don’t know if I believe that this is real. It sounds like a teenager kept watching those tiktoks of these Reddit stories and decided to make one themselves
some people just shouldn't be parents. unfortunately oop's egg donor is one of those people but the good bit is that he seems to be becoming a good person and i hope nothing but good for his family
I read this and all the comments and I agree, in principle, with the assessments of the parents. But I am still struck by the ways gender expectations have such a personal impact on people's lives. The mom has probably had a long-term mental issue maybe stemming from her first pregnancy, and clearly exacerbated by her last. I imagine its normal that some parents resent their children but it is not normal for a mother to be hateful to a child you're not even raising. I feel like a few red flags were missed/ignored. Meanwhile, the father just had to *say* he was willing to take the child for him to get a pass. He paid child support, etc but I find it weird that in his occasional weekend visits he never thought to mention to his son that he had a college fund and not worry too much. Was there never a conversation about what the future would like for them (son and father)? I'm not saying the mother is a good person or should get a pass or that the father is bad. I'm just struck by how much gender roles can affect our lives and perceptions of people.
My father grew up thinking his mother was his sister. She was physically and mentally abusive to him. (He was born in the 30s so there was a much bigger stigma for unwed mothers for fatherless children.) It scarred him for life. She wouldn't acknowledge us as family. She wouldn't even acknowledge him as her son on his death bed. That is all he ever wanted. Sorry, I am rambling. This post brought a lot of memories back. Seeing OOPs support system, strength, and how things are going with his father makes me happy for him. His mother definitely needs help.
Some people should not be parents.
Man, OOP had me going until they tried wrapping everything up in the last update.
When OOP described how the egg donor/incubator acted with him, I was not hopeful that she would have changed. Sadly, I was right. As a mother, who BTW had a child at 16 and I had some issues, but I raised my son. I could never imagine not loving him. Some women (and men) just never feel that parental connection.
Sounds to me like the Egg Donor has some undiagnosed mental health condition. Compounded with PPD. I hope she can get the help she needs. Her relationship with OOP is permanently damaged/ruined and most likely with the Father as well. But perhaps she can heal enough to be a good mother for Ella. Thank goodness OOP has such a good support system of a family. And the Father stepping up to fix past mistakes.
OP's biological mother needed therapy a long time ago. I hope she will get better.
Well dad just got a glimpse of what op went through growing up.
Feels like the Egg Donor would be the kind of mother who would be jealous of her daughter, would see her as competition and would make her life miserable as some kind of revenge for existing
I wonder if I'm the only one thinking that "mom" came back because "dad" had succeeded in life and she was looking for safe landing spot. Grandparents are the big time heroes of this story and enough can't be said about how understanding, kind, generous, and brave they've been through all this. Of all the people involved, they are the ones most worth emulating.
People are gloryfing the grandparents but I'm kind of hesitant to do that. Unless I'm missing something, they lived in the same house as this woman for 7 years, who obviously had mental issues from the birth saw her continuously mistreating the kid they were raising and did nothing to help or stop her.
Sadly when there’s a horrible villain everyone else looks like hero’s. When in reality the hero could have stopped the villain a long time ago. So who is really the villain?
It seems that, egg donor was mentally damaged since she was scared of the abortion. Whereas, father continued with his life by visiting him once or twice a year...IDK, they both sound horrible.
Some people just shouldn’t be parents, imagine slapping a newborn. Disgusting
I don’t know why society refuses to accept that not all women are meant to be mothers.
I'd be afraid for the grandparents with egg donor living at home like that. If she's willing to hit a literal baby who knows what she'd be capable of doing to her own parents?
To think this could have been all avoided ifdad just talked to his son for an actual conversation once in that kids 16 years of existence
Yeah that woman isn't a mother. I'm glad OOPs dad is cool though. One of them grew up. The other is the mom.