Our situation is:

one 10yo stepchild who has been re-located a plane ride away from her dad, who we can only see in the school holidays due to cost of airfares. She is very insecure already, misses her dad so much. ("Other kids see their dads every day, why can't I?")

She is also very unsettled as she has a continuing number of stepdads in and out of her life each year. It is very upsetting for her, as some of them, she gets really attached to. I know it's really hard to find a partner for keeps, but i really wish her mum could find one person to settle with, for kid's sake.

Us: me expecting first child with my partner (divorced). We have been together for years and met long after their divorce. I am the only girlfriend child has ever known dad to have, since divorce. So i have had a r'ship with child since kinder.

We are now pregnant. Live in small house, will probably have to use stepchild's room as nursery. Hard to think of ways to involve stepchild when we're so far away for the majority of the year.

Hostile ex does things like unplug kid's computer (kid not strong enough to put plug back) and does lots of things like that to stymy our communication.

I'm scared to tell stepchild about baby, going on past behaviour, afraid of ex being in kid's ear with negative things "daddy won't have time for you now they have a baby" etc etc. Things we can't counteract for entire school terms when we don't see stepchild. And child is not free to tell us on phonecalls, about things that are worrying to her.

It's easy to keep the pg a secret from stepchild right now (i'm not showing yet) but i suspect by the July hols stepchild will wonder why i'm getting a bump.

All the advice i read about including stepchildren, seems to assume the child either lives with you or you have regular contact (like we used to when child lived in our city). I would love to know what to do when child is not living with you (not our choice - we miss child dreadfully for those three month enforced breaks).