Just when I've sworn not to undercut other mothers...

...comes this little piece of family drama.

My sister-in-law A's sister M suffers from manic depression, not well-controlled with medication and outpatient treatment. M. has two (living) sons by two different fathers - she divorced the first son's father, and the youngest son's father essentially preyed on her when she was wildly mood-swinging in the wake of the stillbirth at 7 months' gestation of a second son.

My husband's best friend C., who rents our downstairs studio apartment, dated M. for two separate, short blocks of time. The most recent of these was late summer of last year. She had broken up with an abusive boyfriend about 2 weeks before she (re-) started dating C. This time around, C. broke up with M. in less than a month.

Around Halloween of last year, M. discovered she was pregnant. She didn't know who the father was - was it C.? Was it the abusive ex-boyfriend? Given her due date, it could have been either.

Fast-forward to early this May. M. delivers a daughter. She and the ex-boyfriend have blood typing done. They both have the same blood type, but the baby has a different blood type. M. reports to C. that the baby has to be his. M. insists it's C.'s baby and strongly encourages them to bond. C. spends a lot of time with the baby and starts getting attached.

C. goes out and gets his blood type read - it's the same as M.'s and the ex-boyfriend. Hmmmm. C.'s doctor, however, tells him there's a remote chance that a baby could have a different blood type than both its parents - the only way to know is to have paternity DNA testing done. Both C. and the ex-boyfriend are suspicious at this point, so they both have testing done - at their expense.

Result? The baby is not EITHER C.'s or the ex-boyfriend's! Under pressure, M. admits to C. that, during the two weeks between the ex-boyfriend and C., she hooked up for a one-night-stand with a guy she met on the Internet. As a good Catholic girl, she doesn't believe in using birth control. As a fertile Myrtle, she got pregnant. As a good Catholic girl, she refused to consider abortion. As a mother trying to protect her child's best interest, she assessed the relative merits of the three possible fathers, decided C. would make the best daddy, and tried to lasso him into the role.

M. does not work. She receives public assistance and has housing via a Section 8 certificate. C. reports that one of the reasons he broke up with her is that she does not discipline her two sons, or allow anyone else to, and as a consequence they treat her like crap and recognize no limits or authority.

I don't know how to find anything positive in this situation. Not like she's likely to come looking to me for advice - another reason C. broke up with her the first time around is that she called me "a fat fucking ugly Jew who looks like a dyke." Then she was amazed when C. told her he'd known me for far longer than he'd known her and loved me like a sister.

All I can say is I'm glad C. isn't going to be tied to this woman for the next 18 years. That, and I'm so very sorry for M.'s poor little baby girl.