'AITA or being upset my ex secretly had a baby and is hiding it from me?' UPDATED 2X

"AITA for being upset my ex is hiding a baby from me? I don’t know how to handle it."

My ex and I were together for over six years and for the last two years we had a pretty dead bedroom and a rough relationship. We kinda knew things were over but we were young and life was super intertwined so we admittedly dragged it on.

Well she ended up pregnant in the last year of being together but during the pregnancy we decided we would coparent, not be together or live together after our daughter was born.

That’s also when I found out she had been cheating on me for over a year, and that she's bi. And later on, I learned that she went off her birth control without telling me and got pregnant on purpose. I don't really think that has so much to do with this story, but it does give some context, I think.

Fast forward, I married my wife who is the best stepmom and partner I could have asked for, we coparent 50/50, and our daughter just started school. Last week, I picked my daughter up from school and she told me that her mommy surprised her with a baby sister but she can’t talk about it with me until I know.

I was so confused, but didn’t want to bring her into my feelings or make her think she did anything wrong, so I just said ‘how do you feel about that’ she said that she’s cute and then told me about her day at school, so I dropped it.

I see my ex occasionally in person, she never looked pregnant in the last 9 months, never said a word that would make me think it, nothing. That night I told my wife and my best friend and his wife about what our daughter said. His wife went on an FBI-level deep dive. She found out that my ex’s girlfriend had a baby, I can only guess that this is the baby sister my daughter told me about. I don’t know who the dad is.

So I’ve sat with this information for a few days now, and I have no idea how to move forward. I don’t know why she wouldn’t tell me, I hate that she made my daughter keep a secret from me when as a dad to a daughter it's really important to me and I try really hard to make her feel like she can tell me anything.

My ex and her girlfriend have been super on and off, so I don’t want my daughter getting attached to this baby and risking her heart being broken so young if they don’t last. If that happens, how am I supposed to tell her that her “baby sister” isn’t actually her sister that she gets to have in her life forever like a sister usually would be.

I’m just at a loss and go in waves of being flat out angry that she didn’t tell me. But do I have any right to be upset? I don’t care what she does with her life, and I know we aren't together, but my daughter is involved and impacted.

My wife and I are thinking about trying for another kid soon and we have talked so much about how to prepare our daughter for a sibling and explain why she goes to two different houses and her sibling doesn't, including what the age-appropriate 'where babies come from' conversation looks like, all of this before we're even trying.

Meanwhile, boom, baby sister at mom's house and we don't know what, if any, conversations were had leading up to it. My wife suggested I call my ex and ask to talk about something our daughter said. I think that’s probably the best way to bring it up, but I’d love any more outside opinions that aren’t as emotionally driven before I make my decision. AITA for being upset?

What do you think? AITA for being upset over this? Here's what commenters had to say:

NeverRarelySometimes said:

Your wife is right. Call your ex and explain your concern that she's asked your daughter to keep a secret from you. This is a bad precedent. Try to avoid talking to her about your reservations about her relationship, and about your daughter's attachment to her sister. You cannot fix that, but you can address the secrecy she's tried to impose. Good luck, OP.

eyespeeled said:

It could very well be your ex's egg that was used in the conception, and the baby your daughter's bio sibling. Don't assume anything, and be gentle in your approach. Frame it like you don't want your daughter to think it's okay to keep secrets. That could lead to bigger problems down the road with predators. Say you value open discussion, and congrats on the new addition!

Beautiful-Event-1460 said:

If it’s not your baby, I don’t think you have the right to be upset.

ShrinkingChihuahua27 said:

I disagree! If you have a child with someone and you choose to co-parent, you have to make the other parent at least aware of life-changing moments for the child. I’m not saying OP should have a say in whether his ex has a child, but if his daughter is getting a sibling, he deserves to know.

My parents are divorced, and if one parent made any decisions that would largely affect my sister and I, even if that’s just moving homes within the same zip code, the other parent knew about it. Especially when children are this young, that’s how effective co-parenting works. You can’t be there for your child fully if you don’t know what’s going on in their life, and I’d consider a new sibling a pretty big life update.

OP responded:

"You can’t be there for your child fully if you don’t know what’s going on in their life" Thank you for finding better words for why I'm upset! This is exactly it.

