The situation when a couple separates and there are children involved can be complicated. It can be, it usually is, because both the father and the mother claim their right to spend time with them and this can be a problem in many cases, such as when we talk about a small child.
This time we do it an eleven month old baby who is breastfed by her mother and that it is part of a reality that justice does not seem to contemplate by making the right of the father prevail over the well-being of the girl: when a couple separates and the judge gives full weekends to the father Although the girl only sleeps with mom.
"Take out the milk so that the father can give it to you"
This is the message that the judge gave to the mother, that if the girl was still breastfed and that was a problem what she could do was buy one of those devices that they sell in pharmacies to get the milk. So he could freeze her so that the father could feed his daughter when they were together.
And it is that as we read in El Periódico, the judge of First Instance of Mataró has decided that the girl's father has a regime of visits that includes several days in a row, and even entire weekends.
This might not be a problem if the girl was not breastfed, or if the father had been living with the girl all this time and could take care of her without the presence of the mother, but It is not the case.
The parents separated when the girl was one month old
The couple got married in 2013. They immediately started having partner problems and in February 2015 she became pregnant when neither of them expected it. The girl was born in November and her arrival only made the situation worse, so that the mother decided to leave home to live with her mother with her little girl The father would see her from time to time, but he stayed only for a while and then left, so that the relationship between them, father and daughter, is very punctual.
Considering this, the mother requested that the visit regime be adapted to the current circumstance, that of an 11-month-old girl who has been raised especially with her mother, who although she is already with the complementary feeding continues to breastfeed several times a day, and that he sleeps at night, like most breastfed babies, caught in his chest.
However, the judge has considered that milk is only one more food and, although she has taken into account that the girl has never slept with the father since they separated and that it is the mother to whom the custody of the baby, it has been opportune to grant the father whole weekends. Given this situation, the mother came to propose that she be allowed to go to her father's house to breastfeed at some time during the day, and to sleep.
The mother just wants it to be progressive
As the mother explains, his intention is not that the girl does not see the father, but that the relationship is established in a more progressive way. The relationship between the two is very poor, that of a father who has barely seen his little girl and that of a girl who does not recognize her father as such.
Of course, the two have the right to meet and be together, but being so small, being attached above all to the mother, depending on her to eat and sleep, and to feel safe and calm, it makes no sense to suddenly pass one or two days with him, however "his father" may be.
And I say that I am a man, father of three children, who would go out of my way to be with them. I say it because above all I would understand that it is a baby, that She needs her mother above all because she has always taken care of her, and that my role should lie in getting to know her a little more every day, taking us better and strengthening with the passing of the weeks and months a relationship that could be great over time.
How long? It depends on each baby, but I who have been at home with my children have not felt that they could stay with me, and without her, until they have had at least 18 months, or in what case even until they have had more than two years. At times, of course, but they always needed Mom for the night's sleep, both to fall asleep, and to close her eyes again when they woke up at dawn.
Photos | iStock
In Babies and more | Protect breastfeeding in case of separation from parents, Breastfeeding, sleep ally, Myths about breastfeeding: "Babies should not fall asleep to the chest, because the breast is not a pacifier," When the folly of divorced parents it ends in his daughter making her First Communion bound by a judge
