OK, forgive me because this may be a long.

My parents have been divorced since I was three years old, and I have a really strained relationship with my biological father. There was a lot of abuse in my childhood, and I ended up being emancipated at 16 from him. I had always live primarily with my mom and stepdad, but the court mandated that I see my biological dad every weekend and spend every other two weeks with him in the summer. It was torturous. After a lengthy court battle and many therapists, I was finally granted my emancipation. I finished high school, went away to college, and that’s when things started to get weird again. He would randomly show up on my college campus to see me. It almost always resulted in massive blowout fights between us, and I ended up dropping out after two years without finishing my degree and moving all the way across the country. It broke my mother‘s heart, but I literally needed the space away to feel like I was free. I’ve been living in California now for nearly 10 years, I’ve gotten married, and now I’m expecting my first child. In the 10 years that I’ve lived here, I’ve gone back home to New York maybe five times, and I’ve only told him about two of those visits. I have brothers and sisters that live with him still, and have wanted to see them. He is not aware that I have ever been back to New York without seeing him. He has an outrageous temper, has been diagnosed with manic bipolar disorder but does not take medication because of his religious beliefs, and also has a serious obsession with all things Christian. Which is fine, I was raised Catholic, but even that to him is an abomination. This is the type of man who brings up abortions over dinner.

He however, has set up an arrangement with his job to take work in my state as often as he can. The man is smart, he’s an engineer for a government agency and often times is able to do work for nearly a month at a time in other places around the country. Before I move to California though, he never had work here. The first time that he showed up, he was literally in a hotel less than 2 miles from my home. Something in my gut told me that this was no coincidence.

In the last 10 years he’s come out to California for at least two weeks at a time for work at least five times. Every time that he does, I try to see him as little as possible, but he always guilts me into showing up at my house or taking me out for dinner. It’s really complicated relationship because even though I don’t want to see him, he ingrained such guilt in me from such a young age that I feel morally obligated to not cause him to sink into a depression, which is what happens when I either ignore him or tell him that I don’t wanna see him.

When he was out here for my wedding, which was another huge debacle that maybe I’ll share a separate post about sometime, because it was a complete fucking shit show as far as he was concerned, he and my husband actually got into a giant fight. It didn’t escalate into anything physical, but my husband basically told him that he never wanted to see him again. Now when my dad comes out here, my husband is very unsupportive of me spending any time with him at all. He hates the fact that the abuse was so severe throughout my childhood, and he sees how stressed out and upset I get whenever my dad is even near me. My dad also had made some very inappropriate comments towards me that my husband found completely disgusting, nothing sexual but he can be very threatening towards me. That was in May 2017, and I didn’t see him again until the last time he came out here. That was in November of this year, and he brought my little sister with them. She’s 17. He’s never brought one of my siblings before, so I was kind of excited to see her at least. She stayed at my house for two days, and she cried the entire time. She hates living with him, and we have so much in common when it comes to our shared experiences. What’s sad for her is that she doesn’t have another home to escape to like I did when I was able to go home to my mom’s house. She’s literally so depressed, and I feel so terrible for her.

During that trip, I shared with him that I was pregnant, because it was too hard to hide. I was already four months along and clearly showing. He was really upset that I hadn’t told him before hand, but honestly I had no intention of him ever finding out. Which I know is super fucked up, because how would he have felt about me suddenly having a baby and springing that on him, but honestly I didn’t care!

So fast forward from November to two nights ago. He calls me on the phone, which is pretty uncommon for him because we don’t talk that often. And he sounds really excited. And this makes me nervous. And he tells me guess what!? I got another job placement and I’m going to be in California for the last two weeks of March. Ladies, my blood ran cold. That’s the exact time frame that my baby is due. And he knows that.

All of a sudden all of this rage boiled up in me, and I said “well that really sucks for you, because you’re not going to see me at all.” And he was like “what did you just say?” And I was like, “yeah dude I’m going to be 40 weeks pregnant and preparing for the biggest day of my life. Don’t plan on being at my home, and don’t plan on being at the hospital. That’s only for my husband and I.” And he got so upset w me. Like I could hear his breathing change and he got super quiet and was like “well that’s not okay.” And I told him, “well you need to get OK with it. Because I’m not going to have anybody infringe on that sacred time that I share with my newborn child and my husband.”

We ended the phone call not on great terms, and about 20 minutes afterwards I started vomiting. My husband was really proud of me for the way that I handled the phone call, but I still can’t shake this feeling that he’s going to do everything he can to infringe upon the delivery of my first child. This is so like him too! I called my mom right away crying about it and she just felt nothing but sympathy for me. It also sucks because I’m trying to plan for my mom to be out here around the same time, and they have such a volatile relationship that if they do happen to be out here at the same time and run into each other, especially at the fucking hospital!, I just don’t know how I’m going to handle it.

Also, it was really weird because the day after that fucked up phone call with him, his wife called me and was telling me about all the different things from my registry that they had just purchased. And not as in they had purchased it before he called me, but as if he had hung up the phone with me and suddenly logged into my registry and bought me a bunch of really expensive stuff. I know a lot of it probably has to do with his mania and bipolar disorder, but it still feels like even more of an effort to coerce me into doing things that I don’t want to do. It’s just insane and upsetting to me that even at 28 years old, he still finding ways to try and manipulate me and such crazy ways.

If you got this far, thank you for reading. I’m just trying to take things day by day. My husband has told me that he will do absolutely everything in his power to prevent my dad from seeing me in that time period, or showing up at the hospital. And I believe them too. My husband is not someone to fuck around with, and he and my dad have a really terrible relationship already. I honestly sympathize with my dad if he shows up and tries to force his way into my labor and delivery room, because my husband will gladly go to jail over that shit. Not that that’s what I want to happen! It’s just something else for me to worry about now. 🤦🏼‍♀️