'AITA if I postpone my stepdaughter's visit until I'm 6 weeks postpartum?' UPDATED

"AITA if I postpone my stepdaughters visit until I'm 6 weeks postpartum?"

Basically for context, my husband has a daughter (14f) from a previous relationship. She has many disabilities that require my extensive care and monioring. When me and my husband got together his daughter brought up wanting to stay over summers and we said sure if it's okay with bio mom.

Bio mom agreed, and its been happening ever since. Usually I love the arrangement. She's a great kid, and I love her to pieces, and her mom sends money for us to support her through the summer. (My husband pays her throughout the year and sends his daughter allowance too)

The thing is, this summer (July), I'll be expecting a baby boy after a long and difficult pregnancy, and I know I'll be pretty tired. This may sound selfish, but I'd prefer to limit the house to only having to take care of my bio kids because my sister will be helping since I'll most likely be in the NICU for a quick minute at my baby is very high risk. I had a pre-eclampsia scare and they're still running tests.

In the past, all my kids were winter or spring babies and I was at least 6 weeks pp by the time she came to visit. So in january (2 months after we learned I was high risk) I brought it up to my husband that I wanted to postpone her summer visit.

This made him pretty upset at first. I told him I'm not stopping him from taking weekends, or even a week or so, to go spend time with her, I just couldn't handle her in the house the full summer because it would stir up lots of energy with her step siblings and this pregnancy was so draining I needed to relax in peace and not worry over another kid with my newborn.

Also if theres a NICU stay, my sister will be staying at our house and its not fair for her to have to watch an extra kid (step daughter also has extensive disabilities my sister would need to learn to care for) I also told him that I'd be open to having her come stay the month of August because I'll have recovered mostly by then (4 weeks pp).

He wasn't exactly thrilled, but he ended up seeing my side and giving in, saying august was fine and he'd take her on a trip for april break to make it up to her. I took the initiative to call his ex (daughters mom) to tell her we wanted to postpone until August because I was high risk and needed time to myself.

She went OFF. She said she already planned a anniversary trip with her husband in July, and she didn't want to bring the daughter. She told me I should suck it up and I'm ruining their relationship by doing this.

I tried explaining the situation, how I'd just been scared with possible pre eclampsia, GD, and my husband would be working and I would be sick & tired. She didn't care and refused to find somewhere else for her daughter to go for the beginning of the summer, or to just keep her at home.

I also told her if she gave us the money she would have given us we could use it to give her grandparents and fly her out to them. Or she could do so herself with that money, all of which she refused. I also said she could give us the money to hire a nanny or caretaker, which she also refused. She said she's paying us to take the kid, not someone else and that she is going to be staying with us.

But I can't help but feel bad about causing this rift and keeping them apart for longer when it's a tradition that's been happening for 10 years (since me and my husband got together, it wasn't a thing before then) should I just let her come?

I forgot a major detail. Stepdaughter has ADHD, T1D, and autism. She would not be able to help with the baby much and her care is on my shoulders since my husband isn't great at handling her insulin schedule. He can when need be, but the insulin pump really scares him (phobia of needles, also he inserted it wrong once and is worried about it whenever he tries) but he does step up to do it when they're alone.

I grew up with a sister with T1D and know how to handle it so its usually my task. If she comes it Will be my job to wake up throughout the night, early mornings and monitor her through the day because even if I have outside support I can't trust them to know what to do for her insulin.

Me & husband also have 4 kids, 3 of which are young and get rowdy and act out sometimes when they see her. My husband only has 4 weeks off, maybe stretched into 5, so that means bonus daughter and bio kids and high risk baby will be mine to take care of and I'm not sure how I can handle that. I don't have the luxury to hire someone, and my family lives across country. AITA if I postpone her visit until august?

What do you think? AITA? This is what commenters had to say:

helell33a said:

Your husband also needs to step up and take over the care of his daughter

Jealous_Tie_8404 said:

Hospital stays are a good reason to change custody. The only thing that makes you wrong is that you’ve known your due date for a LONG time. You should have changed her visit to the end of summer a long time ago.

That said, your husband is an asshole for not knowing how to care for his daughter. He needs to be able to handle her diabetes monitoring on his own and it’s embarrassing and deadbeat behavior that he can’t. This needs to change NOW. This summer he needs to be 100% responsible for managing his daughter’s diabetes monitoring.

Spiritual-TarHeel said:

YTA to yourself for marrying and reproducing multiple times with a man who cannot or will not take care of his 14 year old high needs daughter. YTA to yourself.

Your husband needs to grow up, and get to work to find care for his daughter since his inability to care for his child is potentially disrupting his ex’s trip. He didn’t even have the balls to call his daughter’s mother himself. It shouldn’t be anyone’s responsibility but his to figure this out. If that means you go stay with your sister with your newborn, do that.

