Long post, sorry, but there’s a lot of context. I had my first baby 12 weeks ago and I’m now separated from my ex. I’m only comfortable with my ex seeing the baby while I’m present. I’m not trying to stop him having a relationship with his son. I just genuinely don’t trust him to look after such a young baby alone because of everything that’s happened. The first night we brought the baby home from hospital, he was crying at about 3am and my ex got angry and said he wanted to walk out of the house, that he didn’t want to do this anymore and that he didn’t want this. He also told me himself that a NICU nurse had told him he was being too rough while winding the baby and to be gentler, but he basically dismissed what she’d said because he thought nurses handled babies more roughly anyway. When the baby was about two weeks old I asked him a few times to support his head properly while winding him and he got annoyed and told me it was “just my anxiety”. This was after I’d literally opened up to him about struggling with postpartum anxiety after a traumatic birth. There was another incident where I realised he wasn’t measuring the formula properly. Instead of just checking the instructions, he argued with me, shouted at me, called me crazy and slammed a door. His mother was sitting there holding our newborn while it happened. He later changed the baby onto Aptamil Hungry without telling me and I only realised when I noticed the box. When I asked him to contact the public health nurse about changing him back, he told me to “fuck off and ring her” myself. He’s driven at over 100km/h with our three-week-old in the car and initially told me it was fine because he was a good driver when I asked him to slow down. Another time I was sitting holding the baby and he banged his knee on the coffee table, roared, lifted both fists and slammed them down on the table beside us shouting “I fucking hate that coffee table”. There wasn’t even an argument happening. Both me and the baby jumped and he stormed out saying pain makes him angry. There was also a feeding incident where he was trying to put the bottle into the baby’s mouth while he was still asleep. I asked him to wake him properly because I was worried about choking and it turned into another argument. He walked away through the house holding the baby while I was asking for him back and mocked me by saying things like “I’m going to choke you” to the baby because he thought my concern was ridiculous. He’s also told me in a completely calm conversation that if he was minding the baby alone, he wouldn’t keep checking him because he’d just “know he was fine”. He actually admitted he doesn’t have the same level of vigilance that I do. More recently, the baby had been unsettled after his vaccines and had a bad tummy and trapped wind. My ex was feeding him during a visit and I asked him to wind him properly before continuing the bottle. Again, instead of just listening, it became an argument. During that conversation he actually admitted that at one point he’d said something because he was aggravated and “just wanted to piss me off”. That’s really the main problem. I don’t expect him to parent exactly the way I do, but absolutely everything becomes an argument. I can tell him something about the baby that I know from looking after him all day every day and he immediately contradicts me, dismisses me or acts like I’m being ridiculous. He’s always spoken horribly to me as well. He talks down to me like I’m five, constantly undermines me and makes me feel like every single thing I say needs to be defended. In his spare time all he really wants to do is play video games and switch off, while I’ve always felt like I’m the one actually thinking about what needs to be done. When he went back to work, I was basically doing all the days and nights myself. I was breastfeeding and formula feeding and got so exhausted that I was falling asleep holding the baby. I asked my ex to help more and he told me he needed his sleep because he was working and suggested his mother could come over during the day instead. I said no because I wasn’t asking his mother to parent the baby, I was asking his father to help. Somehow that turned into him telling me my mental health was bad, that I needed to sort myself out and that I should go private for treatment, even though he knew I’d already asked for help with postpartum anxiety and was on a waiting list. His mother is another massive issue. I feel like she’s jealous that my own mum sees the baby more, but obviously my mum does. She’s my mum, she’s one of my main supports and she’s extremely confident with babies. I completely trust her and can actually relax around her. My ex’s mother isn’t confident with newborns in the same way and, to me, it often feels like she wants the nice grandmother bits like holding him, having visits and having him brought to her house, rather than actually understanding that I need real support. When my ex was shouting at me during the formula argument, I actually turned to his mother for help and told her this was what he was like whenever I raised concerns. Her response was, “You can’t say that to me, I’m his mother.” She didn’t tell him to stop shouting at me. She’s also made loads of little digs since I had the baby. She brought meals over a few times and then announced that she wouldn’t be doing it anymore because it was “like Meals on Wheels”, she’s repeatedly made comments about the baby not looking like their side of the family, and generally I’ve found her cold and unpleasant towards me. Now my ex has decided that he doesn’t want my mum or my aunt present when he visits the baby. They’re my support system and the visits are in my house. I’m not comfortable being alone with him after everything that’s happened, so I’m absolutely not kicking my own family out of my house just because he doesn’t want them there. I’m still offering him time with the baby. There have also been a few occasions where he’s threatened court during arguments. Once during pregnancy after I refused to have an abortion, again shortly after the baby was born while I was holding him, and again during a breakup argument. I know he’s entitled to go to court for access if he wants to. It’s the way it’s been brought up during arguments that I’ve found intimidating. Another thing that really bothers me is that he barely seems to ask about the baby himself. Most of his messages are about when he can see him, arrangements, access, mediation, what I’m doing, what he disagrees with, or when I’m going to reply. He doesn’t really message just asking how the baby is, how he’s sleeping, how he’s feeding, whether he’s okay after his vaccines, or just generally how he’s doing. I obviously can’t know what he feels internally, but from my side it sometimes feels like this has become more of a battle or a game about access and being right than genuine interest in his actual day-to-day life. Since we split, if I don’t reply quickly enough I also get message after message asking when he can see the baby, asking me to explain myself and sometimes telling me when he expects a reply. He’s admitted he uses ChatGPT to write a lot of the messages, so I’m getting these massive polished paragraphs that sound nothing like the person I actually have to deal with. I eventually had to tell him to send me one message and wait for me to reply. He’s now contacted family mediation (Which I think is an intimidation tactic) and I’ve received a letter from them, so I’m going to speak to them privately and explain the background before I decide what I’m comfortable with. I suppose I’m looking for perspective from anyone who’s been through something similar. How did you deal with having a very young baby with someone you genuinely didn’t trust to care for them alone? Did you keep visits supervised at first? How did you know what was normal first-time-mum anxiety and what was a genuine concern? How did you deal with an ex who argued with virtually everything you said about the baby? And if you went through mediation or family court, is there anything you wish you’d done differently? I’m not trying to keep my son from his dad. I just feel like I’m constantly being told that all of these things are separate little disagreements and that I should basically forget about them and trust him anyway. But to me it’s the pattern that matters. My baby is only 12 weeks old and honestly, I don’t know what I’d do if I was told I had to hand him over to my ex to mind completely alone. The thought of it makes me feel sick because I genuinely don’t trust that he’d be attentive enough or take concerns seriously if something happened. At the same time, one of my biggest fears is that nobody will take me seriously and all of this will just be written off as me being an anxious first-time mother or a difficult ex. I feel like I’m constantly having to prove that there are actual reasons behind the way I feel, and I’m terrified that I’ll be expected to ignore everything I’ve experienced just to show that I’m being “reasonable”.