Maybe my title is a bit melodramatic, but here goes.
I have a 10 year old daughter and her dad and I split up when she was a year old. I met my DF when she was 3 and we have been ttc for over 4 years now, currently in the middle of cycle 1 of ivf (well they froze all blastocysts as I was at high risk of complications, so we are waiting to transfer them). It's a one child family here, but her dad has an older daughter and DD now has 5 step siblings too. All in all, she has 3 siblings living at her dad's full time.
She has increasingly been asking to spend more time with her dad because she is bored at ours. We dont have tons of money so we dont go out too often, and we don't have any of her friends living nearby to make meet ups with them easy. Part of why she wants to go to her dads is because he lives close to her friends too, so they can just nip in and out of each others houses. We live a 10/15 minute drive away from them and it's not a walkable route either.
I just don't know what else to do with her. It's only very recent, and I actually think a lot of it is to do with spending time with friends rather than anything we are doing/not doing. She is moving up to secondary school in a year and will be attending a school nearer to where we live so will hopefully make more local friends. Also we do hope to have a sibling for her soon but of course with ivf that isn't guaranteed! But in the meantime, I just feel a bit useless and hurt. Even if I offer to do things with her she often refuses - I think the pre teens are definitely upon us and I'm no longer cool.
I'm just really finding it difficult and wondered if anyone else had been through similar? Im hoping to make meetups with friends more regular for her, but I can't help but feel a bit hurt and sad. Is this normal?! Some of it may naturally be her age too, especially the not wanting to do so much with me, but I just can't help feeling useless. Looking to see if anyone else has experienced similar?