I wrote a thread on here months and months ago and received a number of replies which really helped me at the time.
In brief, my situation is as follows. The father of my son had some sort of commitment phobic breakdown in response to impending parental responsibilities. It started in my last few weeks of pregnancy and got worse after our son was born... i.e. he basically just went and got hammered all the time. Meanwhile I returned to work after eight weeks which was immensely difficult (recovering from a caesarian, being diabetic I also had a lot of hypos- when blood sugar goes low- because I was breast feeding).
(The lack of responsibility and refusal thing is evidenced as well by the fact I had to go through the CSA to get him to contribute... he's 33, there is no excuse for that. After he left, I found out he had been internet dating and on his profile he stated that he 'had no children' and 'wasn't sure' if he wanted any... which to me, denying our son's existence is absolutely dispicable... I posted that profile to his parents and circled that bit and they did not see it as a problem... 'it's up to him what he does' type attitude, which gives an insight into the sort of issues I'm up against)
Anyway I'd been back at work two weeks and hadn't managed to get any work done (I work from home, so there was massive amount of flexibility and I have a brilliantly understanding boss, but still you know, in order to earn money you actually have to do something). The reason I hadn't was because my ex just wasn't fulfulling his side of the agreement, i.e. that on his days off he would look after our son so I could plough on with report writing. Instead he chose to sail off to York Races, to London, Glastonbury, to various other things with his friends. When he announced that he would be going to a friend's 'Boozy Barbeque' on a Tuesday afternoon and I (very calmly... as I was at the time topless and breastfeeding) said he had to look after our son as I could not jiggle him up and down on my knee AND write a stats report, he went mental and threw the Moses basket at me. At the time I was breast feeding our son on the bed, and the Moses basket whizzed past our heads and narrowly missed hitting us. I was massively shocked, it took me a couple of weeks to be able to acknowledge what had happened. I don't want to make out that I was suffering from domestic violence or something, because that was definitely not the case, but nonetheless it affected me profoundly after and that's how our relationship ended.
Despite that, I wanted the ex to have contact with our son because I want our son to have a father. So I sought advice from a solicitor who advised that twice a week for two hours would be a fair amount of contact (because our son was still breastfeeding, he couldn't really be away from me for much longer than that). So that's what I said. But I found the ex's behaviour extremely aggressive (he's a copper and works 'incident reponse' so I think that's where he gets it from). He kept threatening not to bring our son back saying that because he's on the birth certificate he could do that and there would be nothing I could do. That was extremely difficult, deeply upsetting and I used to spend the whole time he was with him worrying and anxious because I was sure that he wasn't going to bring him back. But nevertheless I wanted him to bond with our son so tried to make the arrangement work.
We went to relationship counselling and mediation, where I brought up the Moses basket but he would not engage with that at all. At first he said he 'tripped over it', then he said, 'if you said it happened then it happened', then he denied it happening at all. Meanwhile I was having to contend with high pressure emails from his mother.
In the end, it was our son's behaviour which changed my mind. As soon as his father came into the house, he would start crying. Not the tired cry or the hungry cry, although at first I used to make those excuses to my ex becuase I didn't want him to feel upset... again, being too nice as I didn't want to get into a row. To me, though it looked like our son was scared.
I suggested to the ex that he stay around the house so that our son felt safe in his familiar surroundings and I would be upstairs if there was a problem. He refused to eat with my ex. Our son kept crying though and he refused to eat for his father (by that time he was weaning, but again, there had never been a problem if anyone but me fed him). That to me signalled a massive problem because I had never seen him cry like that. He goes to nursery twice a week, so he was used to mixing with people other than me. The issue again was the fact that the ex refused to acknowledge that there was a problem and on the last visit I actually felt like he would play tug of war with our son.
He used to show up late, bring him back late, text the day before he wanted to come round and go mental if I said I'd made plans (which I had, nothing too exciting admittedly but coffee with other mums which I really needed during that time), so I would end up having to cancel in order to accomodate him. I asked him to make plans in advance and he refused point blank. There was no reason why he couldn't, he gets his shifts months in advance so I think it was just becasue he wasn't sure when the next piss up with his brother would be.
I had to stop contact in the end because of the ex's behaviour. I honestly feel that I have acted in my son's best interests rather than my own at all times. (There is a lot of other stuff... his general lifestyle choices with drugs and alcohol, the fact his parents are ex wife swapping nudists and have what can only be called a wanking shed in their house, with pictures of 1980s porn stars with everything on display, not just breasts, interdispersed worryingly with framed school photos of my ex and his brother... which i find disturbing and I don't want our son stumbling across that). The ex stole things from my house when he used to visit our son- including the registration certificate for my car and most upsettingly, a memory book I made for our son which I started from the day I found I was pregnant). Plus tonnes of other stuff, but I would need a thousand more words so shall spare you!
Basically I have put up with a lot of really crappy stuff from him and I just want the ex to behave normally and face up to his responsibilities.
We are due in court in January about access and I have decided to represent myself as the costs are so high. I don't qualify for legal aid and I don't want to get myself into debt. I was just wondering if anyone has been through this and whether anyone could offer any advice as I am really really scared and worried about the whole thing.