DD is pregnant and I’m shit scared.

So sorry you are in this position OP. SS absolutely need to be involved. Your daughter is unlikely to be open and honest with professionals about her life style and relationship, and as you know, the baby and her are at risk physically and emotionally, in so many ways. I'd be ringing SS myself and being brutally honest. Don't rely on systems flagging info. You can't handle this for her, and need to safeguard your own children too. Sending you hugs as you deal with this.

If you do decide to foster your grandchild bear in mind it's common for drug addicts who lose children to social services to have a lot more children each time thinking "this time they'll let us keep it"

@Rachie1973 very sobering what you’ve been through for your grandchildren you sound amazing.

My DH works with disabled children. Some are from very loving and supportive families. However a worrying majority come from very chaotic families and the cause of their disabilities are due to drug and alcohol abuse. When I was pregnant with DD I ate healthily, walked lots, rested, saved money from my job so I could afford six months maternity leave, paid the mortgage. These children who have been damaged by the drug and alcohol abuse, if you could see the damage done you’d weep and start questioning the rights of some to have children.

Saying having a child is a right without also saying in the same sentence that it comes with masses of responsibility isn’t helpful. OP understands this only too well.

Also to the posters criticising the arrival of younger siblings, My father was 14 when his younger sibling arrived. He was born before the war, his sister after, He got on just fine.

Maybe the OP wasn't a drug addict in an abusive relationship. An abortion is the best solution all round.

Op has no right to demand her daughter has an abortion, but of course she has the right to suggest it. This is a terrible situation to bring a child into, no baby deserves that. Nor does op need landed with a baby to raise.

Unsure why some posters are suggesting this will “be the making of her”.

She’s a drug addict who’s been hospitalised by her abusive partner. The risk to the child is overwhelming and it will, without a shadow of a doubt, be removed at birth for its own protection. Social services doesn’t give high risk drug addicts a chance to turn their lives around via the medium of an entirely reliant newborn. OP is absolutely right to be worried, and if she offers to take the child it may well come with the caveat that she goes no contact with her daughter to protect the child’s best interests.

OP, I’m so sorry this is happening to your family. You sound like a devoted mother and none of this is your fault.

Oh do shut up I was even younger than that when I had my first the difference is we weren't doing drugs, drinking and with a violent man. Plus this girl is probably going to expect op to raise her child if she can't.

I'd be completely clear with her that I'm not raising her child and if social services want to take it adoption will be the best route

I was 18 when I told my mum I was pregnant. She was distraught for me and suggested I had an abortion.

I as living 500 miles from home with my partner our own flat and jobs. Completely independent.

I didn't and now have a happy 40 year old. I knew my mum's suggestion and shock were coming from a place of love. She just didn't want that for me when I was so young.

Huge difference though I wasn't in an abusive relationship with a car crash of a life. She never mentioned it again to me and was a supportive and loving grandmother.

If my 18 year old told me she was pregnant I would also ask if she'd thought of an abortion. I'd be devastated for her.

However OP your situation is so different and I can hear the pain and frustration in your post.

It isn't probably going to be the making of her and you and your kids are going to be affected for the next 20 or so years.

At our age we don't need or want another baby, and I can imagine the horror you're feeling.

But you know how this is going to pan out. And you will end up stepping up for your grandchild. I have no worlds of advice just loads and loads of sympathy.

What a terrible situation for you all.

Be that as it may, none of that helps the child being born into this shit storm.

We also need to remember looking at the safety of mum and baby research tells us abusers often step up the abuse during pregnancy and/or when baby is born.

YANBU to treat the situation as it is but at the same time you did raise someone who you suggest is an addict and making terrible life choices so you should feel a bit more responsibility at the same time. Should she be having the child though? No.

This would be fine for a adult that didn't have a drug history and abusive partner. Just hoping isn't enough here

The thing is, with people like that, no matter how sensitively you say it, they will always react. I would have reacted in much the same way. It would have had to be said at some point.

Total aside, but do you have a ring doorbell? I would get one if you are expecting abuse on your doorstep.

Bear in mind if you take one of your daughter's babies now you may find you are expected to take their sibling in a couple of years time.

This. I'm a grandparent to a 2 1/2 year old and a baby of 9 months. I look after them every Monday for 10 hours. They are NT. Their parents are happily married and out at work whilst I look after them. It's only 1 day a week. I'm absolutely shattered by the time they go home. They have a lovely, stable, non chaotic life with two parents who love them. I do not have to worry about a violent ex partner turning up when we are out for a walk. I don't have to deal with health issues caused by drugs and alcohol during DILs pregnancies....because she didn't touch those things. I took early retirement. I'm 59 and not trying to juggle other children still at home, a job . Ops situation is entirely different. I absolutely cannot blame her for not wanting the inevitable 'car crash' that she can see coming her way.

