Can my ex get 50:50 care from birth after early separation?

[penelopesolivegarden]

Is this a thing? Ex and I split very early, now 22 weeks. I have gone through everything with him from him not wanting to be involved at all to now wanting a 50:50 split from the start. He seems to think this may be granted as we've been separated from early in the pregnancy. I feel physically sick at the idea.

He works 3 'normal' days a week and then is on call outside normal working hours for one day/night a week, so could make 50:50 work as long as the schedule changed around his working pattern which is what's worrying me. Otherwise I'd think he was bluffing.

I'd really recommend taking proper legal advice OP, or at least posting on the legal advice board. So much dodgy/misinformed advice when you post on the general boards.

In the absence of abuse, violence, drug use etc. I'd try and stay amicable with the ex if you can. It will make life so much easier for you and baby. By this I do not mean giving in to his every demand, handing over the baby from your hospital bed etc. before anyone jumps on me. For instance, by all means breastfeed for as long as you want and as long as it's working for you and baby, but it won't be the factor that determines when/whether or not your ex gets sole overnight care of the baby, so if you need or want to bottlefeed or mixed feed do so without fear. It really would be better if you can agree a parenting plan that contains a sensible plan for baby's contact with ex outside court if you can (with the help of a professional mediator if need be) - if it does come to court however the court is very unlikely to order a newborn to be removed overnight from their primary carer regardless of how they're fed or where they sleep. On the other hand do be aware that if your ex is a committed and dedicated parent (or tbh, even if he's a pretty poor father but prepared to assert himself in court) he is going to be a regular feature of your and the baby's life for the next 18 years+, it will be very difficult to prevent that regardless of the length of your relationship or his behaviour to you within / after it (short as I say of abuse/violence) so that's why I really would recommend trying to get along and not get into unnecessary battles...

I would rather move to the other end of the country than 50/50 with a newborn. They need their mum and ideally to be breastfed on demand. Tell him no way. Or just move and don’t tell him.

But he doesn't have to be on the birth certificate to be given custody. A contact plan can be agreed by the family court regardless if it's felt to be in the child's best interests. If he can evidence strong likelihood that he is the father he will likely be granted the same contact time whether or not he is on the BC.

Courts are starting to see through weaponised breastfeeding - there was a court case not so long ago where the judge took a dim view of exclusively breastfeeding being a barrier to contact with the father. He wouldn’t get 50/50 from birth but a few hours at a time building up gradually - from 6 months old babies are not EBF are they so that argument also diminishes - you’d be expected to pump

personally it’s not a situation i would have wanted to bring a child into

If the baby were going to be in his care, then in practice he would need to have Parental Responsibility. This is because he could need to, say, take the baby to hospital. PR would be automatic if he were on the birth certificate, but not otherwise.
Either the OP could add him or he could apply to court.

Not married no. Very brief relationship, but friends before that for 10+ years.

He's suggested I express from the start to facilitate overnights.

He jumps between not wanting to be involved to wanting to be equally involved from the start in a way that I just don't see being possible with a newborn. He totally has a right to be involved. I just can't imagine handing over a newborn.

His mum is also pushing me to agree to immediate overnights, 50:50 split etc. She shares my concerns he has no idea what the reality of a newborn will be like but thinks she'll help him and it will all be fine so he has a right to it.

Do not allow him overnights like that with a new born baby. The baby needs the constancy of you, and he could spend time with it regularly ( with you there) till it is older.

Why are you splitting up?

Could you sort of live together as friends?

He won’t get 50/50 from birth. Once child is older and he goes for 50/50, if you want a fixed schedule then insist on that. His work pattern is no longer your responsibility, it is up to him to work out childcare etc on his days. However, if you are happy being flexible, go for it

Do you know him? How are you so certain?

I actually think you need to be realistic and although definitely not agree to 50/50
straught away. Agree at first to him being able to see baby at your place for a few hours a few times a weeks
when baby js a month or two this moves to him taking baby to his place/his mums by 3 months this moves to overnights and by 6 months he gets weekends. Work with him. He is babies dad and deserves a relationship with him as much as you do.

I doubt it and I think it would not be good for the baby, so I hope not.

You need to frame everything you say as what is in best interest of baby. I would stop discussing this with his mum, she clearly has her own agenda.

Only discuss it with him. If he can’t even manage that then what hope does he have of looking after a baby? The fact he thinks you will be able to pump from day one shows how little he knows. Supply takes time to build up and pumping often delivers less milk than when baby suckles. It’s also incredibly tiring on mum. No court would be in favour of you having to do this to allow him 50-50.

Tell him that the best thing for baby is to be with their primary caregiver but to have little and often contact with the other parent. You could offer every day for one hour to start and say you will build that up, based on what type of baby you have.

then give baby your name and don’t invite him to attend registration of birth. He can take steps to get himself added to the birth certificate.

How do you propose the OP feeds her baby?

Expressing is tiring kind of painful and never gets the same amount of milk as feeding does. It’s also lots more work. Sterilising the bottles, the pump ect. Plus the pumps themselves are expensive. Plus you have to pump at the time you normally feed to maintain supply. It’s one thing to get up to feed a baby through the night but do you want to get up to pump?

if he’s swinging between being super involved and not involved then he clearly doesn’t really want to be involved. Sounds like his mother wants it not him.

when I was in this position (split with ex when my dc was 6 month old. Weekend started straight away) I expressed and we gave top ups of formula if needed.

yhe baby deserves a relationship with both parents

The thing is. If he does want to involved it is better for baby to have a bond and foundation rather then suddenly being thrown into a situation when he is a toddler. This way it is gradual and more child centric. I was still able to breastfeed for 14 months even though my son was not with me every weekend.

