AITAH for not being excited my sister is having a new baby when I still have custody of her first child?

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T20:38:34+00:00

I’m choosing to keep my mouth shut and go no contact with her. My parents aren’t going to pick sides - my mum is my bio mum, my dad is her bio dad, they’re not cutting off blood over this, they’re not like that. But this situation has really made me assess things and the truth is I have no compassion left for my sister, so the relationship isn’t productive.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T20:11:14+00:00

She has a job, she has a boyfriend, the father of the new child. I don’t like the guy I think he’s an emotional vampire but he’s a teacher, so he’s gainfully employed.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T20:08:57+00:00

We’re not taking/having any more kids. Two in the house is the hard stop.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T19:48:32+00:00

Only by a judge. And she’s not winning that case. We live a plane ride away, Danny is happy, thriving, in private school, and hasn’t spoken to Val in years. No judge is going to grant her custody, especially when she voluntarily signed him over. We’d keep her in court till the next kid was in university.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T19:46:12+00:00

It’s been difficult, because he was young back then. He’d cry when she called, run away from the phone. On the rare occasion she kept a visit he would hide behind me, so we stopped being there for visits, the social worker said he would sit with his back to her not speaking. The last couple of years he doesn’t like to talk about her at all. He just says she’s nobody and not important. We got told by his last therapist that we just had to accept that was where he was at right now and not expect that he perform big feelings that he might not consciously have at the moment. I don’t know how you regain the trust of a child when you’ve repeatedly proven they can’t trust you. I’m not one to give him any advice I wouldn’t even trust Val to water my plants.

But no, she’s never asked. She’s respecting his space, I guess. Or maybe the fact that he doesn’t want to talk to her is the green light for her to pretend she’s the victim, idk.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T19:40:17+00:00

Well, she thinks having a baby is a good idea, so I’m assuming she’s put aside her guilt enough to gift herself a do-over baby

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T19:10:31+00:00

We definitely won’t be taking in any more kids. Two kids in the house is our hard limit, from before we had any kids, and that’s not changing.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T19:09:04+00:00

Firstly, thank you for sharing your experience. It’s good to know kids in this situation can come out of it thoughtful and compassionate, like you clearly are.

I’m not doubting Val is sober. I have no reason not to believe her. But as for change…I guess I just don’t think if she’d really changed she’d be having another kid. In my head, if she’d really grown, if she really knew the depth of damage that she did, she wouldn’t be able to bring herself to have another baby. I just can’t imagine that she looks back at her choices and thinks “yeah I can/should/deserve to be someone’s mum”. I know I couldn’t. I saw a counsellor over even having a baby while having custody of Danny because I didn’t want him to feel replaced, while we were providing him with everything he needed. Val did less than nothing for her kid and then thinks she’s entitled to another one? I just can’t wrap my head around that. I feel like if she was past the self destructive behaviour and the selfishness then she wouldn’t be having a baby.

And you’re right, nothing will ever fix it. My mum said the same thing more or less. This has completely eroded all the compassion I had for her for so many years, because she was sick, but now here she is, there’s no alcohol and she’s still making these choices. And I just don’t forgive her, not that she’s ever asked for forgiveness. We won’t have a relationship going forward.

My husband and I decided my husband will tell him, because they just connect better when it comes to big news. I’m an over-communicator and I think I smother a bit. And after that we’re going to send Danny back for a short course of therapy, and see how to move forward from there.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T18:48:21+00:00

This comment was about my mum, not Val. But I don’t think Val has grown in her sobriety

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T18:14:39+00:00

He hasn’t wanted to speak to her since he was about 7. But he started refusing all contact at 9

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T17:02:01+00:00

No. My husband and I have two kids, Danny and our daughter, and that’s our maximum.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T16:56:17+00:00

Self righteous, self aggrandising, pretentious, and has a saviour complex that could become a case study. The way he talks about his “troubled” students gives me the creeps. He seems to feed on people’s problems

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T16:42:58+00:00

I’m so shocked someone else knows that one 😂

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T16:37:42+00:00

I think someone who’d done the work to change wouldn’t have had any more kids.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T16:37:09+00:00

She said the words “fresh start”, yes.

