...to want to lose my shit at the situation?

[stilldontgiveaf]

I'll try and keep this as easy to read as possible to avoid any drip feeding...

18 weeks pregnant. Was seeing a guy for a short time and fell pregnant. He disappeared, tried to ghost me out of the blue before I found out. I tried contacting him to tell him I was pregnant and he was reading my messages but ignored it for a couple of weeks, so I decided to contact his sister. She responded instantly and was nice but also in shock. The baby's dad then called me, acted "shocked" and said he didn't get my messages. That was a lie because he read every single one. The contact stopped again after a few days of him ramming the idea of a termination down my throat. (That was not an option for me. I'd had one before whilst in a DV relationship and there's a lot of history to that)

His sister then said he'd told his family there was no way the baby could be his and his family said they want a DNA test (fine with me...)

He then said there was going to be no test. He said he can't have his family find out the truth, he wasn't ready, his dad would kick the shit out of him, throw him out etc etc. I told him I'd put in a claim for CSA and a DNA will be done that way and the truth will come out. He obviously went mad at this and said I was doing it for his money.

Fast forward a few weeks and he says he wants to be involved but doesn't want his family to know yet and wants it to be in his own time that they find out. I get a text from him one day saying he has to send me a message that his dad has made him do stating I'm not to contact any of them until I can prove they are related. But he wants to remain in some form of contact behind their back. At this point, all I want is for him to see his child and stupidly agree to it.

I meet him in person, we talk things through. His dad calls while I'm with him and he lies about where he is. (He doesn't sound like a very nice man after the way I heard him speak to him), so I agree to keep things secret. He's freaking out about the whole situation and I try and reassure him that things will be ok. He told me a girl had been contacting him for a few weeks but he "wasn't entertaining it".

Fast forward a month to now, and I find out this morning he's now in a relationship. He hasn't told her anything. He's meant to be coming to the scan with me in two weeks and now I've got to breaking point. He said he'd tell her in his own time.

I'm so angry, I know how stupid I've been in believing everything and I don't know what to do about it. He initially tried to lie and say he wasn't in a relationship, then says he hasn't told her anything. I can't cope with this situation anymore. How can he get into a relationship with her under false pretences, not tell her anything and expect to just dump it on her months later when she's fully invested in him?

Am I being unreasonable for wanting to lose my shit? I don't even know what to do anymore. It's like I've come out the fog and seen how manipulative he really is. I'm such a twat.

lilmishap There’s absolutely no proof of that.

If he gets unsupervised access to the baby he will be able to take them to visit his parents, and you won’t even able to do anything about it. I would fade away, personally.

@Tolleshunt I would fade away, personally.

That's now my plan. 😣

You can solve it by distancing yourself from the mess.
I'd be shitting and stamping in it, then crying.....on repeat for a few days.

Do that brush yourself off and get on with the long old wait for babies arrival, anything can happen in a few months, he could get hit by a car or you could meet a genuine bloke, OR you could find that he is irrelevant by the time baby gets here.

Hoping it's the 2nd or 3rd for you

Either you or your child will suffer, probably both of you.

Having this child is definitely not the easy way out, you cannot protect him from violence from them. They don’t sound like the kind of people that’ll make it easy for you.

@Jellybeansincognito oh shut up. How dare you question my reason to not terminate. Get off my thread

I can't see him making too much effort to see the baby tbh, Supervised or unsupervised

Get on with it by yourself.

Jellybeans that’s out of line.

Your baby will be fine & loved by you.

I think your life will be easier as a single mother compared with a life trying to organise this man who looks likely to mess you & your child around.

Do you have any friends or family or who can help when the baby is here?

Do you have other children?

What a fucking twat.

@Jellybeansincognito seriously, just stop.

Leave it jelly. It’s the op’s decision.

send a text when you’re in labour

I would strongly advise against this. You don’t want to risk him and an angry family arriving at the hospital. I wouldn’t tell him the baby had been born, until you get the baby’s name registered. That way you get to do things on your own terms, rather than be pressured by this pathetic excuse for a father and his equally odious father.

