i have a baby that is under 6months old and his daddy wants him over night.....im concerned if allowing this whilst the baby is still breast feeding would cause a disruption to him!!!!.....and if i say no not while the baby is being breast fed has the daddy got any back up in regards to the laws for equal custodial in this regard......

both of the children see their father every 3 out of 5 weekends just the youngest doesn't stay over night with daddy yet due to the feeding

HELPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP

I think that you will find that he can pursue an enforcement and that the courts could go either way depending on your circumstances. There will be a lot more than just that taken into consideration. I would strongly suggest that if this is your only reason for trying to stop it from going ahead that you consider all the alternatives to avoid making that an issue for possible conflict.
If you cannot reach agreement on this you should consider mediation. If he has ever had the child for periods of time as long as this overnight stay is without you being near one would really have to ask why you are concerned. If it is just the fact that he hasn't done it before you have to remember that there once was a time that you too had not done it before. If you can look beyond the reasons for the seperation you will know in your heart what kind of dad this man is.
There are some guys who really do not have a clue where kids this age are concerned. Those ones usually run like hell from the prospect of overnight contact with a child that young. If you are not going to be together again the best chance you can give your kids is to encourage their relationship with their father and establish a routine as soon as possible.
That being said, your concerns are a perfectly normal reaction to what you are faced with, so please don't beat yourself up over it.
A major problem for children post separation is that their parents tend to over-react to each other after they split. If you can minimilise that and stay as amicable as possible your kids will stand the best chance.
Yes I know it sounds impossible and to be honest, I could not achieve that with my ex. I do know others that have even though they cannot stand each other. It is possible
I do not envy your position. You will achieve a better and less stressful outcome if you can deal with it out of court.
Good luck, it would be nice to hear how you get on.

Hang in there
Chris

Six months is very young and babies that age depend on their mothers and breastfeeding for nutritional needs as well as emotional needs like comfort and security. The bond between a breastfeeding mother and child is well researched and the benefits of breastfeeding are extensive. It really is in the best interests of the baby to spend the night with you if possible and if it can be done without any unnecessary drama.

How many hours does the baby spend with the Dad now? Does the Dad give him a bottle when he needs a feed? If your baby is away from you for long periods of time anyway I doubt you can prevent overnight contact. I am sure you can maintain your milk supply during these long absences and make up for lost time once your baby is back home again with you.

I admire a man who wants to keep a baby over night. It's not an easy thing to manage and most men would shy away from it. Maybe if he tries it he might change his mind ; ) At the same time I would try and postpone it till 12 months or whenever the baby is weaned if it is sooner than that but give him as much time as possible during the day.

L

I know it will upset some but I really question the arguement about the necessity for breastfeeding and for the mother to have to spend the bulk of time with the child, especially after six to nine months. There are millions of children out there who were removed from their parents at birth who grew up with the best of health. Many of those who were raised in a responsible, loving and caring enviroment turn out to be wonderful well adjusted people.
Even many of the so called experts reports into the benefits of breastfeeding state that it is only most important in the first three to six months.
I think it is really quite possible that we are all victims of conditioning and that simply because women have done the bulk of caring for children in the early stages and have been conditioned to believe that they will be doing so fom a very young age that we just tend to accept it.
There are millions upon millions of stories around about how incredibly adaptable humans are to changes in their circumstances.
I believe it requires a lot of thought and many perspectives to reach a conclusion on this issue.
There are many women in so called 'intact' relationships who express milk so the father (or someone else) can take care of a child if they cannot be there.
Hang in there
Chris

Perhaps the issue should not be breast feeding but what the intention was before separation, and if it was to breast feed the child as long as possible following in the same routine as the first child then their is an argument that breast feeding should be continued as normal from the mother, as before. Until the child is ready to take a bottle of expressed breast milk.

There is more than one thing to consider and much revolves around what the child wants at the time, to move the child onto the bottle early may in fact render breast feeding impossible simply because the child may prefer the bottle.

My daughter was forced off breast feeding within the first three months, I then became the night shift come any time shift and my daughter adapted to this well but I would have still wanted her breast fed till 9-12 months if possible.

Some cultures breast feed until 4-5 years old just because something is done by millions it does not mean it's right for individual situations, most parents discuss many of these things before birth and if there is a break up they should be considered.

I would suggest both parties would adapt fine to overnight stays and although you will find it hard it may well give you a well deserved rest and relax and not just positives for child and dad.

It would nice to know how you got on going_to_scream and what eventuated.

I think there are a few questions you need to ask yourself with this one...

1. How many breast feeding mothers go out to work, or a night out etc and leave their infants with sitters or the father? Truck loads, so why is it such an impossibility in this case. You can either express or for those few feeds move to a formula.

