Baby girl taken from mother to live with dad and his boyfriend

[Darcey2105]

I'm horrified!! Have you seen this story this morning?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32603514

A baby girl was taken from her mother and is now in sole custody of the dad and his boyfriend. The reason being that he said the baby was conceived to be their surrogate child. but she says he agreed to be her sperm donor so she could have the baby.

What is going on? Surely even if the mother had changed her mind about surrogacy she could still be allowed to keep her own baby. I am totally appalled. The men had a top female lawyer fighting their case. And it looks like it was a woman judge who ruled it was in the baby's best interest to live with the dad and his boyfriend - even though the baby was still breastfeding!!

how can there be so little support of mothers? Please tell me I hallucinated the whole awful story.

She quite rightly did not willingly concede access of her children to a piece of shit who used her body to his own ends.

Another one who doesn't appear to have read the judgment. The mother specifically offered to act as surrogate, she was not forced into anything: the father had in fact been considering other options. He seems to have been deceived into providing sperm on the basis of her agreement that he and his partner would bring up the child whilst she would continue to play a large part in the child's life. She reneged on that promise and has done her utmost to exclude the father, and in fact she described him as a "sperm donor" - the same term she had used in relation to her husband and the father of the two older children. Does that read to you like a woman who was being used, sakura?

I will read it again, slowly. Now.

This does all sound a bit curate's egg, though, if the argument is that the judgement has integrity.

Derek I don't think you understand the thrust of what I'm saying. Which is that there must be some doubt about some of it; That we just can't know all of these things that you are being so vulgar and vitriolic about with complete certainty.

Im sure if she suffered from anxiety disorder she would have used that in her case

Now THAT kind of thing is what makes me uneasy. What kind of budget do you imagine she had for legals? And psychological reports? Nothing, I'll wager.

She wouldn't need a budget. If she had an anxiety disorder she could have got treatment from the NHS and a letter from her GP confirming it at a cost of around £10.

In relation to this and the suggestion that she was hormonal etc, it is worth noting the judge's comments that when she gave evidence "she conducted herself in a confident and most assertive manner throughout. She has sought to impose her will on the court and manage the proceedings".

What do you want me to say Blis?

I have said not one word about whether or not the Judge is a parent. Should I pretend to agree that I have?

"At present S is able to care for M well physically but there are already grounds for concerns about her mother’s over emotional and highly involved role in this infant’s life. Ultimately the role of a parent is to help the child to become independent. This is a child who at 15 months old is still carried by her mother in a sling on her body. M spends most of her time with her mother who does not set out any timetable for returning to work, as S would have to, to provide for M and for herself. There is a potential for enmeshment and stifling attachment rather than a healthy outward looking approach to the child’s life. The question is who benefits most from this chosen regime which points towards an inability to put the child’s needs before her mother’s need or desire for closeness.
The attachment which will develop in an infant who sleeps with her mother, spends all day being carried by her mother and is breastfed on demand through out the day and night raises questions about the long term effect on M"

So the best thing to do is separate the mother and child? Seriously, I feel sick having read that.

I don't think Derek is the only one who appears to have comprehension problems with your posts.

S has in the past sent her two older children to Romania in breach of a court order for them to have contact with their father, and S has admitted that she lied to the court at that time saying that the children did not have Romanian passports.

You think GPs diagnose anxiety disorder ici?

An NHS consultant? Look at the timeframe.

Unless she had pre-existing, diagnosed problems before the baby and custody suit, of course. Which is possible, but so are lots of scenarios.

Okay Bux I paraphrased you and I shouldn't.

But you asked what experience she had of parenting babies and if only a little, why not. I read that as you thinking her judgement would be skewed by that. If that's not what you meant, sorry but that's how it read to me. Not because I'm either Victorian or a fool but because it could be interpreted that way.

From reading about this on the internet, I'll never know the true ins- and outs.

Who knows if she sent her older children to Romania to protect them from their father....

This whole sorry tale should be a warning to people not to enter into such agreements with "friends". I'm sure there are some happy endings, but it's not worth the risk IMO.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense, who has read the full judgement, would surely have to come to the conclusion that the judge made the best decision for the child.

People who haven't read the judgement really need to take some time to do so, as they are making themselves look like complete idiots.

Anyone who has read the judgement, yet continues to question the judgement, clearly has an alternative agenda on this thread and couldn't give a damn about any child involved in this horribly sad case.

