On our son's behalf. Again, his bio Dad and other Mother have NEVER despite my son living with them. My son calls my husband Dad. They are close and talk often. We now live cross country but he still texts my husband. Still calls. Also worth mentioning, we married when my son was about 12. So he wasn't in my son's life till later. His other Mom has been in his life since he was 9. My son is not close to her. He still calls her by her name, not her title. Not unless they make him, such as when his sister was young. When I use to take his sister and him to the park I would always say "Those are my two right there."
I despise the term "blended family" or "bonus (insert random relation here)". The family isn't a damn smoothie! Knock it off! It's also no one's business how the family came to be. It's a family! I grew up having 2 Dads, 2 Moms and 5 brothers. Never once felt the need to explain my life to anyone. I have a son from a previous relationship. We dated about a year, got engaged, got pregnant and 8.5 years later split up. I eventually got married as did my son's Father. He and his wife had a long engagement and got married when their daughter was 8. My husband calls my son "My son" or "Our son/oldest". We have a daughter together. So when people ask my husband how many children we have it's always "Two". He has volunteered on our son's school trips. (His bio Dad and other Mom NEVER.) He was teaching our son to drive, takes him on special forging classes. (Male bonding) They cook together, have went to the shooting range together. My hubby has been to parent teacher meetings for him, talked with the counselor
@Annette Thank you so much for sharing!! Families come in all shapes and sizes, sometimes made up of blood relatives and sometimes not. You sound really happy and that’s wonderful! 🥰
Finding a baby is on the way....boy things really ended up scarce. I was scared to tell my parents about it and his sister's. We found out I was pregnant during my second trimester at 18 weeks! Not much to really be able to take in slowly lol. We thought I was about 6 weeks. Afterwards we ended up being extremely happy about it, and he would lay on my stomach and laugh when baby was kicking his back, he took me to my appointments and always checked up on me at home while we was at work. It got really bad at the end of my third trimester, at 37 weeks I was forced to get induced and had an emergency c section. But we had a healthy 8lb 2oz baby boy. He's now 7 weeks old. We still get to see the kids (his daughter now 8 and his son now 5) every other weekend but...we wish we could get them more often. They have met their baby brother and love him so much. And the kiddos warmed up to me pretty quickly back in 2020 when I met them, unfortunately it was during the time he wasn't allowed to see them because of her.
@Lila Thank you so much for sharing! And agreed, there is no one definition for the word “family” and I love hearing about your husband’s relationship with your first son. I hope I can create a bond like that with my partner’s older children 💜