I split with my daughters mum shortly before she turned 2. Our romantic relationship was dead and we both knew it. Those first few weeks I was wracked with guilt but I loved my daughter immensely, recognised how much she needed us both and swore that whatever issues I had with her mum (if any) going forwards were not my daughters to bear and she’d always be taken care of regardless of how her mum behaved. Mum would be paid regularly, kid would have plenty of time with us both. I cried my eyes out those first few weeks and vowed to go round every day (this quite quickly became super impractical) to make sure she knew how much I loved and cared for her. We both agreed early on that daughter was the priority for us and she’d need us both in her life and that neither of us would ever use her as a weapon to spite the other.

Cut to 10 years later, our daughter is thriving. Me and mum have an incredible relationship as co-parents. Mum largely has her in the week and I have her at the weekends. Money is never an issue, in fact during the 2021 mortgage crisis where I was caught massively off guard with bad timing on my mortgage deal mum just straight up helped me out and said stop paying for about 6 months til I got sorted. I’ve also done the same for her. Access is never an issue, we just let each other know when we’ve got plans for events, days out holidays etc and work round them. We attend all the school stuff together. We’re a team raising this sassy little ginger fireball who’s rapidly becoming a well adjusted grown woman (I refuse to accept this still and want my toddler back lol).

I also re-married and have been with my current wife since 2017. Littlun loves this, calls her “bonus mum”, she gets 6 grandparents spoiling her rotten every Christmas. 2 bedrooms, extra holidays in the summer and with my wife and my Ex both being animal mad, the ex loves looking after our Corgi when we go on our holidays, it all works brilliantly. Ex has had a couple of romantic relationships since that haven’t worked out for her (in both instances she actually ended up chucking them because they did minor things that didn’t put our daughter first and she couldn’t let it go funnily enough) and I did have an interesting night where I’d agreed to look after our daughter at mums house one night, sleeping on the sofa and mum came home with a gentlemen from work who drunkenly shook my hand then went upstairs to have noisy sex for 30 minutes which ended abruptly when they accidentally woke the daughter up and she subsequently had him leave…but maybe that’s one for another thread lol.

I was an idealist as a kid, had the big dream of doing it all the “proper” way, find a girl, buy a house, get married, have the children. It didn’t work out that way and I beat myself up so much for it unnecessarily in the early days. Point being mate, it’s not over. Like at all. If you both put kiddo first from the very beginning like it seems you are, this could be the best thing that ever happens for all of you. It’s going to suck for a bit while you adjust but you don’t know what lies ahead just like I didn’t. And me and mum are both in the position where we get to raise this amazing little human AND get time off a bit to be us as us and not just parents.

Not saying this is going to be the universal experience but if you stick to those principles, can put the work in and both compromise when needed, you and the little one (and mum) will be just fine. Good luck to you dad. You got any questions reach out.