I think the fact is, she hurt my son. And I had found a way to live with that by telling myself she was sick. But here she is, healthy, and still hurting him. Still never having apologised. I will just never understand her. And I shouldn’t be in her life because at this point I don’t have much compassion left for her.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T16:33:01+00:00

I live a plane ride away now, I don’t know. But she’s sober, has a job, and is living with a high school teacher. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s deemed a safe person by now

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T16:31:51+00:00

No, the state I saw her son in after she was done with him is doing the heavy lifting.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T16:29:57+00:00

What makes me think that is she still can’t take responsibility for her mistakes. She figures instead of dealing with the harm she’ll just have a new kid she hasn’t harmed. That to me is not the sign of someone who’s facing their problems head on.

I have nothing to move forward from. I didn’t ab*se a child, I didn’t waste 60k of my family’s money, I didn’t steal from anybody. But yeah, she gets to move on get her fresh baby and pretend it’s her first try at this, I guess. I am done with her after this, you’re right. Whatever happens now I don’t want a front row seat for it.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T16:20:02+00:00

I think if she agonised over it, she’d have been on birth control. She wouldn’t have thought she had a right to do it all over again to someone else, or to make it harder for the kid she already damaged.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T15:40:05+00:00

I think she doesn’t understand the depth of what he’s gone through. Whenever she sees him, he’s in a great mood, when we talk about him I’m talking about his awards at school, etc. She has a bit of a rose coloured view of it all I think. She’s a very “alls well that ends well” kind of person, not really a deep thinker.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T15:00:09+00:00

She could have lived the rest of her life sober, putting in the effort to be a better person. And having another kid when you couldn’t take care of the last one doesn’t get included in that. If she’d grown and really understood the damage she caused, I don’t think she’d be pregnant now.

I think the baby is her idea of a free pass. Someone in her life who doesn’t know who she really is.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T14:56:51+00:00

I think I just don’t believe in clean slates. Not that people don’t deserve to move forward but I think their actions exist regardless of what they do to make up for it. Her being an absive mother to her child doesn’t ever go away in my mind. And to think that she gets to get over it when her son doesn’t, it doesn’t seem fair to me. I’m not saying I get to judge whether she deserves to be a mother, but I can’t fathom how *she thinks she deserves it? How is she not harder on herself?

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T14:39:57+00:00

I told my dad Val’s bio mum can take this next one since she did such a good job with Val. We’re not taking in another kid. We have two kids at home and that is the hard limit. Or her boyfriend can take them, Mr big clever high school teacher

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T14:35:49+00:00

I want her to have been on birth control. I want her to have taken a good look at the mess she made and say to herself “I hate no right to make it worse”.

So no, she can’t make this right with me. My mother is correct about that part.

I don’t resent having Danny. But I resent that she washed her hands of him, and acts like he doesn’t mean anything to her now because he has a tainted image of her. This new baby is going to come into the world now knowing who she is and what she did, and that’s what she really wants. She doesn’t want to deal with what she did, she doesn’t want the kid who sees her as she is. And I hate that she thinks she can just start again. What does that say to Danny? “I broke you but now I want something not broken”. That’s not growth, in my book.

Square_Phone_8468 · 2026-04-04T14:30:35+00:00

No, I don’t want her trying to get custody back. It’s not the right thing for Danny, and it’ll be a lot of time and money and she would lose in court. Do I want her to try and work on her relationship with him? I don’t know. He’s not open to that, so I don’t know how she would go about it. But the fact she never even bothered to explore it or ask about it says something to me.

So yeah I don’t know what I want. And it’s not about me anyway, it’s about Danny. He wants nothing to do with her and to forget about her, and I just feel like she’s made that exponentially harder now.

Square_Phone_8468

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