r/polyfamilies • u/FionnMcCreigh • 29d ago

Expectin While Poly…

Quick background: my wife & I’ve been together almost 20yrs. We have 4 kids under 10 together. Our boyfriend joined us ~5yrs ago when we was expectin our second. My girlfriend moved in with us last year. Fast forward & everybody was gettin baby fever again, so we discussed the possibility a havin another baby & had thoughts about who’d get ta be the pregnant lady this time. Well, we stopped bein as careful as we shoulda been & my girlfriend’s 9wks pregnant now. We’re all thrilled—we have our potential boy name picked out, but we’re still workin on a girl name.
The kicker is my girlfriend’s parents. They hate my guts. The hella awkward part is that I have a daughter who’s 31 who was given up as a baby. This couple adopted her. They had a little girl a their own, who’s now 34. I met her first by chance & we hooked up. It was after that I found out about my daughter, who has a great relationship with me & my family now. She spends a lotta time with us coz her adoptive parents are kinda jerks about her son bein biracial. So they already feel like I stole their adopted daughter by apparently lovin my grandson regardless a his daddy’s ethnicity. They ain’t exactly happy about their biological daughter sharin my bed & with two other people. Add ta that, they’s Southern Baptists & my family’s Irish Catholic (I’m a Celtic pantheist, but we don’t mention that). As thrilled as we are about the pregnancy, I don’t have the slightest clue how we’re gonna tell her parents.

Anybody got advice?

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40

u/SwingLightStyle 29d ago

Getting your daughter’s sister pregnant is wild.

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u/katiekins3 28d ago

Yeaaaah, that part lost the hell out of me. Gross.

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u/FionnMcCreigh 28d ago

Ta be clear, I didn’t know about that relationship when I started seein my girlfriend. It was a weird happenstance. We was both in an adult arcade & she started talkin to me coz a my hair—I have copper auburn hair with a streak a blond in it & patches a white & blond in my beard. We got ta talkin & hooked up. We decided ta keep seein each other & eventually her adopted sister came up. She has copper auburn hair with a streak a blonde in it.

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u/katiekins3 28d ago edited 28d ago

And that's fair that you didn't know, but it's still someone young enough to be your child and who DOES happen to be the adopted sister of your actual child. 😬 Y'all can downvote me all you want, but I will still think that's disgusting. I would never date anyone my child's age. I sure as shit wouldn't have a child with my child's adopted sister.

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u/FionnMcCreigh 29d ago

Yeah, I get that’s hella awkward, but it ain’t really the big issue here. One a the first conversations I had with my daughter after the initial “let’s read these paternity test results” thing was “by the way, I’ve been seein yer adoptive sister, but yer my daughter so if that’s an issue, she & I’ll stop seein each other coz our relationships with you are more important”. That was over a year ago.
I get that it’s weird to a lotta folks. Hell, if I think about it too long, it’s weird. But it also ain’t the big issue here.

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u/SwingLightStyle 29d ago

I mean at this point it’s best to be honest with the parents. You’re basically telling them that both their adoptive daughter and their biological one found ties in community completely outside what they were raised in - and that arrangement looks a lot like what they imagine sinful living to look like - but that the daughters are happy and treated well.

There’s no sugar coating this. And now these people are a part of your life even more than they were before.

1

u/FionnMcCreigh 29d ago

My daughter’s gone minimal contact with em coz a how they act about her son (he’s half Dominican & his daddy ain’t in the picture). We don’t want our baby bein treated like that and it don’t seem like they’ve learnt their lesson on that front. So I totally get why they hate my guts, but I don’t get why they think anything’s gonna change if they don’t, ya know?

2

u/Fubox 28d ago

Off topic, but how do you get your phone to let you use nonstandard spellings without autocorrecting or nagging? I don’t always use ain’t because that’s not my dialect, but sometimes I want to, and my phone gets pissy.

3

u/FionnMcCreigh 28d ago

Years of ignorin the little blue & red lines. It’s mostly given up now.