I don’t know whats going on tonight but every thread has advice thats unpleasant & vindictive.

breastfeed to stop the father having contact
co sleep to stop the father having contact
don’t put him on the birth certificate to stop him having contact/till he proves himself.

then people suggest HE is controlling.

he can’t have overnights till be proves himself

I get the impression this is a first baby for both of them but only one has to prove themselves. Standard mums net misandry

OP what do you actually want? Don’t make decisions based on being petty & spiteful. Make decisions that are in the best interests of all including the baby. Not allowing him the chance to actually be a father & making it difficult for him to see the child, hurts the child the most.

I do think with these men that blow hot and cold and threaten court for 50:50 custody and so on, the best thing is to disengage. Not say he can't see the baby, not set yourself up for a huge dramatic court battle, just develop a holding line such as 'of course you're going to be an involved dad. I want you to play your full part in raising the baby. We'll have to see exactly what that looks like in terms of scheduling when the baby's here' and repeat without escalating. Definitely not engaging with his mum about expressing and so on, just keep saying you'll see how it goes when the baby is here.

He's almost certainly coming from a place of his own fears of inadequacy, guilt/shame and possibly a fair dose of wanting to control the situation/you as well, it's not that he actually, really wants 50% of the time with the baby, he just wants to feel he's 'won'/asserted some control - some people would say letting him think he has control by not arguing back as pandering, but I'd say it's being smart. If you're able to maintain a reasonable relationship it will likely work out ok once the baby is here and both of you see the reality of a newborn I really doubt he's going to be all that keen on taking the baby off overnight anyway, and there'll be plenty of time to go down the long-winded legal route later on if he really wants to pursue that... And as others have said it will be much better for your child if their parents get on and they have always had some form of relationship with their father rather than it being a sudden change aged 2 or whatever...

Not everybody wants to give formula.
This man sounds as if he doesn't really know what he wants and clearly hasn't a clue about what a baby needs.
His mother should support what is known to be best for the baby, which is short frequent visits. Expecting OP to pump from the word go is not realistic and as pp have said it would be a lot of extra work, stress, and not really effective in terms of quantity.
If he really wanted to be a supportive father he would be offering to step up and help with all the other things that need doing while OP rests, recovers and establishes her supply. It is distressing and damaging for tiny babies to be separated from their mothers.

You’ve known this guy for a long time so only you can say if he’s a decent guy that’s freaking out over parenthood or if he’s an arsehole. If the former, I think there’s no way in hell he’d get overnights but it’s probably not a bad idea to have him in your home, if you’re okay with that, to help out, including at night. The sleep deprivation is bad but it must be so much worse if you’re a single parent and can’t hand the baby over to someone. My DS would only sleep on people for the first few weeks and so DH and I had to tag team a lot. If you can build a relationship where you can do that in a way that doesn’t involve overnights away from you, I think that would be helpful for you and for your baby.

Re the idea to express milk from the start, this isn’t how breastfeeding works. You need to establish a supply before you can consistently produce enough milk to do this and that’s mainly done in the first 6-8 weeks. You might have heard of cluster feeding? This is when newborns go on feeding binges and this is part of the breastfeeding process to establish supply. Newborn feeding is unpredictable because of things like cluster feeding and the recommendation is you feed on demand initially and I can tell you that newborns can be very demanding when it comes to feeds. I can’t see how logistically 50/50 could work during the newborn stage if you were breastfeeding. Not to mention that pumping is time consuming and extra effort - your body will be in recovery from the birth too for the first 6 weeks and so that’s definitely not a pressure I think you need.

This Doesn’t mean you can’t facilitate a relationship between your baby and their father. But in those early weeks, that might have to be done by sharing time and the same space as each other rather than the baby being away from you. Appreciate that might not be easy emotionally but might be a good way to establish a strong and positive coparenting pattern.

Arghhh this winds me up - HE does not have a "right to it", he has a responsibility to his child - parental responsibility!! The child is not his property!

The CHILD is the one witn the rights here -a right to a relationship with both parents, (and extended family members) based on their best interests. Any court would surely mandate that custody/visitation arrangements are based on what is in the child"s best interests - and that will be establishing a strong bond with their primary care giver - you - in the newborn phase.

You can tell he's clueless- just BF and express from day 1 - yeah ok it's that easy 🤣🤣

This is ridiculous and do not give in to him or his mother. This is a recipe for disaster.

You won't have a hope in hell of getting the baby into any sort of routine and it'll be a nightmare, pumping from day one is not a good idea as your body needs to settle into a proper routine of its own, matching to your baby's needs. It must not be artificially induced and especially not for someone else's convenience. Not everyone produces much milk on pumping either.

Midwives used to talk of the mother/baby dyad, I hope they still do, and the father does not feature in that. He can have his time later.

Please get proper legal advice.

Dear OP, just a second what some other posters here are saying about the difficulty in expressing milk. Your ex clearly knows very little about this area. I breastfed for 3 and 1/2 years and when I was getting started had to express for a number of months. If I hadn’t been able to stop doing that, I wouldn’t have continued for as long as I did. It literally doubles the work of feeding. Not only do you have to feed, but you have to pump and clean all the apparatus as well. And when you’re pumping, you can’t really hold the baby, it doesn’t matter what kind of fancy pump you have and I had a really fancy pump. As always in threads that touch on breastfeeding, there has already been a comment saying that you can spend weekends away from your children without impacting feeding. And while I’m glad that worked for the poster in question and I’m sure their child did benefit, unfortunately they’re slightly deluding themselves if they think that their child got the same amount of milk as a child who did not spend weekends away from their mother. The needs of the father in their case was definitely prioritised over the nutritional needs of the child. And if that worked for them then fine, but that might not work for the OP.

Without knowing the background, I came on to say this.