Has anyone here got experience of custody arrangements with a newborn baby? Sorry this is a long post…
For background, my baby is 8 weeks old. I had a very difficult pregnancy which completely destroyed my health both physically and mentally. Baby was born premature by urgent c section after I was in hospital for a while. They expect me to take at least 6 months to recover physically and I’ve been suffering with PND. I’m exhausted and not wanting to go out a lot, my partner finds it frustrating and said he wants to take the baby out without me if I’m not wanting to go out - for example to see friends, for the baby to meet friends and family and out for lunch etc. I don’t like being being away from my baby for more than an hour or so, and it’s caused a lot of tension. Recently I’ve felt I didn’t have a choice and let him go out multiple times a week without me for the whole afternoon / into the evening with the baby because he said the reason he hasn’t bonded with the baby is all my fault and he doesn’t like being a parent because of that. He‘s threatened to leave, partly because not wanting to let the baby go out without me means I’m controlling and he doesn’t want to be with someone controlling. Along with the fact I’m struggling to keep ontop of the house work and he said he’s sick of doing everything. I try but find it hard to get anything done with a newborn whilst also being unwell. It’s not helping how I’m feeling. I feel conflicted. I know I’m not easy to be around, but also I thought it was normal for mum to stay with baby and not be separated in the first few months.
I’m glad he wants to bond and be involved, but I feel like my feelings aren’t being considered. He’s said he wants to talk about separating and co-parenting because he feels I lied about who I was when we met and I’m not the same person now. That’s hard to hear considering I could have died having our baby, and it’s lucky both me and baby made it through. We were having twins and one of them didn’t survive past the first trimester, the rest of the pregnancy was high risk with some serious complications for me and baby. I know I’m not the same person, but I’m also struggling to recover from a huge experience whilst caring for a newborn. I feel defeated and almost feel I should just let him go because I don’t have capacity to reason with him when I’m so low / exhausted. We live in my house so me and baby have a stable place to call home no matter what.
However, he wants 50/50 custody. Long term, I wouldn’t stand in the way of that, but my baby being way from me half the time at 8 weeks plus is too much for me. If I don’t agree, he said he would take it to court. Financially, we are in a very different position because I’ve not worked properly for nearly a year because of my pregnancy related illness and I’ve lived mostly on my savings and redundancy money because I was made redundant during my pregnancy. I can’t afford to fight it and I’m really worried my little newborn will be away from me in their first year more than I’d like. Because of my complications I’m not breast feeding so it would be easy to argue that he doesn’t need to be with me.
Is it normal for courts to grant 50/50 custody in this situation with a baby so little? Is there any financial support for mums in this situation to get some legal representation or advice? I don’t know where to start.