Having my newborn son half of the week.

[QuirkyRoseFox]

Hi all,

My ex-partner is pregnant with our child, we broke up due to her inability to accept my autism diagnosis is a disability and her constant attempts to dismiss my daily lived experience with it....it lead to immense frustration and caused me a great deal of upset.

How likely do you think I would fair in a court situation in terms of getting an agreement in place to have him half the week? She has already stated she will not be breast feeding him so I don't think there's a need for him to stay with her all the time.

I'm looking to arm myself with the relevant facts and get things in place incase that conversation does not go as plans and she objects to the idea, he is my son too and I will want quality time with him and to form that bond.

0% chance. Maybe 0.1% if you accuse her of domestic abuse in court.

If you struggle with burnout then there is even less chance.

A newborn needs to be with its primary caregiver most of the time, not 50%, unless that isn't an option. It is an option in this case so the courts will not allocate 50/50. If the mother was deemed a danger to the child then perhaps you would get 100% because again, a newborn needs a consistent primary caregiver where this is an option.

The fact the mother does want to be there for the child means that unless there's some reason that the court would take a newborn away from her care, even were she a single mother without a partner challenging her in court, then they aren't going to give you 50/50 access.

You seem unmoved by the need for a newborn to have a consistent primary care being clearly more important for their wellbeing than seeing their father 50% of the time when they've just been born. This is very sad for your child.

Just to future proof.
Your employer may ask for the MATB1 form.
You are not entitled to this. It's is solely hers. Her legal medical record.

You cannot work and care for a newborn or young baby, no matter how excellent a multitasker you are.

Oh dear!
If your ex agrees to it, you will be spending time with her and the baby at her house, at times to suit them. So it's good that your work is flexible, because if you can take a couple hours off work during the day to visit them, and make up the hours later, that could be helpful.
Don't expect to look after the baby in your home while also working. Neither your ex nor your employer would be happy about that, and rightly so.

100% this. Forget what you've read about newborns sleeping 24/7. You can't work from home and care for a child under 8. Once they're 8, if you're cool with unlimited screen time and can take an extra long lunch break you might be able to fo the odd day. Before then...

I know you think you can boss this because of your involvement in your nieces life but you're clueless, completely and totally. Listen to the advice and make a plan for the first year that involves supporting the mum emotionally and financially and see where you are at that point.

😂😂😂 sure and all the women who don’t manage to work FT and have a newborn are just shit at multitasking

The problem is you are still thinking of it in terms of convenience for you .

There is so much you are missing in terms of mother / baby bond .

The fact this won’t be your decision regardless . There isn’t a court that would order this kind of contact and I can’t imagine any mum that would agree to it .

How is your relationship with mum ? I mean is the ability to co parent, communicate with each other - because improving this is your first step . Helping her set up home for baby , supporting mum at these - because these appointments are about the health of baby and mum.

The first step to being a good dad is supporting the mum financially and emotionally. When the baby arrives, if you've managed your create a good relationship with the mum, you could visit the baby and help out with the baby and chores, slowly building up to watching the baby while mum rests, and maybe even taking baby out in pushchair when it's 1-2. Later on, when the child is 2-3, you will have to prove that you are not working AT ALL during the time you have the baby, a judge will not accept wfh, which is why most single working dads have their children at weekends.

Thats not even in your best interest, let alone the baby.

Why do you want 50/50 from birth? Be REALLY honest with yourself here.

You need to go back to basics here and find a contact plan that you can stick to without compromise to your babys care, and work up to 50/50. You need to stay on good terms with the mum and develop a co-parenting relationship.

So, now that you know that 50/50 isn’t going to happen, what is your plan?

You'll find a lot of mumsnetters are very against men having equal rights to women when it comes to children. This is not the best place to get legal advice. You have equal PR and rights to your child but it would be best to work together with your ex to agree a contact schedule at least initially and stick to your agreement. Matters like this take months/years sometimes to go through court to get a final contact order in place. You need to speak to a solicitor about this and keep any evidence of you requesting contact and whether this was denied. Children need both parents in their lives

If you bothered to read the thread you would see that the vast majority of the replies emphasise that what matters here is what is best for the baby, not the parents. 50 50 with Dad from birth is not best for baby. Nobody has said it's unimportant for the baby to have a relationship with his father.

I think this is another example of where you're not really thinking it through. A newborn can't be looked after around a job. It's just not practical. So this is another reason to aim to build up to it so that by the time you're doing 50/50, the baby is in childcare while you're working. if your job is flexible, that's great as it means you won't necessarily need the same level of childcare by then, but you will need some.

