I have opened an account to post here, but I’m a long time reader of Mumsnet and have found the advice wonderful in the past.
I have had a rough year and as we approach January I feel utterly scrambled mentally. I had my little girl in June to a man I had been with for a couple of years. It was unexpected and as we are both getting on a bit (I’m 36) we decided to continue the pregnancy. Whilst we had no major future plans as a couple other than ‘kids one day’, we had moved in last year and I was very happy. To cut to the chase, during my pregnancy we argued, broke up, and I have not heard from him since last March, two months before our little girl arrived. At first I was relieved if I’m honest as he turned quite unpleasant when I got further along in pregnancy. I often wonder if he began to feel trapped by it all… I really have no idea because he never said, he just withdraw. I didn’t bother to get in touch late in pregnancy other than to say he was welcome to come to the hospital on the day of the c section and we could discuss finances and everything else when we were ready. This was met with a text that said ‘I don’t want to know anything about your child.’ By this point I was two weeks from birth and didn’t have the headspace to deal with it. I’ve no idea why he suddenly didn’t want to know about his baby as it wasn’t the impression he gave when we were together.
I surprised myself and coped well after birth. Obviously I had some down moments but me and my little girl have been generally fine. However, as it approached Christmas I have become genuinely broken that I have never heard from her dad. I have had to apply for maintenance last week too because I am starting to worry about costs. I hate that I have had to do this and feel really down about it all. It’s like I’ve got to face up to the fact that he truly wasn’t ever going to be responsible was he?
I feel so embarrassed about my life. How did I manage to fall in love with a person who could do this to their own child? He manages to put his suit on, hold down a good job, see his friends, but ignores the fact he has a child? Just struggling with how someone can be so truly callous and I know im biased but our child is so wonderful and I worry so much of the damage this will do to her.