My daughter just turned 5 months. She’s the best baby ever and just cries when she needs something, what I’m trying to say is that she’s not a clingy baby. My boyfriend and I used to lived together and have had a very toxic relationship. He has been abusive verbally to me (screams at me, cusses me, calls me horrible names) even in front of our baby,. That’s one of the reasons I asked him to leave our apartment back in December when our baby was 2 months. The other reason is because just days before he let our baby cry for 1.5 hrs. And wouldn’t let me get close to our baby even when I begged him and kneel down asking him. He wouldn’t let me breastfeed her. He just called me “emotional” and “hysterical”. I didn’t called the police because I was scared of doing so, since few weeks before I had called them for a similar situation where he was trying to grab our baby out of my arms and said he was going to take her with him away from me, and when he found out about my call he scratched himself in arm and told the police I had done it, I had marks in my arms from him trying to open my arms to take the baby, but the scratch classified as a more dangerous wound so, they arrested me. I explained how my baby was just a month old and I needed to breastfeed her, but that didn’t matter. Thanks to God they let me go quickly and I was back home 2 hrs later. Long story short the prosecutor dropped the charges because he saw videos and pictures of my bf threatening me and trying to hit me, and a video of that night that I took. I have been trying to work things out with my boyfriend because after meeting with few lawyers and retaining one for custody, there is no way the court will give me sole custody of our baby. I have the videos of my bf letting our baby cry for 1.5 hrs in December, and from back in February when she cried for 35 mins until she feel asleep in his arms. I showed these videos to my lawyer and she said they are disturbing, but they are not enough to classified as child abuse when the courts see much more horrible things done to kids. So, I have no option but to work things out with him because I don’t want him mistreating my baby and be allow to do it because he has the right or spend 50% of the time with her. He has seen her only 3 times this year, and at this point she doesn’t know him. 2 days ago he came over and she started crying the minute he held her because she just didn’t know him, he let me hold her to calm her down, but 2 hours later, he wanted to put her down for her nap and she was overtired because she couldn’t fall asleep at the time she usually does, I told him I preferred to do it because I knew she was not going to be comfortable with him and I wanted to avoid conflict. Our baby hide her face on my chest and didn’t want to let go of my hand when I was giving her to him. She started crying and I just went to another room to give him a chance to soothe her, after 10 mins of her crying, I came back and he was still holding her statically and saying “It’s ok, it’s ok”. I asked him if I could help him and he said no, and told me to go away. So, I went away again even when my baby was looking at me and had her arms pointing at me. 3 mins later I came back and told him she had been crying for too long, I asked him if I could calm her down and give her back immediately to him, he held her tighter and told me to go away, I refused and asked him again, I explained how it was not good for her to cry for that long, how she was overtired and she needed a break from that because she was distressed, how she probably didn’t feel comfortable with him because she hadn’t seen him often enough, he yelled at me over and over and said the baby was ok, and he was her dad and he could do with her whatever he thought was right. My mom was in the house and had kept herself away from the situation, but came over and started a video of it, I tried to grab the baby out of him, but he’s much bigger and stronger than me and I didn’t want to hurt our baby so, I asked him again and started crying, he said I was too emotional and I was making our baby cry even more. My mom asked him to stop to please care for our baby, and after probably 10 more mins, he gave up and give our baby to me, she calmed down and fell asleep in my arms. I felt awful because she was in such distress that even asleep she was sobbing. I talked to my boyfriend again and he said he was not going to allow me to take the baby while she was crying with him, that he was not doing anything bad and I had to agree with his parenting style, that it was ok for her to cry for a long time, that it wouldn’t have any bad consequences but just good ones for her, because she had to learn to be strong. I shared with him how her brain is developing and too much cortisol is bad for her, that it wasn’t healthy. I explained how our baby is not sleep training and she is a very good sleeper so, those techniques to sleep train babies don’t need to be use for her especially in the middle of the day. He doesn’t care and does not want to listen. I want opinions on this: my boyfriend says by letting her cry while he is holding her she will be stronger and it will develop her psyche by letting her sooth herself. He says it is ok if she cried for even an hour until she understands she doesn’t have to cry. He says I have to be ok with him letting her cry for 30 mins or longer until she stops. I’m a first time mom and he says it is because of that. I don’t want my baby to suffer and have found numerous scientific articles where it says it is not ok to let babies cry out because they become insecure and develop trust issues. I don’t know what to do. My boyfriend says if I don’t allow him to parent the way he wants then he will take her with him 50 % of the time, I’m terrified of this since he hasn’t been around and doesn’t know anything about our baby, he hasn’t even paid for anything since the baby was born. I’m even more worried to think she will spend all the time crying and just falling asleep exhausted. I don’t know what to do, we are both professionals in our early 30’s, he is an attorney and I’m an engineer. I don’t understand how he can act like this. Am I overreacting? I need advise to deal with the situation please. Thank you for reading this! via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/33Iw6qk
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