my partner & I found out we were expecting in Dec 2024 both extremely happy etc. He has 2 little boys from a previous relationship who I absolutely adore, myself and my family treat them as if they are my children (as I believe this is how it should be). We are currently going through courts to get a CAO as his ex is really high conflict, she has harassed, stalked and physically assaulted me on numerous occasions, amongst other things involving the children and their dad and we wanted to get it formalised so we can have our happy family time without living in fear of her or under her control. The last incident resulted in an attack on me which then caused us to lose our baby - all reported to police but they've not done anything about it. I've not coped well at all with the loss and it's left me craving the feeling of being a mother and having my own children.
I genuinely hold so much hatred towards my partners ex, she's ruined my mental health and just in general she's ruined so many things for us. The only thing I can respect her for is having the two children as I cannot imagine my life without those little boys now I dote on them. I have such a great relationship with both boys and she hates this, I can't do right from wrong, I'm not supposed to spend money on them buy them gifts or celebrate their birthday's but I also can't go anywhere and not take them and I have to keep the roof over their heads, provide the school uniforms and pay for school trips and world book day costumes. But I'm an 'evil stepmom' who she doesn't want involved with her kids? (of course all of this is provided by both their dad and me but I do provide heavily financially and emotionally). I want to be able to give these kids everything I can within reason as this is exactly what I'd do for my own children so I won't let them go without, I just CBA for the constant abuse I get for simply trying to give them a stable, happy environment to live in and for them to know how loved they are from both me and their dad as well as their mom. Another ridiculous issue she had is that she'd told my partner in a mediation session that she wanted us to take them to school & collect as she 'doesn't want to wake up early when she shouldn't have to' so I have changed my contracts at work to be able to do this for her as my partner wasn't able to and apparently now this isn't good enough and she doesn't want me to do this she'd rather me pay for a childminder to do it? Bear in mind she doesn't actually work & I also don't drive so it would've been 1000x easier for us to simply refuse to do this and for her to have no choice but to do it as she doesn't do anything else anyway!
I'm honestly not even sure what I wanted to achieve from this, more just wondering how other people have coped with the grief from loss and coping with a high conflict ex partner etc.
we have agreed to try again in a few months but I'm now petrified of having another loss and wondering if it was a failure of my body that also impacted it as we weren't actively TTC as I have been on the combined pill for years. I don't really know the implications that falling pregnant whilst on the pill can have on my body or to the baby I feel clueless and I don't know when I should be ready to come off the pill now either so we can try properly.