To think this baby is my grandchild?

[mishahotit]

Posting here for advice on how to handle it as I really don’t want to cause anyone any upset but I’m not sure I can just sit on my hands and ignore this. Am fully prepared to be told I’m a nosy old cow who should mind her own business.

DS was 19 in May. He has suffered from depression for years which has been worsened by the pandemic. He unfortunately smokes weed to cope with it but it just makes him worse, not that he’ll be told that. He is on furlough from his part time job and so has his own money to pay for it, I can’t stop him. All I do is ban it in my house and he’ll smoke in the local park. He has started having mental breakdowns every few weeks, panic attacks, verbal abuse etc. I have tried to get him to quit the weed and seek help but he won’t.

He had a short term girlfriend last year, from around February to July. It fizzled out and he dumped her. Other than college and work, DS hasn’t had much going on since. She was a lovely girl, I saw her often and liked her but of course she was out of our lives after the split.

Yesterday I was browsing Facebook and she came up in the “people you may know” section. I clicked her profile, not sure why I did but I think I may have been wondering how her mum was doing as she was awaiting an illness diagnosis when her and DS were together. Saw a few pictures of a newish looking baby, assumed it was a relative or a friends baby or something. But then get to a post dated mid-March, a picture of her in hospital holding a newborn and people congratulating her in the comments. As you can imagine, cogs started turning and I had a bit of a ‘hang on a minute’ moment. They split in July last year, March means baby would have been conceived just before then.

I looked (and keep looking as I am so stunned) at the pictures of this baby again and he really does resemble DS at that age. It’s uncanny. I really do think this is DS’s baby and I don’t know what to do. It’s not just going off gut feeling is it as the dates do add up. Except since the split DS hasn’t mentioned her to me at all, certainly no baby.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that there are 3 possibilities. 1. DS has no clue that this child even exists. They met online, no mutual friends so I find it possible. 2. DS has noticed/she has told him but he is avoiding it. Sadly this is something I see him doing in his current state. 3. DS and her have spoken and it’s been confirmed somehow it isn’t his.

I cannot stop thinking about the whole situation and I don’t know what to do. Can’t even look at DS knowing it’s possible he has a child out there that he is avoiding. Haven’t mentioned it to him as he hates me having anything to do with his life and will likely kick off. Have thought about messaging the girl but the last thing I want is to come in all guns blazing into this girl’s life. If there’s a possibility it’s DS’s he needs to contact her, not me.

I’d really appreciate some advice on how to handle it as I’m struggling keeping it all in. As I said, I really don’t want to cause anyone any upset.

It sounds like you are going to contact her and put your DS's shit on her, she doesn't need this. She's had her first baby, possibly as a complete LP, if it's your DS's.

Personally, I couldn't walk away from a GC. I'd message her asking if she is well and if DS is the Father. Then I'd be asking about her and her and the baby's needs.

I've got two adult children who smoke weed and their MH drops because of it. This might sound harsh, but I've got little sympathy. My middle DD goes on rants after smoking, I've told her that I'm no longer taking her verbal abuse and neither are my GC. It's shocked her into cutting right back.

You shouldn't be asking her to shed light on your weed smoking son's head. Ask her if the baby is his and did he know and stop seeing him as a victim.

Get tough and tell him to get his arse in gear. You are living with DV because he takes drugs. Don't inflict that on a new Mum and child. See your Son for what he is, it will do him a favour. He needs to get on a path to better MH and a better life.

This is the most dangerous part of weed, you wouldn't talk like this about any other drug.

Hope your son gets better op. You sound like a lovely Mum. I would be v cautious about him having involvement with the baby if he is the father due to his meant alone health and drug use- not fair to inflict that on child or mother.

I think your son will just lie and be awful to you.
Send the mum a nice message.

Good luck op. Hope everything turns out well

I would message her and say that she came up on people you may know and that you saw her photo and wish her congratulations.

For D's though he needs to stop the weed. That will be making him feel worse.
What's his and your relationship like with his father? Could the two of you stage a sort of intervention. Or could his dad have a chat with him.

Don’t make your son’s issues her problem. If your son is 19 I’m guessing she’s a similar sort of age so hardly worldly-wise, she’s just had a new baby and in the middle of a pandemic - you may both be mothers but you’re not peers in terms of age or experience. Don’t lay his problems at her door.

If you’re going to send her a message to potentially open the lines of communication then the one that has been suggested and endorsed as being excellent by many other posters is a good bet.

If you want to open a dialogue on a genuine peer-to-peer basis then contact her mother or father.

Personally, given everything you’ve said about your son, I’d steer clear of talking to him about this at present. You’ll get nothing useful from him.

