I can tell you a little story . We split birthdays in the beginning. We were separated when our daughter was 6 months old. On her second birthday I worked the night shift leading into her birthday, so he had our daughter to return her to me at 6 pm. I decided to go get her a bunch of balloons for when she came home . In the strip mall there was a Chuck E. Cheese I had to walk past . I look in the window and there is my daughter, my ex, his AP, and sister and father . I almost died. It was awful to be on the outside looking in at my daughter. My family. And her. Through a window.
Ever since then we have decided to spend our daughters birthday, only the 3 of us.
Today, she actually turned 13. We went horseback riding and to dinner and he came back to our house for a while to relax and have some cake. We have done this every year since.
It gets easier as the years go on. For me , personally, it was so hard to watch my baby have a birthday without me. I was quite a key player in her birth, lol. But for me, the pain of not having her was greater than the pain of having her with my ex.
You have to decide what works for you.
We don’t spend holidays together. But her birthday was something special between the 3 of us.
It’s probably her favorite day of the year too, to have us together having fun together. She loves it
