NTA. She didn’t ask you to help she asked you to pretty much give up your career and raise your step grand child! Help would have been if she said, “Can you see about maybe watching the baby when my school has evening staff meetings?” or “Can you and dad maybe work out your schedules so the baby spends as little time in day care like doing a late start for work and dropping her off on the way to work and I can pick her up after school?”

Many day care centers give discounts to teachers because they know how hard they work and little they get paid. Also, once she knew she was going to keep the baby, that was when she should have started asking her coworkers and friends for child care recommendations. (I wouldn’t say that to her now as I am sure she knows it).

Explain to her that you are not refusing to help with your granddaughter but that you need to focus on your career as well and that you will help her come up with a plan. She needs to find reliable child care for when she is teaching during the day and I am sure someone at the school can help her. She needs to get child support from her ex to help pay for the costs (it’s his child too, and he can pay child support without having visitation rights). You and your husband should then sit down with her and figure out a good childcare option for when she is working and what emergency plans will be if say she has to stay late for a staff meeting or travel overnight for a conference.

I can 100% guarantee you her late mother would agree with this. Also don’t take to heart what she is saying: post partum depression can be very difficult to cope with and I promise she still likes you and is just dealing with a lot right now.

NTA. This is *Leah’s* baby, that *she alone* chose to have. That doesn’t obligate you to change YOUR life to suit *her* desires. The whole business of saying you don’t love her because you won’t quit your job to watch her baby is so manipulative and messed up and i’m shocked your husband is siding with her.

If I were you i’d sit down privately with husband and remind him that Leah is the one that chose to have this baby and she is solely responsible for it; that you never signed up to be a full time babysitter and it’s unreasonable to expect you to quit your job and that you’re disappointed and hurt that he is not understanding of that.

NTA You were told to stay out of it – none of these choices are yours, she didn’t want to get child support etc. Now she’s trying to leave you will all the consequences of her decisions.
Stand your ground. You’re not going to give up your career and raise someone else’s child. You’re going to be the free baby sister for most of the kid’s life if you go down this path.

NTA

Your husband and Leah are acting like this baby was somehow part of your responsibilities. He’s not, not even a little bit.

If Leah needs childcare, she has to trust a nanny or sacrifice her career for the baby. She can’t guilt-trip you into playing her role as a mother and give up your job for someone else’s child.

Let her fend for herself and assume her responsibilities. Your husband should teach her to act like an adult instead of confusing you with the baby’s dad or something, you don’t have to be a SAHM for someone else’s baby while the real mother builds her career. That’s the sacrifice parents make, not you.

She could have asked the father to be a SAHD, but he’s no longer in the picture. Expecting this of her stepmother is way out of line.

NTA. Especially in the face of all this pressure and manipulation to give up your work/career at only 38 years of age and raise a baby while you had been clear you never wanted babies. This isn’t “helping stepdaughter with baby.” This is a full-on giving up your life for something you’ve never wanted to do so that your stepdaughter could have a life instead of raising her own baby she insisted on having. No. I mean — if this continues, I’d consult a divorce lawyer.

Leah is incredibly immature. No child support, when she has 2 people to support on a teachers salary. Incredibly naive budgeting decision. Her child needs the money. I don’t want my child raised by strangers so now it’s step Moms problem. It sounds like she is never moving out and hubby has her back not yours. I wouldn’t quit my job to raise my children’s children just like my Mom didn’t quit her job to raise mine NTA Good luck you are going to need it to keep living with them

NTA Leah can either send the kid to daycare or get the father’s family involved. It’s not your job or responisbility to raise her mistakes

NTA. Even if you were baby’s biological grandmother, why would you quit your job to take care of the baby. If she doesn’t want the baby to stay with strangers, she can either stay home and go back to building career once she is comfortable with enrolling her child in daycare or your husband can stay home since he agrees with her ideas.

NTA

1. She doesn’t want him to pay child support? WTF? It’s his responsibility too. If she doesn’t want to use that money now, she can put it into a college fund for the child’s future.

2. No having kids is not all sunshine and roses. Sam helped her while you did all the household chores? Great so you already help with the baby.

3. She is tired of being a mom all the time after 4 months? Errr… while I get that she needs something beside that it’s HER responsibility to figure something out. She asked you. That’s ok. You said no. End of it. She asked her dad. Dad said no. End of it. Now she has to make the choice what is more important to her: no strangers around baby or her career.

4. As hard as this sounds, but she can wish all she wants that her mom was still alive, that’s not the reality. And she has no idea what her mom would have done in this situation.

5. Besides YOU actually have her back. Just not in the way she wants.

“She said I didn’t love her” – wow manipulative much?

Definitely NTA. My answer would have been welcome to real life Leah, you have to sacrifice a lot of things once you become a parent. You didn’t sign up for it, Leah did. Is she going to pay you for staying at home? Or is it free?.

NTA but I would be reconsidering you relationship with a partner that seems to disrespect your boundaries and a step daughter who does the same. He should have your back in this situation. It’s a horrible situation your stepdaughter is in but to ask you, who never wanted kids, to handle her responsibility. Your stepdaughter is acting extremely entitled and your husband is enabling her.

NTA! What, when you suggest getting child support from the father, you’re told to butt out, but now you’re supposed to stay home and care for the baby you never wanted? Absolutely not. Stand firm. You have very good reasons for your decision, and those two need to find some other solution.

Your stepdaughter might think you’re an asshole but even if she was your biological daughter you still wouldnt be obligated to watch the baby.

NTA. Leah needs to put her baby daddy on child support and take off the rose colored glasses. She chose to have a child by a deadbeat. Why would you stay home to raise her child? She’s getting more than enough help as is.

Clearly NTA! why should you give up your life for someone else to live there’s? You have a career too that is (assumedly) also important for you.

NTA. Your stepdaughter *and* your husband have one heckava nerve to demand you take yourself out of the job market to be [paid? unpaid?] nanny to her baby and she won’t even pursue child support.

Why doesn’t Dad quit his job to take care of kid?

NTA but SD and husband are. You clearly have a husband problem and need to address it with him. This is not what you agreed upon or signed up for. This needs to be your hill to die on or else you’ll end up raising this child.

NTA. You gave her lots of alternative options, refusing to consider them is her choice. She was the AH even before she drew the Dead Mom-card, but drawing it certainly didn’t help her when I made my judgement.

NTA

Your husband knew your boundaries before you got married. That he’s trying to push you into this shows what you want doesn’t matter. You need to remind him constantly when he tries to push you that he is not respecting your boundaries, that he was fine with when you got married, and nothing has changed in the interim.

And stepdaughter needs to understand that having a baby is taking responsibility for another life, something she signed up for but you didn’t. It doesn’t matter that she’s over it already, it’s what she decided. If she wants a life as well, then that’ll happen in 18 years (if she’s lucky).

This child is not your responsibility.

Stepdaughter can still go for child support to help pay for daycare/nanny/babysitter. Stepdaughter can still put the child up for adoption. Child is young enough that a childless couple would beg to take her, since babies are in demand by adopters.

Stepdaughter obviously can’t cope on her own, but that’s also not your responsibility, based on the fact that you never wanted kids.

Make sure to never babysit. I’d also suggest not even helping feed or change the baby. Any little crack in your resolve will lead your husband and his daughter to keep pushing you to what they want.

It may come down to an ultimatum with your husband. It may end your marriage, but this is your hill to die on.