2. If you were both still living together, would you leave the father to care for and feed the baby during it's infancy? A good deal of loving and caring mothers do, so why is it a problem when you are not living together.

It sounds as though your issue is not one of trust and you do sound like you have the best interests of your children at heart. In saying that, you also have to think about the importance of your youngest one also bonding with it's father.

I have taken my granddaughter every second weekend from the time she was 5 days old for overnighters to give my son and daughter in law a break. My daughter in law expressed enough for her so that I could take over the feeds for the two nights I had her.

My granddaughter is a well balanced 1 year old today who has not suffered any ill effects from being away from her breast feeding mother one weekend a fortnight. In fact both parents have used this time to catch up on sleep and some time to themselves. I've had the wonderful opportunity also to bond with my beautiful granddaughter who I love to bits.

I think sometimes it's us as women/mothers who suffer more than the children when it comes to letting go of our children. It's at these times you have to remember the importance to them of having a healthy worthwhile relationship with both their parents, even at such a young age.

I think sometimes it can be easy to rely on the courts guidelines to judge what is right and wrong and forget to look to ourselves for what we know in our hearts to be the right thing.

In this case it sounds as though you have a reasonable relationship with your ex and he sounds like he takes an active and committed interest in his children's lives. The sky won't fall down if you allow him to take his youngest child overnight.

Use the time to get some rest so that you are full of energy again and ready to go again when they come home.

Generally speaking, I believe many, especially in the medical world, would say this.

But you have to be honest with yourself. Can you manage this? With the trauma of separation? We all have our idiosyncracies.

There's also the baby's idiosyncracy. Does he cry in the middle of the night when you're in such a bad mood? And after breastfeeding, he's asleep. But when you put him down, he yells. Etc. Etc.

At the end of the day, I believe it's you who should decide. My only advice is, keep the baby's best interest as your paramount consideration. Be objective about this. It will go a long way towards a healthy upbringing of your baby.

well put D4E.

I'm a big supporter of the importance of breastfeeding babies. But there are ways and means of still making that possible whilst still giving dad every opportunity to also bond with his baby.

Expressed milk is one of those options.

There will always be excuses for not allowing overnight contact for a baby under 6 months with it's father. But unless the father is an absolute moron and genuinely incompetant, then there is absolutely no reason he can't be trusted with the care of his own child.

As a mother, you picked him, now live with that choice and allow him to parent his own child.

If he is a total incompetant I'd be asking myself the question of why you as such a concerned parent chose a total deadbeat to father your child.

Just because the marriage is over, doesn't mean the relationship between the child and either parent is.

Sorry, I'd better clarify. I am a woman.

I love my children, and consider myself to be an exceptional mother to them.

I am also the mother of a son who is now going through this very thing with his 2 week old daughter to his recent ex-GF.

AND

I am also a partner of a DID who went through hell and back to see his kids and ultimately won custody from his manipulative neglectful ex who lived by the belief that as a mother you 'own' your children and therefor it's the mothers way or the highway.

My youngest daughter was a screamer, which sent my ex around the twist, almost to the point of killing her. In that instance, i decided to stay home and my ex worked. She was very young. My ex tried expressing because breastfeeding was problematic. I then became my little girls nurturer. It really does annoy me about the stereotype of nurturer.

I am male and did all the things real dads want to do. Anyway my ex and i broke up, she ended up with the kids while i ended living in my van, on the streets. Still harrassed by CSA, which is another story.

I visited my girl in daycare, where she went psycho and was crying and hitting kids and crawling away from me. I didn't know what i had done wrong??

She grabbed a ball and crawled back, sat in front of me and rolled it to me. Then i knew what was wrong, she was a daddy's girl, who missed her dad. When i stayed home with her, i fed and changed her, i also rolled a ball to her for playtime. Babies don't just bond to mums and taking them away from a dad is criminal no matter how young.

Obviously in special circumstances, but not in many peoples cases. It would be rare. Remembering the baby is als 50% dads so a civil discussion about things could be better.

My ex has completely eroded my little girl from my life now. And they say alienation isn't real. Well fuck that. And fuck the bullshit system.

When my ex wife and I separated, I took the view of being sensible and not being unreasonable. I could not breastfeed a newborn and felt it was appropriate to leave my son with his mother primarily.
Had I my time again I would have acted differently. I still believe that a baby is best served by it's mother, however given that possession seems to be 9/10ths of the law and my Son is now disadvantaged by the family law system.
At nearly ten years of age 8 hours access, (overnighters if she wants to play with her new boyfriend), is rubbish.
The Family Law system is not helping our children.
There seem to be an equal number of hard luck cases, both Male and Female. The real losers are children - the innocent.