Those are big questions. I at the time Andy left, suffered an emotional breakdown, which meant I was unable to look after the kids. He initially left them with me but I was so out of it I just cried continously and ignored them. I did not clean or tidy etc. I would feed them but that was all.
I then admitted to Andy that I wasn't mentally well enough to have them so he moved back in for a time, we got childcare and basically he just dropped them at the daycare provider in the morning and picked them up in the evening. He would put them to bed etc and then go out partying/drinking/drugs in the evenings while I stayed on the sofa and just cried.
We did this for several months. I stopped eating but would still feed the kids. I would pretend to Andy that I had already eaten. I lived off water and very ocassionally tea with sugar in (I was pregnant with DD4 during this time).
Then I OD'ed 3 times (because our M was breaking up, I didn't want to live) and slashed my stomach when 8 months pg (terrible, I know, but I wasn't mentally right at the time).
When the time came for Andy to leave, he tried to take all the kids but I stood in the way and told him I'd physically attack him if he tried. So he plea bargained. He said let me have DD1 and DD2 and I'll let you have DD3 and DD4 and then we don't need to go to court.
In the state I was in, I thought it would avert court action so I agreed. He took my 2 eldest and left DD3 with me, who was then 2.
The baby was born (I was going to give her up for adoption as I was so ill but then she was born at home, with no medics, straight into my arms and this did wonders for the mother-child bond.
I had 10 blissful minutes with her, totally to myself, before her dad turned up, and then the ambulance 45 minutes after him. It was the nearest I've ever got to Heaven. I just can't tell you what it is like to birth your child alone with no one telling you what to do and no one fussing and no one taking the baby away to weigh her etc.
It was just her and me, attached by the cord, and lavishing each other's company.
I decided right then to save myself from depression, for her sake and for the others, so I began to climb back up. I went in a mother and baby unit at the hospital for a little bit, I went on anti-depressants, I found my life-coach, I did everything I could think of to get well. I had one further blip when she was 6 weeks old (caused by Andy's behaviour) and none since then.
I got my house clean, started eating etc, but it was too late for my 2 eldest because I volunteered them away and they'd already been with Andy for a while.
They awarded me custody of DD3 and DD4, but then he snatched them both (repeatedly). I managed to get the baby back by brute force, but not DD3. He had broken the law to get her so we scheduled an emergency hearing but that took 3 months to get, and then they wanted psycho evals and so we had to wait to be interviewed by psychologists and by the time she had completed her report, DD3 had been with Andy for 10 months.
He was allowed to keep her, despite me having custody, because of the 'status quo' argument (they said it would stress her out to move her from him after 10 months).
Because I was recovered from depression and looked after DD4 well and she was a happy, bonnie baby, they let me keep custody of her. She was also breast fed until she was 3 so it would have been hard for him to have custody.
There was also a LOT of disability discrimination going on behind the scenes for which I had a formal apology from the Chief Superintendant of Police, but that's another story.
Andy was partly to blame for the circumstances, and I was partly to blame - but at any rate there's nothing I can do now.
As I said before, I did have my kids 10 days a month but then the court wanted to lower it to 4 days a month and cut out me home educating them. It had taken me 2 years of court battles to win the 10 days, when they wanted to take that away from me, I was so heart broken, I walked out of court and said I wasn't going to be a mother. So I didn't see them at all for 8 months, and Andy for a year.
Andy won't offer me more than 4 days a month and I won't accept less than the 10 days I had. A court would not listen to me either, and even if they did, I have run out of legal aid (it only goes so far). I find when we get into discussions over the kids, it just wrecks all DB'ing and stresses us both out and causes arguments, so I prefer to go with the flow, as it were.
I don't hate him, I think both of us caused the sitch with the kids, but I do think he hasn't been fair/honest about a lot of things, and yes, I don't think it's appropriate for OW to be at the funeral.
Did he do this in the M? No. He had 1 bout of depression where he was emotionally attached to a co-worker (not physical) but aside from that 2 month blip, was a model husband for 8 years. Did everything he could for me for years, romantic, considerate, thoughtful, hardly ever angry, never smoked, never drank excessively etc. Regular family man, cried at the birth of our children. Proposed on an airplane over the loudspeaker in front of 200 passengers, that kind of guy.
