Teenage daughter pregnant. Disappointed, upset, angry WWYD?

[Downnotout]

My 18yo DD has told us she is pregnant. She has just started a 2 year course which would have set her up for life.

Her BF of all of 4 months is in the forces and will be going to Afghanistan next year, although he says he will stand by her. She was on the contraceptive injection but was ill a few weeks ago, had lots of anti biotics and ended up having an operation. Somehow in amongst all that she managed to get pregnant.

I feel so disappointed. For her, for him, for us as a family. It isn't good news. She is living away at college, we have signed a lease on the house. She will have to leave college and the house and we will have to continue paying til next September for it. As well as next terms fees of £4000. We have been killing ourselves to pay for all this as it was her lifelong dream to do this course/ job and now it's all for nothing.

I think she has rose tinted glasses on about life with a pretty house and a cute baby gurgling away in the background. Join me here in shaking your heads and thinking about the reality of being alone with a baby, not having slept for weeks, your partner away at war and having to spend your last ten quid on a packet of pampers.

There is no way we can have her back living with us at home. Call me selfish, but I have brought three children up. My youngest is still only 9. Somewhere along the line me and DH were starting to think about having a bit more time to ourselves.

Yes she's 18, an adult. Old enough to make her own decisions. But I am filled with dread about it all. I am only too aware of the pitfalls, what might go wrong, if they split up etc. and I know she will need me to be there for her, to support her. But I just don't want it. I don't want the responsibility of it. I don't want to be tied to another baby and I wish so much that she wasn't throwing her life away and maybe ruining his. A baby is forever and at her age she has no concept of what that means.

Downnotout.

I'm sorry she still playing games. I have to agree with you about all her excuses for her behaviour, you could be describing me i'm short, asthmatic, dyslexic, a middle child, was bullied at school. But at no time have I or would I treated my family in the way she has treated you and yours. I hope you can keep being strong and keep her at arm length until she grows up.

P.S. I hope you had a good holiday and christmas.

@ the damaged car! Do you think she did it?

No she didn't do it. But it is because of her. Something else happened the same night and it's too much of a coincidence to not be connected.

We had a really good break, thank you. It was just what we needed to clear our heads.

I've read your entire thread Down, with a rising sense of horror (and admiration for you).

Your daughter's problems are beyond the analysis of unqualified MN posters. But the sheer dramatic nastiness is just astonishing, and I can understand why you are questioning and blaming yourself.

I read an interesting post by a mum on another site. She was talking about maternal self blame. She has two sons. One has completely cut her off. The other completely adores her. She wrote, 'I am the same person; but to them I am two different people.' I think in a sense, just as parents partly create the child, the child creates its parents too, or a story about them, to fulfil its own needs. Your daughter NEEDS right now to feel that you are 'not a proper mum'. Her ambivalence and (selfish) need are palpable in those awful texts.

When you say it happened because of her do you think she enlisted someone else to do it? That sounds like a truly horrible escalation.

Oh Downnotout - I am glad you had a good break but sorry about the way things are still going. Hope something changes soon for the better.

I'm new to MN and have just read the entire thread. Downnotout your plight here has left me absolutely stunned. I hope that your daughter realises soon what she is at risk of losing here. I assume this lovibg family is her new husbands family? Let them deal with her for a bit....
I hope the police have been informed about the car!

I have no proof but I think it was the druggie ex boyfriend. The one we had to get a harassment order out on 6 months ago.

He heard about the wedding and tried to attack my son in town with a bottle and threatened to stab him. It was the same night that the car was damaged and he lives around the corner.

Obviously I'm not saying its her fault, or that she had any part in it, just that we're still having to deal with this nutter that she ran off with last time and the consequences of her actions.

She just said "well what's that got to do with me?"

breaktime73 I have two other children who love me to bits and would do anything for me. It is very true that they have had the same mother but to them I am a completely different person to the one that DD sees.

Obviously you've reported it to the police, Downnotout - have they any way of finding out if it was him? Local CCTV perhaps?
That's really scary, that he is still bothering your family, and with violence. Did the harassment order cover your DS, can he be picked up by the police for breaching it?

The police weren't interested. We had to phone them from Tenerife to get a crime number for the insurance. I told them about the ex and asked if they were going to look at the car in case there were fingerprints or any blood but they didn't even come out to it.

Actually I'm glad we weren't here as the dogs would have been going mad and we would have gone out to investigate. Another car in the drive wasn't touched but DHs car was completely smashed to bits- it wasn't one quick brick through the windscreen. There are bricks all over the drive.

Jings! And the police weren't interested? Bloody hell. :(
I don't know what your insurance will say but be prepared to have to pay the excess "because you weren't driving it at the time". My car was damaged on my driveway because the neighbour was having breezeblocks delivered by Jewson, and owing to the space constraints, they were being lifted over my car. Well, one pallet broke and they fell down the side of my car, scratching and denting the paintwork on two doors. My insurance company paid out but minus the excess, because it was on my drive. FFS!! If I'd been driving it, I would have been able to reclaim the excess, but because I was nowhere near it, and it was completely the other party's fault, I lost my excess. Work the logic of that one out, cos I bloody couldn't!
Hope you have a more sane insurance company.

Well, have read this whole thread in two sittings and feel exhausted for you just reading it. I can completely understand and agree with everything you have said and done. Keep doing what you are doing.

And is your DS ok? I really hope so.

Sorry to hear about your car.

I have certainly self destructed my life in the past and to a lesser extent still do.

I think in part the issues are to do with my very very early childhood and to do with my parents relationship with each other etc.

I have not been a great Mum to my dc and I think there will be much heartache ahead.

If I could back and redo my eldest early childhood How I would. I wasn't awful or neglectful but I did fail her in some ways and we've had some traumatic times already.

