Hi, do you have family support or are you doing this alone? I feel for you, yet you are making all the right choices. I agree with you that our children come before a relationship, they are so dependant upon us and need to be our first priority.

It will be rough, but you will have love unmeasureable from your daughter. I never said anything bad about their mother, I let them find out on their own. I hope you have skills so you won't be financially burdened, it is bad enough only having one parent, be it mommy or daddy.

Glad to hear you are prepared, daughters wrap daddies around their fingers at a young age.

So I'm now a father of a beautiful 4 month old baby girl, and over the past couple weeks the mother, who I love dearly melted down and went back into drugs, and it's still sinking in. In terms of money and stuff, the damage was comparably light, a few hundred dollars and almost all of our baby's clothing and once again, she's off and running with nothing. No phone, no car, no bank cards, off and running. I was already the primary parent, so our daughter is not really suffering as much as if I were a deadbeat, and I'm just getting past the shock stage of it all. Tonight I went ahead and replaced the clothing partially, at least to get a week's supply of clothes, and throughout the course of the week will get more.

At this point, protecting and caring for our baby is much more important than what can be salvaged in the relationship, if it can be. I worry about her and pray our daughter wont have to do without one parent, but that's well beyond my control. Even if she returns, it's going to be a good 6 months before our relationship can be fully restored, for reasons that would be obvious to anyone who understands addiction and even then, my real priorities are to be a good parent. In fact, the idea of an intimate relationship with anyone other than friends is probably as repulsive as it gets at this point and probably will be for quite some time. I have a new lifelong relationship to form and really, nothing will interfere with that.


People in the neighborhood know that I live a clean lifestyle and for the most part, respect that boundary and of all days, the absolute tramp of the block shows up and I'm thinking wth? So I'm nice about it, and in a project I'm working on with a neighbor, tell her, "We're going to lowes, so..", and she leaves. We get back and after already sizing her up as in how in the heck did she think she could invite herself in, the neighbor warns her not to return and where is she? At my effin door. I was much clearer that time and only a true idiot would return.

The last time she got clean, she nearly died and this time could do it for her. Her family knows to pass the message that the damage to the family is not irreverseable and right now I'm sure she feels very bad about what she did. The thing is, she's sick and sick people do bad things. While I'll have to go through the process of obtaining full custody I do know the good she's capable of and pray she finds that person again. Regardless of what happens next, I will be forever grateful for the gift of a child, a chance I thought permanently lost to me.

Funny thing, 3AM for a lot of people means a booty call. Today, I'm grateful to have it be a baby bottle call instead.