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Woah, being a step mum when pregnant sucked! I don’t know if mine was a unique experience but I struggled to find anyone who understood or who could help me make sense of my feelings. I must have googled “Why don’t I like my step kids when pregnant” or different variations of that sentence a hundred times.

We were thrilled to announce to the kids they would be having a baby sister. It was all very exciting! I had visions of shopping for baby room decor with my step kids and choosing names together. Unexpectedly though, I found it very hard to have them around for 9 months. There were many days of locking myself in my bedroom and asking if Adam could take them out for ice cream. “She’s just so tired’ he would tell them. I went from super cool Mel to mean Mel and I hated it.

Obviously there are a lot of hormonal changes happening in your body when pregnant and I blame a lot of it on that. However, this seemed to go a step further and was almost a primal maternal instinct to protecting my baby. From what, I have no idea. It was a bit of a rough time for us but thankfully as soon as the baby was born, it went away!

The same thing happened 2 years later when I was pregnant with their baby brother. This time we were more prepared for it and it didn’t seem to hit us so hard. I just had my “grumpy days” and Ad would know to take cover.

When you live with kids that aren’t your own and don’t have a good relationship with their mother it makes it very difficult to feel completely at ease in your own home. When my first baby was born I was so embarrassed to breastfeed in front of the kids.Even now, I triple lock the doors before I have a shower. I hide bills and private things in case the kids see them and innocently tell mum. I don’t share every part of my life in case she uses it against us. I probably flatter myself with how much I think she’d devour the information from our house but I’m no idiot, especially when it comes to shared custody.

Being a step mum while pregnant was difficult but seeing K & P with their little sister and brother is worth it all! They absolutely adore each other. There is a benefit to less time together in that they all rarely fight at our house as their time together is so precious. We never ever use the term half-sister or half-brother. The little babies have connected me to my step kids in an unmistakable way now, I’m the mum of their siblings. You can try and play down “dad’s partner” but never that.