My children's dad has got his new girlfriend pregnant.
BACK STORY:
Me and my children’s dad were together for 5.5years, we married young and are not yet divorced.
We have 2 children, one girl who just turned 4 and a boy who is nearly 3 and has special needs.
He left us in December 2019 with no explanation. Throughout 2020, we were very on and off, more so off. He chose to ignore me and all parental responsibilities. Also he kept jumping into different relationships, all of which became intense quickly.
May 2020 we reconciled for 3 months. In this time our son just managed to build up a tolerance to his father. In august 2020 stbx admitted himself to a mental health facility and was in there for 4 weeks. He cheated on me with a patient and this became intense quickly, but she called it off, he was planning to move in with her once discharged from hospital.
He had nowhere to live so he came back to mine, I offered this so he could continue working on the relationship with the children. We seemed to be getting on well and although we “weren’t together” our actions were still very much like a married couple.
He met his new gf in late Oct 2020 and had an overnight date. I couldn’t take the emotional abuse anymore and told him to leave.
He moved in with the new girlfriend instantly and stopped bothering with our children. Even though I was making them available for contact often. In a conversation with her, she told me she had no plans to get pregnant and wouldn’t do that to me or the children so soon, she also said due to her past experiences she knows how important it is to be careful before getting pregnant with just anyone (She had miscarried a few months previous with another partner). Turns out she fell pregnant within a week of this conversation.
Due to a lot of abusive behaviours, me and our children were suffering so I blocked his family in November and had a non molestation order granted against him in January. I found out the new gf was pregnant through someone showing me a social media post.
I’ve done a lot of healing in the 7 months of no contact, and our children are happy and thriving. I’m happy to have contact reinstated with him and his family providing there’s no more abuse or drama. It will take an awfully long time for my son to build these relationships back up, he is so scared of people he doesn’t know and seems to not know who is dad is, our son is also non verbal and has little communication skills so it’s tough to know. It will take our daughter a long time to build the trust up with him ,I believe, because she was so badly affected with the inconsistency last year.
It is my priority for the children to build up a relationship with their dad and paternal grandparents & aunties and uncle. Contact is to be supervised due to their dads mental health (as per SS conversation)
He has stated he’s happy for me to supervise contact and we are both in agreement that this could be the best route considering it would probably be too distressing for the children to go into a contact centre with strangers. I respect the fact that the new baby will be my children’s sibling and I will be happy for them to meet, however it needs to be in ways that aren’t confusing for our children, so I’ve proposed that once baby is born we don’t introduce him as a brother to start with as it will be too overwhelming given the circumstances. However, I am not in agreement with the new gf being introduced to our children yet, I feel it’s totally unnecessary at this point in time, the priority is for the dad and his family to create bonds with our children first. And given my ex’s history, I don’t want to introduce a new woman so quickly because he seems to bounce between different women frequently.
I have spoken to my ex a few times recently and he has made it abundantly clear that he has no intentions of staying with his new girlfriend, and he just needs somewhere to live, not only that, I have heard video recordings of their arguments and her being physically abusive to him. So I am in no way wanting to put my children in that environment after we have all spent the last 7 months healing from the emotional damage.
This makes it quite tricky, because I don’t want to stop a relationship between the 3 children, but I am not happy with the baby’s mum being around my children yet, and I’m not ready to be around her after some nasty things she has done either. And I totally respect that she may not want me around her baby, but I have to supervise the contact of the children with their dad for numerous reasons I am the only one who can facilitate this.
I’m not saying that this is going to be the case forever, but for now this is the situation and although the baby isn’t due until August, I don’t think my position on that will change by then. It’s much more important that my ex can prove his consistency with the children and his family can have the opportunity to build a relationship with them before we bring her involved. I can’t say I will still feel like this in 6 months time because so much can change but I don’t see this changing in the near future. I don’t want to be pressured into having her around my children, but equally I don’t want to be a reason my children don’t see or know their brother.
Any opinions / advice on the situation are very appreciated and welcomed.