Help please.

[Rachellily2013]

My ex partner and I have a 10 month old daughter. We don't live together so he doesn't see her every day. When we do meet he feeds her, plays with her but doesn't really know her needs.
He wants to have our daughter on his own for daddy time. He insists he doesn't want me around and complains his family don't see her.
She doesn't really know his family all too well and I know she will be upset in front of strangers. She is also going through separation anxiety at the moment.
I don't want to put my baby under stress by leaving her with my ex partner and his family.
What do I do?

Thank you all for your advice. I will contact csa.
And hopefully within time I'll find it easier to hand my baby over to him, even the thought of it at the moment makes me want to cry!

It's hard to accept that someone can waltz in and out of your children's lives. It's also hard to accept that you are expected to be fully responsible for the financial cost of bringing a child up to adulthood, but that is the reality.

Tbh I think the first part is much harder to accept for me. I can't understand how a parent isn't 100% in love with their child and wants to be involved in their life. A maybe if I'm not busy doing something else kind of contact is appalling.

Despite the CSA (or maybe because of in some cases ) a massive number of fathers do not take any responsibility and pay anything.

However your baby is also his baby and evidence suggests a relationship will benefit the child. So you do need to work towards this. It does not mean capitulating to everything he says but to have clear boundaries about contact. Know your rights and his rights and use them as your benchmark for deciding all contact.

Maintenance is not linked to contact but it might be worth pointing out that parenting is also about money and since he wishes to start parenting then he needs to include this element immediately

Best wishes.

A lot of what you are saying is ringing true with me. I have a 20 month old and have been living away from husband for several m

Sent too early!!

... Several months. He said that with more money, we would live together. Now he says he can't live with me but wants more access (we see each other every weekend together) and then he will decide if we can live together. He wants her alone and wants to parade her around his family. They have been awful to me. I don't trust his family. Plus my daughter always calls after me.

I'm stuck and I don't know which way to turn.

Difficult as it is, it's not about you or how you feel, and you need to remove that from the equation.

Think seriously about why you are concerned about this. Is it because you harbour anger and resentment towards him and his family, or is it out of genuine concern. Is it your daughter who will not deal well with this, or is it you?

Thing is, you can be worried about something - but that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't do it.

I agree with others about ensuring he pays his way - that is part of being a parent after all. Beyond that - evidence shows it's best for your daughter if she has a relationship with your ex.

You say your ex and daughter see each other, so they do know one another and she will likely trust him as she sees him regularly. What about letting him be alone with her for an hour or so to being with. May be meet in the park and you go do some shopping and then come back. Then you can build up from there.

He will only ever understand her needs and how to take care of her by learning how to do it. He can only do that if he is allowed to take responsibility and do it.

For what it's worth, my DS was 6 months old when ex and I split - mainly because he was working away a lot and when back didn't really take on much responsibility. But it wasn't long before he was taking DS off on his own. DS is now nearly 4 and hasn't been adversley affected by it.

Goodness, 6 months?! How did you cope with that emotionally? Ie being away from DS?

How often is your Ex seeing DD? You say he feeds her and plays with her. where are you meeting? can you go sit in the corner out of the way.

My Ex doesn't see his DC but I can tell DS when he gets older that I did my best to make relationship work.

Once a week with me

will he increase this. Take her off for half an hour. It is a difficult line to follow..Is she away from you at all. There is an element of she will never bond with you there.

AC786 - I think you were asking me about being away from y DS at 6 months, right?

How did I deal with it emotionally? I don't want to sound facetious, but it wasn't really a problem. Like I said we started with a couple of hours. Ex and I had been living together(ish) for the first 6 months of DS's life, so it wasn't the first time he had been caring for him alone.

For example - We moved house when DS was 6 weeks old, in the few months post that there were a couple of occasions where I would go off to the DIY shop to pick something up and ex would look after DS while I did etc. I didn't see this as being that much different, and treated it as such. I used the time to get a rest or catch up on stuff. I rationalised it in my mind, that if we have still been together, I wouldn't have had reservations about the two of them spending time together without me - and would have in fact encouraged that sort of bonding, so why should our split change that?

We built up from there. Then by about 9 months it was my very close friends hen party - an overnight thing. I had always planned to go, and when we were together ex had been lined up to look after DS that night. Well we went ahead and did it anyway. I did worry how DS would cope without me. However, my Ex had temporarily moved in with his parents and so DS was in a familiar environment and ex had his mom for support if he needed it.

Thinking back on it now, if ex had been living on his own I might have worried more, or perhaps requested this kind of set up for the first few overnights. But I don't think it would have been a reason to stop it.

It continued from then and it wasn't long before he was regularly away over night EOW. Now he is nearly 4 he spends the entire weekend EOW with his dad.

Don't get me wrong, I miss DS when he isn't here, and I don't particularly like that fact that he has to go EOW and spend that amount of time away from me. But I do honestly believe that it is the best thing for DS, and feel like I have done the right thing.