Just like you said, when we moved I told my ex before we told our kid so they could respond better if our kid was upset about it or wanted to talk about it. Not because I felt like she needed to know as my ex, but as a parent of a kid who was going through a change.

QuietWalk2505 said:

First at me, it seemed like he is the father but he isn't. This upsetting feels like he has smth for his ex or that he doesn't have a child with his wife yet? It's the ex business.

In the comments, OP shared this first update:

I'm trying to be pretty active in the conversation here but I have gotten a good chunk of private messages as well pretty much ripping me to shreds. So I'd like to just touch on a couple of things below and then I'll probably read comments and not engage anymore as they come in, I think I have a pretty good idea of how I want to move forward with this now.

- her being bi and having a girlfriend doesn't bother me, I couldn't care less who she is with as long as they are good for her and our daughter. There are studies that prove the happiness of parents, and more commonly moms, directly impacts how a kid grows up.

I have seen my ex go through periods with her girlfriend where the GF will just break it off and leave, and my ex is devastated, my daughter is confused on how someone she has been taught is a parent figure can just walk away, and my ex gets depressed and struggles and I hate that for both her and my daughter. So it's not the fact that it's a girlfriend, it's how she treats my ex that I take issue with

- I want to be happy for my ex having a baby in her family if that's what she wants. But I don't know if she was happy about it, I don't know if they planned it, I don't know how she plans to frame it to my daughter, there's a lot of unknowns from my side.

I just wish I could have gotten even a text from her saying 'hey, [gf name] is pregnant and we're really excited, [daughters name] is going to have a sister here!'. If that were the case, I would get her a baby shower type gift and say congrats, I still have our old crib if you need/want it.

- My two biggest concerns in this are that she asked my daughter to keep a secret from me, and that I don't know when or if my ex was planning on telling me.

If my daughter's behavior changed and I didn't know it was from a new baby at her mom's house, I might react differently and not in the way that helps her the most, which isn't fair to her. And I don't think an adult should EVER ask a kid to keep a secret, end of story.

- At the end of the day, I have no desire to control my ex, I just want to always put my daughter first. We even agreed in our custody agreement that new partners need to wait a certain amount of time to be introduced to our daughter and the other parent needs to be aware before it happens. She didn't do this with her girlfriend, I didn't make a huge deal of it.

When I introduced my now wife, we had been together for longer than the agreed time, and I told my ex a week before I planned on introducing them, and sent over her FB profile (with her permission) just so she had some idea who would be in our daughters life.

I felt like it was the right thing to do because we're tied together forever now. I would have thought a sibling would have been something to notify if we agreed a new partner is worth a heads up. As far as I know, she had 9 months to give me a quick text.

I plan on texting my ex in our coparenting app and saying something along the lines of '[daughters name] told me she has a baby sister at your house, but also that she said she couldn't talk about it with us. I'm really happy for you guys, but I'm not okay with her being told to not tell me things, can we talk about it?'

Thanks for all the helpful opinions, still workshopping the message but no matter I end up with, a conversation is going to happen.

A day later, OP shared this second update:

I had an overwhelming amount of people tell me that my ex’s girlfriend having a baby and them introducing her as a baby sister to my daughter was none of my business.

I disagreed when reading the first few comments but could see the other side, but now that things have developed I have an update and I’m not sorry but you can’t change my mind that it was 100% my business. Like I said, I’m not good at being brief and a lot happened, so there will be a TLDR at the end of this if you’d prefer that.

I got a call from the school telling me that there were a few behaviors from my daughter that they’d like to understand so nothing gets worse. I’m the one that pays for the school, so I’m usually marked as a primary contact. I told them I’d talk to my ex and both come by towards the end of the day. So we go in and sit down with her teacher and a school counselor.

Teacher tells us that she has some concerns about behavior from our daughter, that seem like they’re not just ‘getting used to school’ behaviors. They wanted to check in and see if she needed any extra support or accommodations.

Basic overview of the behaviors, she was totally fine with the bathroom the first week and now she’s having sometimes multiple accidents a day (she’s been potty trained since 2), she can’t sit for a really age appropriate work time, she’s being really mean to friends on the playground that she’s known and played with since daycare, she’s thrown disruptive fits because her teacher won’t carry her.

We know it’s early in school and they said this has only been for a couple of days, but the big red flag is that she was in a Montessori style daycare that she thrived in, and the school we put her in is also Montessori style so it’s really focused on independence and learning at your own pace.