If he is expected to make some form of financial contribution towards the child then along with this will come access. at least in my eyes it should. so either manage by yourself, cut him and his money out of your life and never see him or his family again or if you do want him to give financial support be very prepared for all the drama that is going to go with it. I dont think its fair to expect him to support the baby without some form of access and at some point in the future he will want this if he is paying. so personally the second best option in this scenario is to not take money off of him and therefore make sure he has no rights over your child. it might be tough to manage financially but it relieves you of 18+ years of drama with him and his family.

OP,

You need to ask yourself the following:

'Is the tiny amount of money I might get worth dealing with this muppet and his family for the rest of my life?'

My gut feeling would be 'hell, no!'

In your shoes, I'd be running far, far away. I'd be making no further contact, not putting him on the Birth Certificate and I wouldn't be keeping the door open via CMS claim, either.

As things stand, he'll bring nothing positive to your life, he doesn't sound like he'll being anything positive to a child's life, you think his wider family are toxic and possibly abusive and you're adamantly against any unsupervised contact.

Listen to that gut reaction,drop contact and count yourself lucky. Whilst I agree he has a responsibility to pay for his child, that is likely going to come at the cost of leaving open a door for him/his family to change their minds about wanting to be involved. If he is the child's father, unless you can prove he is dangerous to the child, you actually have no legal right to prevent contact. For sure, no one's talking about a tiny breastfed baby being handed over, but by the time the child is in school, 50/50 unsupervised would be considered reasonable unless it's not in the child's best interests - and that's damn difficult to prove, as children are deemed to have a right to know both parents.

It's not necessarily going to be a popular view, I know, but just read some of the many, many (many, many) threads on here from women stuck in scenarios with kid's fathers who drop in and put, let them down at short notice, borderline neglect the kids when they're in their care, drop them for second families etc etc etc. and do some real soul searching.

Is that what you want, a fuckwit manchild tied to you forever, who if the mood takes him (or his family through him) could take you to court and gain access to your child, whether you like it or not?

Is it worth it?

At the end of the day, he knows now, and he can contact you as easily as you can contact him. If he's worthy of being your child's dad, and not just their biological father, then he will. If not, I'd be counting my blessings. You can't make him be a better man, and why would you want involvement from a deadweight?

@S1naidSucks yeah, I think I've decided to not do anything now until after the birth and take it a day at a time from there.

Jellybeansincognito the op has chosen to keep her baby and is just looking for support how to deal with the situation with the father. She isn't looking for judgement or spiteful comments.

Making a pregnant woman feel like shit, especially after she asked you to stop, is pretty nasty.

No, you are catastrophising, Jellybeans, and pushing for OP to majorly over-react. Calm down.

Positing that the child would be better off not having a life at all because it might have to have a relationship with dysfunctional family members is ludicrous, and extreme.

If you wouldn’t go on a thread about abortion and tell OP not to do it, you shouldn’t be trying to push OP into an abortion. FFS.

Whilst I don’t agree with pressuring abortion

I do think this is a very sad situation for the child. This is not going to be a happy settled stable childhood I strongly suspect

Your priorities at the moment need to be your baby, and you. Take care of those two things, don't allow this stress and drama to take up your head space.

Don't try and help him play silly games with his family, just crack on with your life and keep at an arms distance. DO claim for CSA, it's your right and his obligation to pay for his child. Don't allow him to talk you out of it - I'm sure you've read the horror stories on here and know better.

DifficultPifcultLemonDifficult I am a bit emotional today so I do apologise, it’s not going to end well though is it?

Essentially what op is doing is allowing a child to suffer because she doesn’t want to suffer herself, but tbh... there’s no guarantee of that either. The mans family sound vile and this is only the start.
Op doesn’t sound very clued up on the rights they will have either.

When you have children they come first, this situation isn’t putting the child first at all. They’re open to abuse already and aren’t even born yet.

Telling an OP to have an abortion at this stage is ridiculous and inflammatory.

There is every chance that OP and her baby will be just fine and will not have contact with this man or his family going forward.

OP, you don't need to make any decisions now because you can't do anything about maintenance etc until your baby is born, has been registered and you have put in your claim for child benefit. You will want to think about whether you ask the father along to register the birth otherwise he won't be on the BC (my son's father isn't because he was still disputing paternity too at this stage). Otherwise you have a long time of this pregnancy left so you have plenty of time to think about things and build your support network.