Finally, the term attachment has been thrown around this thread like some kind of top trump buzz word. How many of you actually understand the theory behind attachment, the different strategies children develop based on their parenting, and the long term impact that can have on their emotional wellbeing, due to a type of insecure attachment. Anyone who wants to keep using attachment to hang an argument off really should educate themselves a bit more about it.

Yes, and if I were the judge, and actually met all concerned I would have probably come to the same conclusion. But I haven't so, it all seems very upsetting.

very sad case - but having read the judgement notes I have to agree with the judgement.

It is possible to BF and cosleep purely for the benefit of the child. Lots of people do that. It is also possible to use this as an excuse to prevent contact. When someone is shown to use a whole stack of other techniques to prevent contact then it is certainly fair to consider the idea they may be using BF and cosleeping in that way too.

Any decision that M lives with H and B and spends much less time with S is bound to affect her, likely to upset and distress her in the short term at least and necessarily amounts to a change in her circumstances. However familiar M is with her home with H and B she would miss her mother with whom she has spent most of her time. Against that I will weigh the harm that she is at risk of suffering if she remains with her mother. As she gets older she will become more aware of, and will be directly affected by, her mother’s negative views about her father and B. These views will affect her own sense of identity; negatively inform her view of herself and where she fits into the world.
I can only judge S’s ability to parent M based on recent history and based on that history M is more likely than not to suffer harm; to continue to be taken to the GP and to hospital at times when it is not necessary in furtherance of S’s determination to control M’s contact with H and B or in respect of contact or any other dispute she may pursue over M with H in the future. It is likely that S will present H and B in a negative way to M and give her limited opportunity to understand the history behind her conception and of how she came to be here; nothing in S’s conduct of her case can offer any assurance to the court that S is capable of doing that for M in a balanced way that is free from S’s own agenda.

If you read the document I really don't see how you can think this person is this little girl's best chance at a happy, stable family life.

Buxhoeveden, the mother at no time suggested that she had an anxiety disorder. Her presentation in court was the reverse. I also note that in the later stages she had legal aid, which would have enabled her solicitors to instruct an independent medical expert to diagnose this: clearly they didn't. You're flogging a very dead horse there.

We also aren't privy to the statements made by her older children which the decided to keep private, they were made during the case when custody was given to her ex husband.

I think that the comments about slings and breast feeding need to be read in the context of the knowledge that the judge had of the mother personally and of the guardian ad litems testimony. You are interpreting the remarks as if they were applied to normal sling use (I was a sling user too) and breastfeeding but I highly doubt that the comment about the child being in a sling "all day" were a typo and the judge specifically linked the breastfeeding to situation purely as a way of disrupting contact with the childs father, along with the more extreme method of visiting doctor and hospital to prevent .

Someone was rather scathing up thread about how ridiculous it was that the judge had needed a breastfeeding consultant to comment on whether it was OK to breastfeed a 5 month old (I think that was the age) but if you read the judgement carefully you will see that the breastfeeding expert was called on to give an expert opinion on whether it would be OK t award overnight stays to the father whilst the child was still breastfeeding.

I think the judgement was thorough and I strong;y suspect that knowing the actual person involved would change the emphasis some of you are reading into some of the statements.

This is a relatively straight forward residence/custody (call it what you will) case. It was deemed better for the child to reside with the father and to award his partner PR. PR has not been removed from the mother and she continues to have access albeit supervised. If at any time she had put the needs of the child first I have no doubt that the court would have agreed with the suggestion made by the father which amounted to the pretty typical every other weekend and one night n the week that many non-resident parents get.

I know divorced men who have genuine 50:50 custody after divorces and she may even have been able to negotiate that as they seemed to have been originally considering sharing a house (even to the point that she put down a deposit also). I don;t think that she has a reasonable bone in her body or it would have never got this far. I think she expected them to roll over and take whatever crumbs she offered to avoid the publicity and the court case.

But she miscalculated (or maybe is just not able to have that kind of insight) and has ended up worse off than she would have been if they had agreed something amicably. I think her blatent homophobia shows that she didn't have any intention from the beginning of sharing their her child.

LynetteScavo, the child had, despite the mother's best efforts to disrupt it, been having regular overnight staying contact with her father. Being separated from her mother really would not be the nauseating prospect that you suggest.

She clearly didn't send the older children to Romania to protect them from their father. They are both now living with him following a separate prolonged court action.