All I can suggest is send her texts randomly telling her that you love her and miss her

Have now got up to speed having been off MN for a bit.

EFA - I agree with the others that your post was unnecessary and unpleasant. You evidently don't have children this age of your own, or you would recognise what is going on. Having taught teens for years, for some, nothing is ever good enough, and they have what my teenager terms as an overinflated sense of their own importance in the greater scheme of things. He also sums it up as egotestical, and yes, the spelling is correct.

It seems to me that the daughter is still pushing buttons, and if she did get married, I hope that Forces life is being a salutary lesson to her. Having done it for 46 years, it isn't a picnic and it will open her eyes a bit and she will have to do some fairly rapid growing up, or she will wreck her new dh's career good and proper.

I don't see as a parent, and a daughter, what more the OP could have done in being supportive. I would have personally reversed that text at Christmas, and pointed out that when she was ready to be an adult, then I would be ready to listen. Funny how the 'I love Mum' text was followed by a request for money.

Glad you had a good time away OP. Keep us posted.

Hello all.

Just a quick update. Things aren't really any better but they are no worse either.
DD and her husband got their married quarters and have moved down south. dD has found a job so that is positive. She texts me sporadically, either to ask for stuff like her suits or documents/ references off the computer, which of course I send her.
She went to stay with her cousin for a while before the married quarters came through but that only lasted a couple of days. DN had initially taken DDs side but after hearing a conversation between DD and someone else DN checked DDs phone and found out DD had been telling her hubby that DN was being horrible to her and she couldn't stay there anymore. She also read all the texts between DD and me and realised DD had been telling her a pack of lies. she rang me to apologise and said that she had had no idea what had been going on and that she had just thought we were being mean.

Predictably DD has been to hospital 3 times. Someone saw her on crutches and someone else told me she said she'd had a miscarriage. I suspect this is all just much of the same but who knows?

She has text me to ask me to visit my fathers grave with her a couple of times. He died 18 months ago. I feel this is just more emotional black mail. I said that I thought the best thing she could do was to try and not make things any worse, to settle down, get on with the life she has chosen and prove to everyone she has done the right thing.

I don't feel able to build any bridges with her yet. I am never nasty but I keep my responses short. I don't think I will ever be able to trust her again. I know there is more to come in the future and the only way I can deal with it is to wait for things to happen.

Can I just ask what it is with the deep breath thing on this thread?

Can I just ask what it is with the deep breath thing on this thread?

Thanks for the update. The next bit will be when her dh goes off on deployment and she has to cope. She won't like that, and she won't enjoy life on the patch as she will be firmly at the bottom of the pecking order; women who have been doing it for longer will only put with her so far.

scaryteacher this dd is not some kind of demon and it does the OP no favours to take such an unbalanced viewpoint.

why do you ignore nailak's posts?

I don't think the OP has taken an unbalanced viewpoint at all. I think she has been even handed and fair throughout.

As a Forces wife of some 26 years and a Forces daughter and sister to boot, so have 46 years experience of this; this lass will find it hard when her dh goes off on deployment. He will not be able to rush back and pat her shoulder and sort things out, and contact will be minimal and infrequent. He will not need or want to hear that she has problems, just that everything is OK. If he is in a hot sandy place, then this is doubly important as he will not need the distraction. If she kicks up a fuss this end for no reason, then that is not good for his career.

As to ignoring Nailak's posts, I read them, but she wasn't rude to the OP as I felt you were.

I have a mil who is behaving at the moment much like the OPs daughter - it's all about her all the time, and how she doesn't like to be 'controlled'. Our solution was to step back and let her go to hell in a handcart her own way. This has resulted in her now not having contact with her sons and our respective families, because we won't play by her rules and kowtow to her version of events, or put up with accusations she has made. When she is ready to be civil and reasonable again, then we will resume contact, but not til then. The OP is in much the same position, and having put up with mils behaviour for two years, we've had enough, and I can see why the OP feels that way too.

It was you rather than OP I think is taking an unbalanced view, scary! I think you are projecting your own experiences massively onto the OP and I just think that's unhelpful.

I also think you seem to be very lacking in empathy and understanding with people who don't behave according to your own rules "go to hell in a handcart" being an illustration.

There's a difference between having certain experience of life in a section of society that is unlike others and posting it here, and projecting. You can describe experiences without projecting. Projecting is more a matter of assigning your own emotions onto others, blaming others for things you do or habits you have yourself, etc..

I give it about a week after he goes on his first deployment before she has another 'miscarriage' and gets them to fly him home as a welfare case.

It'll happen about twice before the military tell the dh that he needs to sort her out or make a decision about whether he is in the right job. Which is of course what she wants anyway, but the cheap house provided with the ring is a good catch at the mo. and if she really doeshave fertility issues, then the standard way of young service wife bonding (breeding) isn't going to fall into her lap. If you aren't working and don't have kids, and ESP if your dh is away, the life of a military spouse can be a bitch.

EFA - scary is telling it how it is, so that the op is forewarned

...and following on from what Scaryteacher and madwoman are saying, the other wives on the patch will soon resent the fact that her DH gets to come home, and theirs don't. I've seen it happen, and felt it myself. Emotions are raw enough when partners are deployed, jealousy and resentment come to the fore very quickly.

and that's not that mental health emergencies aren't recognised or treated as a valid reason for service personnel to return from active duty, but there is an expectation that in that case the person will receive appropriate treatment for said mental health issue, or the serving individual will have to reassess their service as they are unable to meet their duty commitments. (and so the freebie house will disappear). work hours can also be long and unpredictable

It is some time now from your first post and I'm wondering how you are doing now...
And your daughter?
Wishing you both well.