I unfortunately made the mistake of posting this originally in AIBU thread.
I just need some advice from parents/step parents or just anybody that has experience with blended families.
I will cut a long story short, my partner and I are expecting child. His daughter (13y) understandably has not taken it very well. It has been a little up and down over the last few months. She stays with us EOW, however female intuition paired with her changed behaviour/attention seeking (which again is understandable) leads me to believe she still is finding this hard to come to terms with. My partner lives in rose tinted glasses and maybe a bit of guilt/personal denial so believes everything’s okay. She has also told her dad now everything is okay on many occasions.
My partner has a good co-parenting set up with her mother and there is no bad blood between me and my SD mum. If we are ever REALLY worried we will will always ask her and if we get the normal “I’m fine” but it’s clear she is not, my partner will drop her mum a message just to get a bit of help/make sure she’s speaking to someone.
When she first found out about the pregnancy her mum advised that she comes and speaks to me about her worries and any emotions she may be feeling, which she did and we sat and cried and hugged and openly spoke about. She is worried she will be replaced and forgotten about, which is a HUGE worry to her but absolutely not what we would want on our end.
Her behaviour over the weeks towards me has deteriorated but we have always had a good relationship. I understand she’s emotional and upset and going through a heap of changes. I just want to try what I can to turn things around but I’m also very conscious of not trying to get too much from her. My partner deals with any behavioural conversations when she’s been really disrespectful and rude but I hate that it’s now like this and I am worried it will get worse as time goes on, baby arrives.
Buried in with the masses of SM hate my other thread has, I have also had some wonderful suggestions/a reality check where needed. I am under no illusion this is going to be easy work. But it’s hard when my partner is so adamant everything is okay when it’s clearly not and I get the brunt of the disrespect/rudeness. This weekend I was completely ignored every time.
My question is, do you think it would be a silly idea for me to message her this week (before she comes up this weekend), just to ask how she’s doing, explain that I have been cautious to talk about the baby around her as I am conscious of her feelings and let her know she is very much included and always will be. I want us to be on eachother side as much as possible but I’m undecided if it will be taken the wrong way. My other thought was to maybe message her mum first to see what she thinks about me messaging her… I also don’t want her mum to feel awkward either but I feel like whatever I do will most likely not be the right thing.