We did open house days and home visits and the behaviors she’s showing are drastically different from what they have seen of her up to now. None of this was said with any judgement, which I appreciated, but they just asked if we had noticed these issues at home or if we were aware of them and wanted to come up with some home and school plans to help understand and correct.

And of course, figure out the why if it’s not just school and being a kid. I told them honestly that I haven’t seen those behaviors at home but for the last few days she’s been at her moms so I’d default to her answer. She looked panicked when it was her turn to talk.

She said her behavior is fine so it’s probably just new school and she’ll talk to her about it. Now say what you want about me being controlling or whatever, but I was with her for long enough to know her tells when she’s uncomfortable or trying to just move on from a topic. And I don’t want to move on from this as her dad, I want to know what’s going on and how I can help.

The teacher and counselor didn’t give up that easy either. They asked, very kindly, if there were any recent changes outside of school that have happened. I said nothing, and she just sat there until she finally said ‘well, we did introduce a baby sister a few weeks back’. She refused to even look at me. Obviously this isn’t how I wanted this to go, but oh well.

The teachers were a little surprised and I think could tell pretty quick that I didn’t know. They said these behaviors are pretty common for adjusting less than great to a new sibling. And then the questions really got started and I got all the answers I had been craving. All during this I barely said a word, I’ll rapid fire them below.

- Was baby sister planned? No

- Did daughter get to interact with mom’s belly at all and learn that there’s a baby growing in there? No, she wasn’t told the entire pregnancy

- Did she get to help with any prep, pick out toys or clothes, set up nursery space? No

- What’s the custody situation for sister, is it the same as daughters? There is no set schedule yet. The baby is biologically the girlfriends and her boyfriends (didn’t know that was a thing) and they don’t have a custody plan yet

- Was there any discussion between houses on how to handle potential regression? No.

That’s when the questioning stopped and I said that I was not told about the baby. The room was so quiet after that. The counselor broke the silence and said well it seems like it’s safe to say that some home changes are the root cause of the behaviors we’re seeing, and knowing that we can help her a lot better here.

She suggested that the two of us sort out a few specific things and offered the room until it was time for our daughter to go home and I gladly took her up on it. I tried my best to be calm and told my ex what our daughter said and that I was not okay with her having my daughter keep secrets from me.

That I don’t want her thinking it’s ever okay for an adult to ask a kid to keep a secret, especially from their parents. I told her that her relationship is none of my business but that her gf does not have a track record of making her happy and treating her well, and now there’s a boyfriend? Is he around our daughter regularly?

And before you come at me, I don’t care about relationship dynamic or orientation or whatever, I care that after she didn’t tell me about introducing her gf to our daughter like we have in our custody agreement, we agreed any new reoccurring adult figure warrants at least just an info text to the other parent so we can know who our daughter is talking about and around while she’s this age.

And I wasn’t going to comment on her relationship at all, but I was with her for years and genuinely care about her well being because a happy mom modeling healthy relationships is so important for a little girl. I try to show my daughter the ways I treat her stepmom well, so that’s what she knows she deserves from any partner she chooses later.

Well to all of that all she had to say was ‘her baby is none of your business’. I came back with ‘if you introduced her as your girlfriends baby to our daughter, sure, but you’re calling her her baby sister and telling her she can’t talk about it with me and now she’s regressing, so you made it my business’

Some back and forth later we agreed that she would explain where the baby came from, that she won’t be there all the time, and that if she wants to, she can love her like a baby sister. We agreed on a couple books to add into the rotation about siblings and different family dynamics that I ordered right then to both of our houses, and that we’d both reinforce that no grown up should ever ask a kid to keep a secret.

I ended by telling her I’m happy for them if they’re happy, and our door is always open if she needs anything. I’m hoping it continues as productive as I feel it ended. Our daughter asked to come home with me even though it’s her mom’s week and I said yes.

I think my ex was pretty upset over that and honestly, I probably should have handled that ask differently and will in the future, but right now I think she deserves some choice and a break from the baby, and my ex has some things to think about.

TLDR: my daughters school called about behavior issues caused by some new baby regression and my ex had to come clean about it. We talked over how to move forward and best support our daughter on the same page after a bit of a fight.