So when you become a parent you automatically have to raise your grandchild if the grandchild's parents put drugs and sex before them?

Must have missed that in the parenting books

You were both reasonable and unreasonable so I couldn't vote.

You are reasonable to have serious doubts about how wise it would be for your daughter to go ahead with this pregnancy, and would be reasonable for you to spell out gently that you will not be caring for this baby if she goes ahead with it as your hands are already full with your own young children. The baby would be her responsibility and she is very likely to end up raising it without help from the father.

However, you could have handled it more sensitively (appreciate you were in a state of shock). It's not your decision to make whether she has an abortion or not so you shouldn't really be trying to tell her what to do unless she asks for your opinion. I hope when you have calmed down you can talk to your daughter using more sympathetic language and that she will see the sense in what you are saying. But at the end of the day, her body her choice.

Oh no, gutted. It's her life though. And what you need to do is enforce boundaries. She will come around.

A grandparents role and a grandparent who ends up with full care of the baby/child are very different...

OP….i have no words of advice only to say I’m so sorry this is happening to you. My DD is in a very abusive relationship and it’s hell on earth for us all. Sending you a big hug.

Of course she has the right, it’s nothing to do with age and everything to do with circumstances.

My youngest had her first at 16. I wouldn’t and didn’t suggest abortion. She’s a born mum and I knew that. 6 years later she’s proved me right and her son is a happy, healthy lovely little boy.

On the other hand one of her brothers was in an up and down relationship with his partner. She had a child on a child protection plan from a previous relationship. In fact he met her in a mother and baby foster placement. Within 4 months she was pregnant and I sighed a big sigh. The pattern was made, the next few years were spent with kids being traumatised from the screaming matches. Both parents have mental health issues and substance issues.

Finally the children were removed. We started the court process to take them. The children were separated, boy to his biological family, girl to us. The traumas these poor children have witnessed are unimaginable, and if you do some research on early childhood traumas you can see how it affects their lives long term.

Then…. Just when you think it’s settled she gets pregnant again. Of course I advised an abortion but no. She didn’t, and that baby was placed with me at 3 days old. No maternal leave for me! I had to work full time and juggle a new born and night feeds at 47, as well as a 16 month old. Parents drop in and out as it suits them, not the kids. They try to tell me how awful life is, in between their fights and spliffs. They try to tell me how they want me to raise their kids.

Not to mention the absolutely invasive process that is SGO. My life, my relationships, past and present, my finances, my home all picked over with a fine tooth comb by social services to check we’re fit to raise these children into our retirement.

4 years down the line the emotional and financial strain is horrific. My DH has cancer, my blood pressure is high. The kids have similar issues to their parents so I’m trying to navigate them as well.

We had plans you know? We were going to travel. We were financially sound and had spare cash for the first time ever. Instead, we are committed to children again for the next 18 years. Sadly my DHs cancer means that he won’t see all of those 18 years so the kids will be exposed to more trauma in the loss of primary care giver, and I will be nearly 70 by then.

I think OP has every right to suggest considering an abortion.

You signed up to be a grandparent when you had kids

Not to two drug using parents, one of whom is a violent, stalking abuser.

And not with the possibility of having to raise the child herself if they end up having to go into the care system.

Very different indeed.

I don’t think I have any better advice than others have already provided but it sounds a very difficult situation and you’re clearly a very loving mum

Whilst I think you know that would be for sure the best, if she wants to be a mum she will need to cut all contact with the boyfriend and do it single handed - she's got months to prove she can stay off drink and drugs, social services will be looking really carefully at whether she's capable but won't terminate parental rights unless she relapsed, he sounds too volatile to change without also being clean from drink and drugs. I like to think anyone can change though takes a wake up call

A more serious in a way point though is has she taken drugs or drunk excessive alcohol since being pregnant, potentially before she knew because damage could have been done, a know a child with moderate to severe FASD and I wouldn't wish that on any child which could be avoided, definitely a consideration

I'm not anti abortion but it shouldn't ve used as a method of contraception.

Loads of people use abortion as contraception.

Who are you to stand on high declaring people shouldn't use abortion as contraception..... ??? Especially in these circumstances.

She's probably only pregnant because, as a poster said, she's missed pills or vomited them up due to drug use. And you don't even know if any damage could have been done to the foetus already.