You seem prepared for it to be his and the impact on his life of being a dad, or that he may know and be keeping it secret from you, or that it is not be his. But there are other, more troubling outcomes with this can of worms that I think you’d do well to think through before deciding what to do.

Regardless of whom you choose to contact, you are going to have to be prepared to be told:

• to stop interfering without finding out any information one way or another
• that the baby is his but they don’t want him, or you, involved
• that it is his but they don’t want him involved and ask that you keep it secret due to the state of his problems with drugs and his MH while also asking that you contribute financially and/or offer contact to just you

If someone came up on facebook that you knew but hadn't spoken to for a year, and they now had a baby, you'd contact them to say congratulations and wish them well. Why would this be any different?

@callmeadoctor, that's not what's being asked. Potentially, the baby could be her GC and has, the right to know one half of his/her family.

If someone came up on facebook that you knew but hadn't spoken to for a year, and they now had a baby, you'd contact them to say congratulations and wish them well. Why would this be any different?

It's obvious

*In the kindest way, do you think that your son would be a positive influence in this little baby's life? Reading your OP, I can absolutely see why the girl in question would have quietly disappeared from his life to have the baby.

Please don't inject an extremely mentally ill and violent weed addict into this baby's life and impose him on that poor woman.

The baby won't save him, he will endanger the baby and her. In your position, I would pretend I never clicked the link, keep my mouth shut and have a mental health assessment for my son.*

Exactly as picsred said. Leave well enough alone.

I can’t just ignore my grandchild though.

Of course you can. You don’t have any rights even if you were the child’s grandparent, and your son isn’t in a fit state to be a father.

She’s not in contact because she doesn’t want either of you involved and you need to respect that. Trying to contact her, ask her who she’s had sex with or attempting to make her responsible for why your son is like he is is unacceptable.

I think it would be nice to contact her. I had my first son at nineteen and was originally with the father. However, he turned out to be a shit. But his parents weren’t. I kept visits with them because I wanted my son to have the loving grandparent relationship he deserved, even if his dad wasn’t willing to facilitate it. They didn’t talk about his dad too much, mostly just them trying to get him to grow up and be reliable. He has now grown up and is a much more normal and involved father, and I am very glad that I continued contact with them. When he was a toddler, they would take him for tea once or twice a week so I got a break. They were the days that he was supposed to have contact with his dad and they just came instead if he didn’t turn up. They ended up taking over the visiting times so that if his dad was going to turn up, he would go to one of their houses. But if he didn’t turn up, my son wasn’t disappointed, because he considered it a grandparent visit and they never let him down.

I had always got on with his parents (particularly his mum) when we were together so it wasn’t fraught or uncomfortable. His mum even buys gifts and thinks of my younger son (my husband’s child), and he also refers to her as nanny. You sound like a nice person so I don’t see why it couldn’t work out nicely, assuming that’s what the mum wants. No harm in sending her a friendly message and seeing what comes of it.

Wow, OP. What a difficult situation.

Firstly, I agree with PP in that messaging this new mother probably wouldn't be the best idea. She might be overwhelmed with becoming a mum and this could contribute to any stress she is dealing with. I would say that as she has posted on social media about the birth of her baby, she is not intending to keep this a secret, but it might take her aback to suddenly receive a message from you about it. So I think it would be best to approach your son about the matter instead. Is your son friends with her on social media?

Secondly, I think it is possible that your son does already know about this. As you have said, the dates match up, and his behaviour does indicate that he is struggling with things at the moment.
I have had some experience with young people who smoke weed, and I can empathise with you because I have seen first hand the verbal abuse that comes with cannabis addiction. It is not a reflection of your sons character, but instead a reflection of how the drug affects someone when they are reliant on it, and how they feel when they are withdrawing from the high.

I would agree that you should speak to him about it. It might also be that the child is not his, and he might be struggling to come to terms with this if he had strong feelings for this girl. However, my gut feeling from reading your introduction is that the child is his.

The tricky bit is how to address this with him. Do you have quite an open relationship aside from his personal struggles at the moment? Does he often share things about his life with you?

To those saying the ex obviously doesn’t want OP involved- I’d say there’s a good chance the ex thinks she already knows and has chosen to not be involved. The son could have made out that none of his family want to know because it makes his life easier.

OP you will never know if you don’t ask. Personally I’d need an answer either way. Also, if I found out that my son knew about something like that and chose to walk away he wouldn’t be welcome under my roof.

The fact that she hasn't tells you all you need to know. It sounds like your son is on a seriously bad path, and you should focus your energy on helping him, not butting into other people's lives

100% agree with this you have much bigger problems regarding your son at the moment.

You need to start treating your son as an adult. You are only a potential grand parent by default of his actions. He is the one who needs to take the lead on this and you need to respect his decision. You can support him, encourage him to do the right thing but he needs to take his own responsibilities. Talk to him, discuss him, let him know you're there to support him depending on whether he knows or not, but don't get involved yourself,certain not behind his back.