From the sound of it, your stepdaughter’s mother does all the heavy lifting as far as her daughter goes. Your husband does little to nothing at all. His ex even has to pay him to spend time with his child for a month.

OP responded:

First, I offered to call the ex because usually we get along more than her and my husband, and figured she might understand more since she also had her fair share of difficult pregnancies.

Also, bio mom offered to pay us for summers because the daughter asked about coming for the summers, and bio mom knows she fought him tooth and nail to have full custody of their daughter.

The money isn't even much and we don't use it for us, we use it for her medical expenses, food, room decor, extra things she wants etc. And most of the time we pay for her out of our pocket. (Which isn't a problem, she's our/his kid).

I do agree and have been asking him to step up and learn how to better manage the T1D care and I think he's been trying but the needle sticking part is what he's worried about (putting it in the wrong place, hurting her)

The ex is refusing to use the money she would have given us to instead find any other option for step daughter like sending her to grandparents or flying family in to help or hiring a carer and we don't have the money to do so on our own.

Apprehensive_Soil535 said:

Yes you’re YTA. For marrying a man who can’t even handle his daughter’s medical condition and doesn’t even care to. As long as women like you exist, men like your husband will continue to outsource parenting.

logaruski73 said:

You and the new baby go stay with your sister. The other kids including his daughter stay at the house. Problem solved. If he didn’t have you, he’d learn how to handle the insulin so that’s a piece of crap. The mother deserves her trip too.

Your husband needs to find a solution that’s not on you or his ex. 6 children is a bit much. You chose to have a baby and in the summer time since you and your husband chose not to be fixed.

In response to a commenter asking if the stepdaughter is "high or low-functioning," OP wrote:

She isn't exactly high or low functioning. She has issues with communication, self care, repetitive behaviors, and executive functioning. She will go mute for long periods of time and has trouble effectively communicating through words. She also gets over stimulated easily and may have meltdowns because of it. She's in OT therapy and goes weekly.

Doctors advised not to let her manage her insulin pump at the moment unless a CGM was bought, But her mother refused to get her one and we don't have authority over it.

She isn't extremely unsafe with my other kids, but she does need to be watched during interacting because she gets too rough, not realizing that she can hurt them. (She has a few times in the past where the little got a bruise or just a small pain for a minute or so)

Less than a day later, she shared this update:

We have decided to go ahead and postpone her summer visit until august. It's not her fault I decided to have another kid but I'm not in control of my health during pregnancy.

I always knew I wanted 4-5 bio kids. I grew up most of my life as an only child, then a sibling with a major age gap and I wanted my kids to have eachother. I also knew when I married my husband that that number of kids would increase in some form because she's part of our family.

I am also confident that I will be able to take care of all of them once this high risk and uncomfortable period of time is over, especially because my husband will be taking up a more sustainable job were he has more time with us to spend. He's been good taking care of our four even at this last job, so now that he has one with less hours he will be able to help a lot more.

We decided to choose what would be best for all of us, and the compromise worked out for everyone. We will be paying for her to attend the sleep away camp she's been wanting to go to for the past two years for the month of July.

(Her bio mom always said no bc she "has" to go to dads) meaning bio mom goes on trip as scheduled and we pick her up at the start of August. We will make up for lost time by taking her for vacations all through the school year.

Dad called Bio mom and she agreed, then apologized for yelling at me during the initial phone call in january. I also had an honest convo with my husband about his role in her life.

He obviously needs to step up and learn her insulin management. We booked him some classes on managing T1D and talked to bio mom abt getting step daughter a dexcom (someone in the comments mentioned this, and it looks pretty good. My sister uses one.)

I also made it clear to him that her care when she's here is something he needs to step up in. BIO mom will keep us posted around the year on any updates on her T1D and how she manages it at home. Stepdaughter is also enrolled in courses to learn how to begin to manage her T1D herself.

Since she's taking the classes to learn her own insulin management and so is her dad, she will be coming the weekend after baby comes to meet him, and then dad will drop her off at camp!

Also, to clear things up:

- My husband does pay child support. The agreement was that Mom had full custody and he could visit whenever. When me and him got married, his daughter asked if she could stay summers. Bio mom called us and said she would pay us for summers and we agreed. It's not even like she's paying us, we don't keep any of it. It all goes towards step daughters expenses.

- also we have a great relationship with her. I take her on solo trips all the time and we fly to all her events. I face time her all the time and we even flew out when she was sad over her first friendship breakup. We even asked her multiple times if she wanted to come here or go to camp and she was rlly excited for camp instead and said no.