When is too young?

i dont have kids, nor experience with shared custody. but i would think the younger the easier on him.
as he will just adjust to it, rather than being say 18months and more aware that this isnt my house wheres my mummy.
if that makes sense

It sounds like it would get very painful very quickly.....

What type of "shared did you have in mind" week on week off?

Remember at some point in the future you are going to or your ex is going to meet someone else etc and having an ex coming around daily to "hang" might not be ideal for a new relationship, and the other person may very well get rather jealous.
Thens there that whole.......if he moves town will you move town or vice versa? who would be making the compromising on where you both live and would you be happy to live where that person lives or would they move to you? cos obviously you would need to live close by to each other to make the close shared thing work eventually with schooling or kindy or daycare

IMO - It may seem to be the best option at the mo, but i can only see two people who cant live with each other being very much in each others pockets and faces and therefore would more than likely end up having one being a little bit more overbearing or jealous etc than the other meaning you really wont get to be living your own life, you will still have your ex breathing down your neck constantly.

I hope all that makes sense. Good luck with what you decide, its very good of you to be trying to find a better option so you both get to raise your baby, but i think it would take some very remarkable people and patient and understanding and non controlling to be able to compromise on both parts without it getting messy........

There would need to be some pretty strict rules etc so you both get to have enough space and privacy to carry on with your lives

And that didnt even answer your orginal question........12months would be the absolute earliest i would do a shared custody with my baby. And im sure they baby would adjust fine after a small unsettled period

Best of luck on your decision

It's a tough decision - what ever you decide make sure you write it all out in a parenting agreement.

At such a young age (0-3), it's crucial that a strong bond is formed with one primary caregiver (it's that important to the psychological development that 14 inmates on deathrow were interviewed, and 13 of them lacked the bond). I would encourage that you remain primary caregiver until at least 18 months, but allow dad and baby to spend a few hours together most days a week (eg 5-7pm, Monday to Friday, and most of the day on Saturday). You need to give yourself a day off from whole thing each week - just for mummy & baby fun time.

RogueMum wrote: Chickielou - I understand what you're saying about ex's coming around in new relationships but babies Dad and I have already covered that base in the agreement and also, if I got a new partner and he threw a tantie about my babies father coming to see his son, then he'd be out the door pretty quick. Any new partner I get will need to be understanding of the situation. .

I was also meaning on the other end of the scale......you know if you were the first person to move on but you werent ready to tell your ex your not exactly going to be able to keep your private life "private" and well we all know when one party moves on before the next things can go from being harmonious to rather nasty again.

I think the 5-7pm when its dinner time and bath time etc while your living close and to bring baby home and help put to bed maybe most nights of the week and a whole day in the weekend, but i do think avoiding having two seperate night sleeping quarters while so young probably will be a bit unsettling

Question - how much time have you spent away from your baby so far? how did you cope? could you do that for days?
Sorry i can just see the rules changing once in place.......cos ive seen it all before with my parents and it didnt seem to matter what parenting order was in place the finer details can be changed. like if your ex decided that the day he had baby he wasnt going to let you come around or just go out for the day and you wouldnt get to see baby that day etc, you can try and take him to court over being difficult etc but you dont get far. my dads ex wouldnt put the kids on a plane my dad had paid for and she would make excuses like they werent well.........but they were fine etc. she was just wanted to make life very difficult and theres always loop holes.........

I know you are researching all of this so you make the best decision for your baby and I highly commend you for that!!!!

My wee girl was 11 months old when my husband and I separated and intially he was seeing her 3 times a week - two afternoons for 2.5hrs and one full day 8am - 5pm. She didn't cope well with the arrangement at first (not helped by her dad not keeping to the routine very well. He had not had very much to do with her when we were together and she screamed and cried ever single time I left her with him for months.She was very unsettled and had trouble sleeping at night, especially after her full day with him.

For me, it was really tough to leave her with him when she was crying and clearly very upset. What made it worse was that the crying made her Dad annoyed and upset that she didn't want to stay with him and that didn't help.

G's Dad initially wanted shared care but I stood my ground and compromised on him having her one night a week as I believed she wouldn't cope well with shared care. She'd only spent 2 nights away from me in her life and both of them were with my Mother. He'd never had anything to do with her bedtime routine or even bathed her before. She was attached to him but had a secondary attachment relationship where she prefered me or my mother before him due to his lack of interest in her. In consultation with my councellor I decided that any more than one night a week would harm my bond with her and that was the last thing she needed as I was the one secure stable person in her life.

Long story short, her Dad never took up his one agreed upon night per week and we have dropped to one afternoon and one full day a week. Things have settled down and she no longer screams and cries when I leave her with him. She isn't happy but she knows she has to stay with him and that I do come back afterwards.

Sorry for the long winded saga but I just wanted to give you the perspective of someone going through something similar at the moment. Its been really tough on G and I think that shared care would have been too hard for her to handle. Her and I have a very secure attachment and I thought very long and hard about disrupting that. I wanted her to be attached to her Dad but not at the expense of her bond with me if that makes sense. There needs to be at least one primary attachment and the councellor told me that the child/baby should not spend more than 24 hours away from the primary attachment figure until the child is more than 18 months old but preferably until they are 2.

I know its really hard to work out arrangements like this and I think a lot of it depends on the child and their temprement. We had a temporary arrangement for 6 weeks so we could see how things were working, and then another interim arrangement for 3 months so we could reassess after that. That worked well coz things sometimes don't go to plan. Good luck and I hope things work out well for you.