Hi, I’m happily pregnant with my wonderful partner and now we have passed the first trimester we are excited about telling his two daughters. I’m lucky to have a great relationship with them but their mother has been rude and difficult from the start with me and my partner. I’m beyond stressed about her reaction once we tell her about the baby and we can’t decide the best option - advice needed please!
For reference she does have mental health issues and has had a number of breakdowns over the past 5 years. The youngest daughter (7) has aniexty to the point she is literally sick with worry about mummy’s stress and headaches. She has had unprovoked screaming rages over the phone with my partner over the past 2 years. For context of her behaviour she has called me a b I t c h to the children, tried to stop me seeing my family by screaming at my partner and making threats, moved the kids 4 hours away when she found out my partner had moved on with me (no crossover - they were long separated) and claimed mental health issues to justify the move so far away to the children, bad mouthed my ex to the shared schoolgate friends when they broke up and then claimed I’d ruined her life and was evil when she found out about us (the school gate friends told us they sang ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ when she announced she was moving away…). She broke all Covid rules with house parties in Tier 4 whilst I was shielded and knowingly forced me to move out temporarily so my partner could still see his kids - and somehow found reason to scream at him to blame him for the kids being upset about her parties, and last week started threatening to reduce contact with the girls because he had to book a train 30 mins later (he travels from Yorkshire to London and back x 2 to bring them home on access weekends and she travels 20 mins to London for the handover). There are many more examples but she has a history of severe temper swings and depressive episodes.
We are terrified of another screaming fit and threats when we tell her and can’t decide what’s best. I feel she should be told by phone over a conversation (in person doesn’t feel safe given her volatile past behaviour) but friends who knows her and her behaviour says to email her and let her react in private before speaking to her at the handover. An email feels on the disrespectful side given how emotional she can be, but I would love independent views on how best to handle this. We will be telling the girls first and then telling her before she speaks with them.