I am feeling a bit fragile and would genuinely appreciate some other points of view as I am completely unsure of what the best thing to do is.
DD will be 6 in July and me and her dad split when she was 13 months. He has always had her every other weekend, and paid a pittance in maintainance (£120 a month, which has only fairly recently gone up from £80 a month!). He gets her with a bag of clean clothes and brings her back with a bag of dirty clothes, and does a mediocre job of entertaining her inbetween.
He is possibly the most selfish person I have ever met, and has no idea what being a parent actually entails, he just takes it for granted that he has this wonderful little girl and doesn't have any understanding of the time, money and effort that I have put into bringing her up.
He NEVER phones up to say hello to her inbetween her weekends with him, has never once randomly asked to spend any extra time with her, even though he does not live that far away and does bugger all else so there is nothing stopping him.
DD is in year one and before Christmas I had a discussion with her teacher about her progress as she did not seem to be picking up reading at all, despite being very bright. The teacher said that the school had referred her to the special needs teacher. DD was becoming aware that she was falling behind her peers and was getting quite down about it and making comments that she didn't think she was very clever etc, which were upsetting for me and I hated to think of her feeling like this. So I got on the internet and found an online programme which helped kids who were struggling to read, it sounded ideal but the drawback was that it was nearly £400. I spoke to her dad about it (he is dyslexic so it is likely she has inherited her difficulties from him), and asked if he could contribute. He said that he didn't have much money but he would see what he could do. Anyway, time passed and I saved up the money myself, and in February I paid for her to start the programme (and in less than two months she has gone from not even knowing most of the letters to being able to read almost anything so it was worth it!). Her dad had not paid a penny towards it and I just left it as what could I do.
So anyway, I will get to the point, last weekend he had her and I drove to meet him on Sunday where I normally meet him, forgetting that this once we had arranged to meet somewhere different (I am pg and had had a long day and was very tired, and just went on autopilot). I realised as soon as I got there that I'd fucked up and called him to say I would be a bit late, and if he headed back towards his house I would cut across and meet him en route to save him waiting around. So yes he had wasted about half an hour all in all but not really the end of the world. And there have been a few occasions where he has fallen asleep, van broken down or once he was arrested, and not turned up to meet me at all or left me there for a lot longer than half an hour. So anyway I get there and he went completely mental and kicked right off, effing and blinding at me in front of poor dd. I pointed out that he had done it to me more than once and that I was very sorry and it was a genuine mistake, but there was no calming him down and he just carried on verbally attacking me in front of dd, critising me and my life when I have done a bloody good job of raising his daughter, I run a successful business and all he does is sit around moaning about how unfair his life is.
Then this morning I was brushing dd's teeth and she piped up with 'daddy hasn't cleaned my teeth for ages'. Now this is something I have fallen out with him several times over the years about, he doesn't ever bath or even wash her when she stays, or brush her hair or anything like that, but one thing I do expect him to do is clean her teeth. He has never really bothered, and on her last trip to the dentists it turned out she had 3 cavities, and so I told him that I am not messing around, he cannot have her for 48 hours and not clean her teeth once, if he is not capable of doing this most basic thing then he should not have her overnight anymore. And lo and behold he has not been doing it (again). It takes the piss that he can't be arsed to do this when I do absolutely everything for her, pay for everything, deal with her schooling, take her to her clubs and parties etc, keep her clean and tidy and just generally be there for her every day and do everything else that a parent has to do.
I am at the end of my tether with him, and I need to write him an email to tell him how it is (you cannot talk to him as he just shouts and shouts and shouts, writing is the only way). He has no respect for me and is generally a crap dad (last weekend dd spent pretty much the whole weekend watching the tv whilst he was outside fixing his van). DD doesn't mind going to him but she much prefers being with me. I have gone out of my way to allow him as much access as he likes to her and make things as easy as possible for him, even though he has not played fair with me at all. I am so tempted just to tell him to fuck off and if he wants to see his daughter get a solicitor (he would never bother do to this). But on the other hand I am pg and do not need a massive showdown with him, and also I am aware that it is a major thing to stop his relationship with dd. So what do I do, do I allow him to carry on being crap and taking the piss and being generally vile towards me and a crap dad to dd, or do I get heavy with him? Sorry for the massive ramble, there is so much to this situation and it's hard to know where to start.