OP, whilst I think the tone of some of these responses is unnecessarily goady, the point they are making is correct. Newborns believe they are an extension of their mothers and it is absolutely against their interests to be separated from their mothers during the early weeks of life. It is lovely that you want to be a hands-on Dad but you need to accept that Mum and Baby are a package deal and see them jointly in the early months.

With regards to multitasking, bear in mind that you won’t be able to juggle the job and the baby around each other.

It’s entirely the job that gets juggled. The baby comes first at all times, with no warning or ability to plan. So if you organise a virtual meeting during the usual nap time, you just don’t know whether it will happen. Some days there will be no nap times at all and the baby will squawk all day- and night. My DS1 didn’t sleep at all, bar the first fortnights- newborn fortnight, fortnight he started crawling and fortnight he started walking. Other than that he needed to be carried at all times until he was crawling. Then he crawled everywhere until he could walk then he ran everywhere.

I struggled to look after myself, my house and my baby and I wasn’t working at the time.

You just don’t know what your baby will be like.

If you have a dream baby that is formula fed, sleeps through the night from weeks old and doesn't have any issues with colic or reflux you could have a lot of contact quite quickly potentially overnight some time between 6 and 12 months.
The odds of your baby are pretty slim. 40% of 4 month olds have some form of reflux.
My daughter has severe reflux and a lot of food allergies and at 4 months spent 23h a day in my arms. No one else's would do not even my partners and we were together living in the same house. She was 6 months old before I could leave her alone for an hour with him whilst I had a long soak in the bath as some time away from her to cope with being totally touched out and with severe pnd.
I went into a mother and baby unit at 10 months and he had her 1-2 nights a week so she could keep up her 2 days a week a nursery and to give me a night to get some sleep as she still woke up 5 times a night (formula fed at this point) and work on my mental health. He paced around the house with her in a sling for 3-5h with her screaming to get her to sleep for the first few weeks.
I was seriously burnt out having my daughter and the mental and cognitive stress was far worse than my job and was up there with writing my PhD thesis and viva preparation! I would say this was the biggest contributing factor for my pnd aside from my bipolar diagnosis. Having a screaming infant and trying to figure out why and what you can do is far more stressful than anything else I have done. I have a niece and was involved in her care when she was a newborn but the mental load is completely missing when you are an aunt/uncle and it is all consuming when you are a parent.

I would start small and regular. If you can an hour a day or an hour most days and expect that your ex will be in the same room. See what type of baby you have. With a contented baby by 3 months it could be an hour a day away from mum, with an unsettled baby 10-15 minutes. By 6 months it could be a few hours away from mum with a content baby or not an option at all for an unhappy one. For a settled baby it could be an overnight at 10 months for an unsettled one you could be just getting some chunks of time away from mum. Right now you have no idea what your baby will need because babies needs are so specific to the child. Start small and often and reassess every 2-3 months there's no point making any long term plans because it absolutely depends on the baby you have

You can't actually multi-task with a newborn. They need your full attention. I too thought that I'd be able to work while looking after my baby, picturing them lying happily in a Moses basket next to me while I worked on my laptop, or at least in a sling. But that's just not how they work. My daughter would scream if I wasn't holding her on me, upright, and ideally I also had to be walking around. Once she was a few months older, she would cry if I was sat down but not making eye contact with her! I could not send a single email while she was awake. All administrative work that required thinking had to be done in her naps, but by then I was so shattered I couldn't keep my eyes open. I'm just trying to give you a picture of the reality of having a newborn. Even the most excellent multi-tasker with the lowest sleep needs really can't simultaneously work (especially if the job requires any degree of thinking) and care for a tiny baby.

This. It is simply not possible.

I have 1 month fully paid and my work is very flexible as well as 100% from home, I am an excellent multitasker

I agree with the others. This is simply not possible. Neither of mine slept independently at that age, I had to be holding them and I was their Mother. I can't begin to imagine how distressed a newborn would be if they did not have access to their Mum.

As many other have said, you are being incredibly naive of you think your plan is going to work.

With ASD you can have a heightened sense of justice and I get that you think it's unfair that you don't get your LO 50/50 from birth. But it's like that exactly because being with the Mum most of the time is what's best for baby. You should see that what's just for you takes second place after the needs of the baby.

Another feature of ASD, as I'm sure you're aware I can help fixed thinking. If you suffer with this is there a way that you usually have of breaking out of the fixed thinking pattern? Maybe a DF or relative who will be honest with you and you can talk things through with?

*is fixed thinking