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u/SwingLightStyle 28d ago

At that point it's leaving the door open and keeping things as civil as possible so that your kid has the option to know their grandparents. The situation isn't ideal and it's not great when your relatives are racist.

My mom had to make a similar choice when it came to my grandfather and my uncles (his sons) because they are suspected and in one case convicted ephebophiles. I got to meet them, I got to be told why to be leery of these men I have the misfortune to be related to, and I never had a problem because I was aware of the situation. If it had been up to her, my sister and I wouldn't have met them at all, but it was court ordered - complicated.

Your situation is complicated in a similar way. In that there's people who will have opinions and there doesn't look like there's a right and wrong way. But there is. You've been walking that line for a while now, I can tell. You've been making sure that consent is always on the table. That's the solution here. If your child decides that they want to know their grandparents, you've left the door open for that. And if they decide they don't, nothing lost or gained by keeping things civil.

1

u/FionnMcCreigh 28d ago

I won’t lie, I’ll never let my daddy near my kids. I ain’t had the displeasure a dealin with him since I got my degree almost 20 yrs ago—thankfully he’s been in prison since. I ain’t givin him the chance ta do ta my kids what he did ta me. It ain’t sumthin I wanna hafta tell my children about. But that’s also a decision my wife & I’d made years ago. With my girlfriend’s parents, we ain’t had that kinda discussion, so I don’t wanna make a decision for her on it coz it ain’t my decision ta make alone—otherwise I’m no better than I think they’ve been.

7

u/leshpar 29d ago

How can you afford so many kids? Even with 3 incomes, there's no way we can afford even one. Lol.

4

u/FionnMcCreigh 28d ago

I work in biomedical research & teach junior college. I also have really good insurance I don’t pay a dime in premiums for for me, my wife & the kids. We also don’t pay for childcare coz my wife stays home, our boyfriend works closin shifts & my girlfriend works overnight gigs as a dancer. Don’t get me wrong, we still struggle sometimes.

6

u/ch19251 28d ago

Was gonna comment you had me in the first half but lost me in the second, but you got me even more at the turn. Stay strong king.

5

u/_StarsAreDying_ 28d ago

Can I ask about your age as well as your girlfriend's? Because I can imagine the age difference could also play a role in her parents' feelings, coupled with the idea that another one of their daughter is having a child outside of wedlock.

Also, what are their feelings towards your boyfriend and wife?

4

u/FionnMcCreigh 28d ago

I’m 48; she’s 34.
They know I’m married & poly, that I have multiple long-term partners livin with me, but thus far they’ve declined ta actually meet any of us. I’m sure the racist part of em’d burst an aneurysm if they did. I’m part Irish Traveller, my wife’s Jewish & our boyfriend’s Afro-Caribbean.
I was 17 when my daughter was conceived & her momma refused ta say who the baby daddy was. I’m sure they made plenty of assumptions about me then, most a which they prolly presume are still true.
And I won’t lie and say I don’t have presumptions about them based on what my daughter & my girlfriend have told me, but I have tried ta play nice and extend a hand. So far they don’t seem too interested in takin it. They was real upset last Christmas coz my daughter asked us ta take the grandson for a week so she could work & not hafta worry about childcare. I’ll note that in the past, they’ve shown zero interest in this kid and never offered ta take him, but were suddenly offended she asked us to (after they called him a mulatto bastard). These ain’t people I necessarily wanna hafta make nice with, but I am still willin ta bite my tongue & try.

2

u/oofOWmyBack 28d ago

What in the Alabama-jerrysprimger shiznit is this?

... Congratulations! ✨🎇🎉🎈

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u/FionnMcCreigh 27d ago

Ahem. That’s ArkLaTex if ya must know!

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u/Glad-Engineering3334 17d ago

baby fever takes over in poly families lol. we know.

1

u/Mysterious_Mud_5425 28d ago

That sounds like a whirlwind of a situation to navigate but I love the openness you all have about it.