Good Morning, 

First I would like to start with I am new here. I am looking for support on an issue that has been brewing for sometime now. 

I am 30 years of age I have been married twice divorced once. I met my now husband at a facility where my brother lived and my husband worked. We actually got formally introduced by some mutal friends. My husband has a child from a previous marriage at the time 3 year old girl. I knew this and was more than willing to help care for her as i had no children of my own at the time. When I met the child we formed a bond we became very close. My husband and I got married a year later and have been married for 5 years. Now the arrangment at the time between my husband and her birth mother was he had her everyweekend and she had her during the week. My husband works an insane amount of hours to put it simple he likes money and loves to provide for his family so I took the place of I now had her on the Weekends and he worked 7 days a week. I quickly realized that my step daughter was in my opnion not being taken care of. in 2019 my step daughter was the age of 4 every time we got her for the weekend she was extremley sick.. running temp. coughing, snotty noses everytime we also got her she was so dirty the last time she had a bath was from the previous weekend when i gave her one...

Finally what prompted a change in the custody arrangment was in the month of March 2019 her birth mother had dropped her off at our house after taking her to a easter egg hunt now keep in mind we lived up north at the time so it was chilly outside i do not remember the exact temp. but cold enough that she needed to be dressed in pants and a long sleeve or a coat. She was dressed in shorts she did have a long sleeve shirt on but no coat and she did have tennis shoes on. In an instant I knew something was wrong with my Step daughter she ovbiously was extremley sick to the point where she was having snotty discharge coming from her eyes and appreared this had been happening for a while and you could tell on the sides of her face by the amount of crusty discharge was built up that she had been using her long sleeve shirt to wipe her eyes. I took her temp. and it was very high as i do not recall the actual temp. I called my husband from work to come home and we took her to the local ER. We then learned my step daughter had been in and out of the ER four times in one month. Thats when we put our foot down and said enough is enough. My husband went to a lawyer and got visitation changed and our house being her primary residence also she had to pay child support in the amount of 200.00 monthly. Now she rarley ever paid her child support she always had her great grandmother pay it as i was working as a loan officer at the time at the same bank where every month i would get a visit at work from the great grandmother making a transfer from her bank account to mine which whatever i guess the child support was paid just made me feel horrible as i knew the great grandmother lived off her Social Security but again why am i feeling sorry i guess it was not my fault the birth mother had no money let alone a stable job.

Fast foward 6 months My husband and I decided we wanted to try to have another child I became prego immediately. Then Covid hit we were in the middle of remodeling our home we got that complete and we had our second child. Our step daughter was over the moon about her!! My step daughter having to do pre-k online and having a new born was absolute chaos but we delt the best we could. The birth mother never reached out and asked how she was doing if she needed help or anything. My husband and I had made the choice to move back south where i am orignally from. We had a conversation with the birth mother and with little fight she agreeded to let her daugther move 6 hours south. Now we set up a Visation schedule she would get her for christmas and spring break and 6 weeks at the end of summer. We set up that we would meet half way for drop off and pickup. Now we have never limited the amount of communication that the birth mother has with her daughter. Her birth mother had given her a phone that only worked off WIFI so her mother could call her though kids messenger. We did put a stop to that as it was becoming quiet the disruption for our daughter wanting to be on it 24/7 now before the phone was even given to my step daugther there had been no conversation between the birth mother and my husband. It was just gave to her upon looking through the phone the birth mother had left whole body nude pictures and pictures of her smoking out of bongs and complaning how hard it was to a friend about being a parent......

anyways We were not comfortable with her having access to the internet being so young... but we let it fly for a little while until it became an issue. We took the phone and told the birth mother that we would like all communication to come though either my phone or my husband.. we all have i phones so she could facetime her anytime she wanted. She kept in contact for about 1 month calling every other day then it turned into she would call once everytwo weeks maybe once every three. She never checked in on her she never texted or called my husband or I to make see how she was adjusting NOT ONE TIME. My step daughter went to her house for the summer and when i picked up my step daughter she was in a great mood until she started telling me about things that happened my step daughter was very vage about a situation that might have happened or might not... we believe she was left alone to watch her little sister which my step daughter would have been 6 at the time and her little sister would have been 1. When my step daughter returned home she did bring home a busted up i pad when i say busted glass shards were falling out.. I naturally went through the I pad because i wanted to know if i could find out more information about what happened... when looking through the ipad i found out that she indeed was left alone she had tried several times to call her mom she had typed a message using voice assist at the time my step daughter could not spell the best let alone really read the best that stated I am scared mom when are you coming home etc... now this situation was brought up to the birth mom and she denied everything. There also were multiple vidoes of the birth mother and her boy friend smoking marijuana rolling joints... bragging to friends that the kids were upstairs and they were iin the basment getting high.. now my step daughter had access to this content she was able to see all of this i am not sure if did or not regardless the situation was brought to the birth mothers attention that we do not condone that type of behavor and would prefer for it to stop when she had her daughter.

After that the birth mother went 28 days without any type of contact at all not a call text nothing.... the amount of emotional torture that my stepdaughter is going through is terrible. She came to me and we had a conversation keep in mind she is 8 now. She says she feels as if she has done something wrong and that none of them have time for her to call her... i assure her that she has not done anything wrong and that she needs to focus on good things as we have her enrolled in Softballs and Science Camp and she does dance classes here. I assure her that she is so loved and it is not up to her to keep that connection. This girl is living though hell all because of a half ass parent... now it is hard for me to keep a level head sometimes because I get just as upset as she does because she is my daughter not step not half I care for her as if i birthed her and want to protect her at all costs. My huband and I have talked and believe that we are going to let the birth mother know that she is no longer able to go to her house for visits but she is more than welcome to visit her here. The moral of all of this is my step daughter loves her birth mom as she should I as an adult have never talked bad about her birth mother i often get caught up in situations where i dont really know how to answer questions that my step daughter asks me pretaning to her birth mother without point out the fact that she is an unstable parent. I am in fear that the torment will only accelrate when we cut off the ability of my step daughter going to her birth mothers as she thinks the world of her birth mother... I do not want to mentally cause any more damage and simply do not want my stepdaughter to hate us for making a choice to protect her. Another fear is her birth mother knows how sweet and loving her daughter is and prays on that to become a victim of every situation. The birth mother has even told my step daughter that we stole her from her and we moved 6 hours away just to keep her from her... I have to take all those angry emotions that i harbor and put them aside and try to make a logical decision here. I am by no means prefect and i struggle so bad with this situation but I am tired of calling out and telling the birth mother how to care for her child. I just need advice as i am so struggling here.... My husband is not the emotional type at all he too struggles to talk about this situation if were up to him we would cut ties with the birth mom but i am worried as to how this will effect my step daughter..

Sorry for the long post but i felt as i needed to explain everything so you can get the bigger picture. 

Dooms Day is approaching fast....

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