hi to all...
well lets see the situation that i live with is that my husband was in a relationship previously for 4 years they met at work pizza hut and he was at uni she was still at high school.

they decided to split after 4 years but then found out they where pregnant so they decided to give it another go to see if things would work (he was 21 she was 18) so they went and brought a house with help from his parents. the problem was now the ex became a stay at home full time mum (she didn't finish year 12) my partner worked full time so they had very little money ,a new baby ,a morgage and a puppy on top of a very unstable relationship so things went wrong .when my partners daughter was around 7-8 months it all ended. the ex left with my partners daughter. now before the relationship ended they also had to deal with the ex's mother trying to get her to abort the baby, my partners family trying to get them to abort,the ex suffering from postnatal depression untreated so it got worse.but when things did end it was because the ex had a new boyfriend who she met online. i met my husband through my housemate his brother so when my husband split from his ex i was the one that helped him through the break up and things just sprang from there.the only unexpected thing was that we fell pregnant very early in our relationship even before we really knew if we where going to make it or not,so that complicated things some what. we ended up having a beautiful baby boy. the arrangment my husband had verbally arranged with his ex is that she could have their daughter monday to friday and my hubby would have her every weekend and give her $50 a week, this worked well for a few months but then suddenly my hubby would go to pick up his daughter and would recieve a text saying she was unavalible this went on for a few weeks when my hubby sort legal action. this took a further 3-4 months to get sorted he was going for shared care but was denied due to the amount of time he had not had access and the age of the child, so he got every 2nd weekend after a few months of every saturday 10am til 4pm to reintroduce him into his daughters life. this remainded so for about 2years. during those 2 years the ex managed to have 3 boy friends and move house 4 times twice with house mates and twice with her mother. my step daughter was also nearly always filthy/ soiled or dressed inappropriatly for the weather.when my step daughter was around 2years old we picked her up with server brusing to her eye and was told she went bed with out it but woke up with it we contacted crisis care but didn't have much to go on so we were told to just monitor things,on a number of occasions we would recieve c ( the inital for her name) with more brusing scratches etc and when we asked what happened we would always get told she was just a clumsy child or she ran into rose bushes etc then when c was nearly 3 we recieved her with server brusing and red marks around her private parts first we questioned the bio mother and was told she hurt herself on a rocking horse so we called crisis care again but they didn't do anything. then when c was 3 years old we recieved her for our usual weekend with brusing to her face we asked her what happened and she told us and showed us her mother hit her for spilling her drink. with this we sort further legal action to get imediate custody with an impending investigation into the allogations this went on for nearly 6 months with us trapsing back and forth to court ,family physcologists etc the physc report stated that c had developed the problem of saying what people wanted to hear and not the truth in order to not get into trouble a servial technique. the phys recommended shared care with the bio mother seacking councilling and that as much stability as possible for c. this became a very stressful and costly adventure for us and then when the court deemed that there wasn't enough evidence to go on to grant us full custody we recived weekend access for every weekend after having c live with us for nearly 4 months.to add to this very complitcated time we had another baby of our own. this time in our lives nearly caused my hubby and i to split due to stress. in the end my hubby ended up sighning a consent minutes of order this was settled only last october 2006. the reason for him sighning off was that between all the fighting and court battle little c was becoming very stressed and upset by things and my hubby just wanted time with his daughter and our growing family without the issues due to his ex. we aren't overly happy with the arrangment but are just trying to make do as we feel that taking things back to court will be to much for c and us to handle.however now we have to deal with the issue of paying over $100 in child maintenance to that women fortnightly when c still comes in clothes filthy damaged or ill fitting, not weather appropriate. and that women gets her hair done regularly has a new scooter, lap top etc we hate it. also the ex has gone and enroled c at school under her name and not c legal name which is the same as her fathers and we where told we can't do anything about it. we have to deal with our belongings being damaged or not returned from that womans house and all the lies or hurtful things she says to c about us.
i know this is an awful lot to put into my first blog but i felt it needed to get started.i'm very passionate about my babies and my beautiful step daughter who i have been bonded with from an early age. she calls me mum and her bio mother mum to.this was her decision and we have accepted it as c has stated that she doen't want to be different from her brothers.i find our situation frustrating and heavily emotional. it has gotten that bad sometimes my hubby has said he wished he hadn't sort legal action when he got cut off all those years ago, he doesn't truely mean it but has just been that low with all the issues that it was said.