Co-parenting with an ex can be incredibly difficult.
Particularly when their child continually battles health issues.
But what happens when one of the parents re-marries and has another baby?
This is a story about two moms battling out over which child deserves Dad’s priority.
My ex and I have a 13 year old daughter, “Nicole”. Nicole has several medical conditions that require a lot of attention.
She will need some sort of in home assistance for the rest of her life.
While we have an aide to help a couple of days a week, it is still a challenge. The outcome of Nicole’s condition became clear when she was 2.
At that point, my ex and I agreed we wouldn’t have more kids because it wouldn’t be fair to anyone. There’d be no way we could focus attention on two kids.
Someone would lose out in this situation.
Their marriage was the first casualty.
We divorced when Nicole was 5. We originally had 50/50 custody.
3 years later, my ex remarried. His new wife, Callie, is nice.
My ex did say that she didn’t understand the severity of Nicole’s condition . I figured there was a learning curve.
Eventually, Callie basically said she wanted to be hands off. Which I respected, though I wondered how it’d work considering Nicole lives with them half the time.
Soon enough, another variable jumped into the equation.
Last year, my ex and Callie had a baby. I was a little surprised given my ex was always firm on not having more kids but figured it wasn’t any of my business.
He did begin to complain that it was a lot of work juggling Nicole and the baby. I sympathized but really didn’t know what else to say.
It’s a hard situation, but what could she do?
Recently, the venting got worse. He said Callie yelled at him for taking Nicole to her physical therapy appointment instead of helping her with the baby.
He brought up potentially having Nicole stay with me more. I wasn’t entirely shocked but it pissed me off.
I said Nicole was his daughter. He can’t just abandon that responsibility. He asked what he was supposed to do about the baby.
I said “maybe you should’ve thought of that before you procreated? I mean, really, we discussed this 10 years ago as to why it’d be hard to juggle two kids. Why did you think having another would be a good idea?”
Her comments landed hard.
He got quiet and said Callie wanted a baby. I said that isn’t enough of a reason and maybe he should’ve thought harder before bringing more life into this world.
The conversation ended with me saying I’d call my lawyer and we could arrange for him to have less custody as I’d rather my daughter be properly cared for than be viewed as a burden.
Her ex’s new wife had some thoughts of her own.
Callie called me that night very upset that I had made my ex cry and that I said her baby shouldn’t exist.
I said that’s not what I said completely, more that they didn’t think it through. She called me a jerk.
Everyone is upset, but did our author do anything wrong?
Our friends on Reddit have a lot of thoughts about this family entanglement.
They were not so kind to Callie…
Many indicated our author should lawyer up and seek more child support.
They’re not letting Dad off the hook either.
Redditors are holding Dad accountable for his prior decision to not have more kids.
But most agreed our author is one fierce Mama Bear…
Yeah, this is a tricky one…
If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.