If you have no friends in common and she popped up as a potential friend she has 99% for sure looked you up

Is this actually true?
I googled to see if people can tell if someone has looked you up, and this is what I found:

www.facebook.com/help/205685226136386?helpref=uf_permalink

Neither she or the Mum have been in contact with you throughout the pregnancy or up until now when the baby is 3 months.

So they can perhaps figure out that your son has said nothing to you-if he knows that is.

So either he's not the father, he is & they haven't told him, he is & knows & hasn't told you.

Either way, no one has told you, so I think that you need to leave it.

Much as you might be a lovely person, they would probably be too wary of you involving your son, whatever you might promise to the contrary.

Their sole concern is the baby.

I can’t just ignore my grandchild though.

You can actually.

If she wanted any of you in this child’s life, she had the means to reach out.

It’s not fair for you to fuck up her life on the off chance that your son fathered a child that you know he likely won’t care about and Who will be a terrible presence in that baby’s life.

Leave her alone. If you must speak to you ds about it, fine.

But your idea of messaging a young new mum about her problematic ex is just so, so selfish.

It is not selfish, a child knowing it’s family is important for the child. You have no idea what he may have said to her, giving her the option to create a relationship with you for her child is kind. You aren’t taking her to court for access, just letting her know you are there and want to help if she would want that.

Oh, OP, what a horrible situation. I don't think there are any perfect answers but I tend to agree with your instinct of messaging her directly with all the caveats you've said about understanding of she chooses to ignore you and so on. It's hard to be more reasonable than that. Her child comes first and it seems right to offer the opportunity to know their (possible) grandmother.

I'm not sure if I'd ask your son first if he's as you say he is. Whether or not he knows about the child, it could set him off on his poor ex.

I agree with those who say write to her. But I would tell her what you wrote here. He’s always drunk or high, you can’t talk to him at all, that she popped up on your suggestion list and you were reminiscing about when he seemed better (when two of them were dating) and saw her baby. I would apologise profusely for asking directly and tell her this is eating away at you... the possibility your raised an asshole of a son who hid this child from you... and ask her whether it’s his and he’s been told... because you’re devastated you might have raised such a man. I think she will answer that — but be prepared she might not tell you the truth if she doesn’t want him in the baby’s life. So if she says the baby isn’t his, you’ll never really know if that’s true.

"She was a lovely girl, I saw her often and liked her"

Yet she hasn't contacted you.

I'm really sorry OP, I just read one of your updates about how your son speaks to you when you ask him questions. As such, please ignore the questions I asked you in my previous post. It makes me very sad to think of how you must feel when he speaks to you in this way.

After reading your update from last night I feel at a loss about what advice to offer you at this current moment. I wish I could help you, though.

You do sound like a lovely lady

As a grandmother I can’t help but think I’d need to take every chance to know my grandchild or know if I had one. But as a mum of both sons and daughters I would also urge you to take your time and speak to your son first and foremost and start tackling his drug addiction head on. While I don’t agree that weed is the worst thing ever- equally if it is NOT doing his MH any good and is in fact harming it then it’s something he needs help to address. You are letting him spiral downhill in front of you and I think it’s time to step in and get him to face up to the issues and make a plan to get help. And hard though it may be, the baby issue might just need to take a back seat for now.
If you do contact the girl, please don’t make it about your son. Or his issues. He is not her problem any more. He’s yours. But I know that my dd has had many issues with the other grandmother of my grandchild due to the way she refused to ever admit her son was in the wrong when he was. And in doing so she has missed out on pretty much all of her grandchild’s past 2 years. My dd has many struggles and had the other GM just been a decent and kind person who maybe even said “my son isn’t a bad personality but I can see he has done things that have hurt you. But can I still help with the baby and give you some support” then she’d have been more than welcome in his life... So if you do reach out to the exGF a simple “How are you doing? I saw on fb you had a baby, congratulations and I hope you’re both well. Please don’t take this the wrong way but I wondered if there was a chance it was DSs? I am not trying to make any trouble for you but felt I needed to ask as I know nothing of the situation in which the relationship ended. Apologies if I’m way off base. Take care.”
Or similar ...
This is a really tough situation for you.

I feel the need to ask about baby, while also stating I know she doesn’t owe me anything and I completely understand if she ignores and blocks me, and say I have no intentions of pushing anything with baby

Just this bit. Don't start asking her to help re your DS.

You're askng because you think you may have a DGS. Make it very clear that, if it is your DGS, you'd like to support her and get to know him.

I'd keep your DS out of it for now.

If you discover that you have a grandchild - what will you do?