I've been lurking here off & on for a while, most of my time is spent on the fibromyalgia board. I figured it was time to jump in though, especially with everything going on in my life.
I'm a 34 yr old stay at home mom, my husband is 39. He was married at 18, and has 2 daughters who are now 19 & 21. The youngest was 9 when I married him, so I feel like I practically raised her myself, and have always considered both his daughters my own as well. We also have a 7 yr old son. I have several health issues, my biggest one being fibromyalgia & chronic fatigue syndrome. I may be young, but I never feel that way! :)

My youngest s/d got pregnant at 15; the family tried to talk her into giving the baby up for adoption which she considered, but her boyfriend's family talked her out of it. He is now 3 yrs old. My husband got a call from her last December, telling him she needed to talk to him, but not on the phone. (She had been out of touch for about a year & we couldn't call b/c she didn't have a phone.) He gets over there & she says "meet your new granddaughter." We never even knew she was pregnant again. That really hurt. Our granddaughter will be a yr old next week. My s/d does not have a GED, was living in a filthy house with her bf's family, and is a drug addict. When the baby girl was 6 weeks old, she got bacterial meningitis. There was a 4 hour delay in treatment, because they had no phone & no car. The hospital didn't know for 2 days if she'd live or not, they'd never seen a baby that young with it. The social workers were called when my s/d told a nurse that her 2 yr old was a year behind on his shots. They told her that there were too many people living in her bf's house, they needed a new home & the children needed to get caught up medically. We stepped in & let them move into our house, so the kids wouldn't wind up in the system. We didn't know at the time that there were drugs involved. 3 months after they moved in, we found out they were using & selling drugs, and were stealing our meds. They weren't going to their GED classes or even trying to get jobs. We got a court order of temp custody of the kids & the police came over & evicted them. That was a very hard day. She was crying & screaming, cursing at us, they were her kids & nobody was gonna take her kids. They were given a reasonable amount of time to get a clean drug test, get their GED, get a job & housing, then they could regain custody. They did nothing. They had gotten married during this time frame, and when her husband beat the crap out of her yet again, she finally left him 3 months ago. Social services were involved & were setting up drug rehab, medical services, GED classes, the whole works for her. She was given a 2nd chance at life. She decided to decline services. She just recently passed a drug test though and got a full time job at a gas station, but it has benefits. She wants her kids back. At least, her son.
Since she was making such progress, we let her take the 3 yr old boy overnight Wednesday. (Her current bf's mother was there the whole time.) Thursday when my husband picked him up, he started sobbing & yelling, cried the whole way home, cried so hard he threw up in the car. He has missed his mama so much, and he's been here almost a year now & still has that reaction. We've decided to try to work out some safe situation where she can regain custody of him. She called us the other night though & admitted that she thought it would be a good thing if we adopted the baby girl. We've had her here since she was 8 weeks old, and she thinks we're her parents. We worry about her being taken & how she'd adjust. The mom said we were probably right, and she wouldn't be able to afford both kids, so we'll do an open adoption of sorts. Baby girl doesn't even know her mama. I tried to be brief here, but it's hard to do! That's my chaos in a nutshell.