Mother to Mother

If you are in a physically/emotionally/mentally abusive marriage or relationship and you have children within the home AND you’re thinking about leaving with your children:

You’re not a bad mom. You are doing what you feel is best for you and your child/children. People will tell you how “divorce is a sin” and that you’re making a mistake, or even that you’re going to distort your child’s/ children’s mental and emotional health because they won’t be around their father often….. but that isn’t always necessarily true. My abusive husband used to say the same thing to me but here’s the thing: I was once religious but he ruined that for me. I still tell him how “God wouldn’t want us to be in an abusive household where our children can get hurt now or even one day when they’re older” and I still believe that. He was sure of himself that I was a “sinful person” for leaving and said that I was a terrible mom.
This was the same man who neglected me and my newborn daughter to go out from 5:00pm-3am everyday with friends. Never bought me food while I wasn’t working (during my 30th week of pregnancy) and never bought our daughter diapers or formula… I was living off of my own money that didn’t last long. He has some mental health issues he refused to take care of that we’re always putting me at risk… he stopped taking his medication cause he believed he didn’t need it. He physically abused me and emotionally/mentally abused me and he neglected me and my daughter. The one time he stayed home to watch my daughter was once for 7 hours because I had an emergency with a family friend in the hospital, he complained and disappeared from 7pm-4am that day…. And then there were a few times where he stayed home for an hour to help me with my daughter and left because he felt too stressed out about my daughter screaming and crying.
Now whenever we (my boyfriend and I) would let him see her, we’d drive to him 40 mins out… and after 2 hours of seeing her he would ask if we wanted to leave early cause he was “tired” and he was stressed cause my daughter was being fussy. That frustrated me to the core cause he only saw her twice a week and kept cutting it short to two hours because he was “tired”. So after that we told him gas wise we can keep driving for him to see her plus our schedule is all messed up so he could come drive to see her.
He complained about driving to see her cause he’d be spending money on gas. Eventually he caved and decided to drive to see her. He still cut it to 2 hours… the first time he saw her where we live he wanted to leave after 2 hours of seeing her so we said whatever and we just kept it at 2 hours since that’s what he was wanting. Now he believes he shouldn’t have to provide diapers for my daughter cause a new man is in the picture now. He believes it my boyfriend’s responsibility to take care of her now especially since I plan to have her full custody. While he’s somewhat right he’s also wrong… it’s not my boyfriend’s responsibility whether I live with him or not it’s me and his (baby daddy’s) responsibility. Plus he feels as though financially can’t even though he spends his money on house bills, car bills, 2 memberships, groceries, buying stuff off online for his hobbies, and eating out.
Part of me just wishes he would give up his parental rights but I already know he’s not going to without a fight. Stressing out about it tbh.
My point is that… even though that’s occurring I don’t regret leaving him and becoming a single mom until I ended up meeting my boyfriend months later after moving out of my baby daddy’s house. So you’re not a bad mom, don’t beat yourself up… you got this mamas!❤️

in our community

Do I need to see a Pelvic floor physio?

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I had a vaginal birth with an intact perineum.

I’m wondering how necessary it is since it’s really expensive and I haven’t heard of other people doing this. Has anyone else been told to see a physio before exercising?/ do you think it’s necessary?

If your pram was this mouldy, wouldn't you replace it instead of paying $$ to get it "cleaned"?

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Cold turkey with the dummy

My LO is 12 weeks tomorrow, he heavily relies on the dummy to fall asleep. We decided to take it away bc he was waking up multiple times in the night for his dummy when he spat it out or knocked it out his mouth. He sleeps until 4-5am so it was causing unnecessary wake ups.

I’ve been rocking, shhing, patting him to sleep using a muslin as a comforter. He woke up in the night and then slept with me as he woke up as soon as I put him down in his crib.

I’m hoping when he forgets about the dummy he won’t take as long to get to sleep as I feel like it’s taking longer bc he’s looking for the dummy?

Any advice if you’ve done it this young? Any advice on introducing self soothing?

Overthinking

I’m 1 month postpartum and I can’t stop overthinking everything I do for my self, like I wanna wear jeans but when I put them on I take them right off because I start overthinking on if I’m gonna irritate something and bleed again and its mentally exhausting.. any other moms do this?

Drying up breast milk

I’m currently 10 weeks postpartum and don’t breastfeed (no judgement please! there was a lot of personal issues that stopped me doing so). i did attempt to express colostrum when i was pregnant but only managed to get about 3ml total. however since birth, i never breastfed. my milk came in properly after 2 days and i was told to leave them alone and it would go on its own. however they are still producing a lot of milk, im going through almost 10 breast pads a day . i’ve spoken to multiple health care professionals and all they’ve said is there’s nothing they can do and to ask other mums for advice 😅 it’s affecting my daily life so much and im so uncomfortable all the time. it makes me feel so insecure as i can’t wear anything comfortable/nice without leaking through my pads and bra. is there any advice on drying them up thats actually worked for others please? thanks so much in advance 🫶🏼

Is it normal to NOT have leaking breasts while still producing breast milk?

I EBF yet I’ve never had a leak. Not once. Even a little bit. I had a c-section and it took a while to bring my milk in if that makes a difference? My milk comes out pretty instantly when baby feeds or I hand express but it just doesn’t at any other time - is that normal? Getting some weird FOMO hearing everyone else does 😅