Finally a reason to smile

My three year old son, LG, returned today from a holiday trip to visit his father’s family in The South. I’m in The Midwest. Eight hours by car, an hour and a half by plane, an eternity away for my heart.

According to R-ex‘s own attorney’s divorce documents served so kindly to me, since R-ex and I are still living in the same household, we are to abide by the same manner of living that we had been before the divorce filing. Before the divorce filing, we had our son with us, in our home, for Christmas mornings. Before the divorce filing, and even after, my son had never spent more than a single night away from either parent. Suddenly R-ex decides it’s his right to take our son for 8 days and seven nights to The South.

Now had he spoken to me about it, as I do with him before I make any new changes to LG‘s routine, I would have said that I would have been happy for him to visit his extended family, family he did not know, but only for two or three days and definitely not on Christmas Day, OUR day. A full week away from the mother who has been with him day after day for three and a half years has to be traumatic for a child his age and I wanted him to have fun, not be traumatized.

Also, R-ex‘s family weren’t even celebrating Christmas until the day after, since that was the soonest all of the family could be together.

But he didn’t talk to me. He just bought the plane tickets and informed me a week before he was to go that he was going, taking LG, and there was nothing I could do about it. So there. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it. It was far too late to file a motion stopping him from doing that.

For five days, I cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Anything to get my mind off of how much I missed my son. I had told R-ex that since LG‘s evening routine always included some snuggle time with me and telling me goodnight, that I would like him to call me every evening right before he was to go to bed so I could tell him good night.

Out of seven nights, guess how many times he called me right before LG‘s bed time? Once. Yes. Once. He also did not return with the two pictures I sent of myself for my son to have if he missed me. Yet he returned with the MP3 player that had been with these two laminated pictures. The two laminated pictures that had metal grommets in their corners by which they were attached to a metal ring, along with the MP3 player, that I had to use heavy duty pliers on to get closed.

Guess who is talking to their attorney tomorrow about changing my shared parenting plan to a sole custody one?

I want my son to know and love his father and his father’s family. But any man that selfishly puts his wants over the needs and mental well-being of a child, and also without a single thought or consideration for how the mother feels about it, is NOT a man I can trust with shared custody of our son.

Plus, with all of his family in The South, no friends in The Midwest, where we currently are at, and a job that is easily replaceable in The South where his family lives, it is a very realistic that R-ex will be moving sometime in the near future back to The South, or maybe The East Coast where his online tart lives. So getting sole custody now saves me a battle for it in the future when he moves out-of-state.

I think I have a pretty good case. I also have God on my side. I’m feeling confident, but I do have to admit that the heart-wrenching pain I felt when LG was gone for only eight days is something I am not looking forward to reliving — and I’ll be reliving it daily if I don’t win this custody battle.

I fought hard to even have my son. Three surgeries, two egg retrievals, two IVF cycles of feeling like a post-menopausal pin cushion, a complicated pregnancy with a surgery during the pregnancy to keep my son from delivering six months early, a very difficult labor where LG‘s heart rate kept plummeting and the epidurals… seven doses… were NOT working.

R-ex just had to get frisky with a plastic cup. Excuse me if I feel a tad bit bitter that he’s even bothering to fight me on this.

I truly think he is only doing this to try and hurt me. Seriously. You can rail against me all you want and say “That’s his son too and he loves him.” You can say it all day long. The thing is, I live with this man. I know how he shows his love and let me tell you, NO ONE that knows the real R-ex and sees him with his son is very impressed by his parenting skills. In fact, they are downright disgusted.

Let me give you a taste:

• When LG sticks his tongue out, even in play, his father smacks his face.
• When LG wants to play with R-ex, he is either sent away so R-ex can have more special alone-time with his computer, or he is plopped in front of the television for it to do the babysitting.
• R-ex wants to take LG from being home with his mother all day, to literally putting him in daycare for 10 to 12 hours a day and then an additional 1-3 hours an evening with a church acquaintance.  Let someone else raise your child much?
• R-ex bought himself a $150 flat-screen LCD computer monitor when his old one wasn’t all that old and was working perfectly. He bought himself numerous video games. He bought himself a space heater when the old one worked fine. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to buy his own son the D-Rex he wanted for Christmas, or even the BOOTS our son needs for the wintery climate we have here.
• He has never made a single doctor’s appointment for our child and I had to make him come with us to the ones I made.
• He has told me numerous times since our son was born that “sometimes I wish we’d not had him.”

Shall I go on?

So for those of you poo-pooing me because of my IVF/pain comment, just chew on those facts for a little while.

Anyhow, he’s home and I am so glad of it. I finally have a reason to smile again after a week of misery.

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