[Solved] A whole load of outpouring

Really not sure where to put this and I apologise in advance for the sheer length and the volume of outpouring that lies within.

I'm not really the sort to turn to somewhere like this for help, be it to just pour everything out or ask for advice, I normally manage to get through everything fine.

Anyway a bit of history, my partner and I are unmarried, we currently have one child (a girl), born in 2004 and my name is on her birth certificate, We are also expecting another child (unknown gender) and my partner is 24 weeks pregnant.

Our first pregnancy wasn't an easy one, my partner was struggling with depression after losing her Grandmother who'd been heavily involved in raising her, there were probably other issues going on too from a highly controlling Mother whom we were living with at the time and didn't seem to want me around. Her house was an absolute bombsite, not far off what you'd see on those TV programs about hoarding, it was in need of desperate repair (bathroom was unusable so we'd have to use the sink in the downstairs toilet to wash ourselves) the bathroom floor had also caved in. There was very little lighting, she kept Guinea Pigs under the stairs and the kitchen was a health hazard.

Labour wasn't easy, we were both very young (she was 18 I was 4 weeks off 20) and everything that she'd researched and requested was over ruled throughout the labour, ultimately she had a c-section because the baby was attempting to come out before she'd dilated fully and she had a lip on her cervix that was pressing against our daughters head. We've since looked through the notes and discovered this came about as they'd essentially rushed her labour.

Once the baby was born her scar opened up and became infected so she was essentially bed bound, she received no help from the midwives to lift our (rather heavy at 9lbs14) daughter to try and breast feed and later when she came home she was unable to express or breastfeed properly and has said she felt like a failure and was later diagnosed with post-natal depression.

Social services got involved and because of her mental state, the involvement of her Mum (who has a bad history with them) and the state of her Mums house they decided that our daughter was at risk and so she was put into care with us being able to see her under supervision and monitoring, my partner moved out into a mother and baby home under the promise that she'd have more access (monitored) with a view to getting her back. However whenever our daughter was with her no one was really around to monitor how she was with her despite her staying in the communal area's of the home, they didn't report this to Social Services however (who'd if they were aware would, I assume, send someone to monitor the pair), instead they covered their own backs and kept delaying things, we weren't getting anywhere and so my partner moved out and back into her Mums temporarily.

We then made ourselves homeless and was offered temporary accommodation for a few months. We moved in and would have regular visits at a Spurgeons centre for a couple of months and then monitored visits at our temp accommodation for a couple of weeks before she came back to us permanently around November time. During this time we'd spoken to a housing association and had been guarunteed a house once we were together as a family. December 2004 we moved into our current home and began to rebuild the damage that had been caused to our family.

Of course none of this was plain sailing with someone suffering from depression from losing a loved one and post-natal depression and there were many many rocky times ahead.

By the time our daughter was 2 we'd removed my partners Mothers influence completely and informed Social Services of this (who'd been popping in once every few months to see if we wanted any help with anything) and hadn't heard from them since. My partner went to college to study to be a Nurse then attended Uni and ultimately (after a 6 month set back where she picked up a nasty stress related hand infection) qualified in February 2011.

Unfortunately she found a position on a ward thats ill-equipped to deal with a newly qualified nurse and thus hasn't received the support or training that she's supposed to have had and some 18 months after starting her job she finds herself unhappy at work and still at the entry level with all the blame placed upon her shoulders in regards to her lack of progress rather than her superiors or the hospital itself. This has led to her being placed on anti-anxiety medication and anti-depressants after the Doctor wrote her off work for 4 weeks last Christmas due to her declining health because of the treatment she recieved. The NMC/RCN (@I forget which) got involved and fought her corner but she didn't have the motivation to keep everything up and fight through it all.

Add to this problems with debts that we incurred during the time she was training because of our low income and things have been tough.

We decided earlier in the year that now our daughter was 8 it was now or never if we wanted to add to our family and we really did want to add to our family, we got through all of the above and felt it could never get as bad as that again now that we were both in steady employment and that whilst our financial situation wasn't perfect it was improving, some of our debts are paid off, but the ones that are left are growing impatient.

So, that brings us fairly upto date. We also had a falling out with my family a year or so ago, there were accusations of us not keeping in contact with anyone, which was true to an extent but we had tried to contact people and interact with them via the phone and Facebook (we live in different parts of the country) but calls would never get returned if they weren't at home so we told them that if they didn't make an effort then that was their choice in regards to seeing our daughter, this was before we fell pregnant.

At the start of the summer holidays my Dad and Step Mum (who have always maintained contact, phoning at least once a month and visiting 3 or 4 times a year staying in Travel Lodges when doing so) took her back to their home for a few days to visit my Aunts and Uncles who'd always sent gifts at birthdays and Christmases but had never met her, or at least thats the impression I got until she came home and I found out she'd seen the relatives who'd not contacted us at all since that argument (not even a phone call on her birthday or at Christmas). I dealt with the issue, told my Dad and Step Mum I was unhappy and explained exactly why, my partner was at work and I intended to inform her but various other things happened (problems with money arising, stress from work and the main one was that she was having difficulty at work relating to her pregnancy which ultimately resulted in one of the ward sisters getting her to push beds, she had a bleed that night (I found about this later) and complained about stomach pains for a couple of days, I kept telling her to speak to a midwife or drop in to the baby/gynae unit at the hospital), so the whole thing slipped my mind until a few weeks ago when our daughter started chatting about it, so things have been difficult for the past few weeks between us and she's attempted to ban my Dad and Step Mum from seeing our daughter but I've told her shes not using Rachael as a weapon especially for something that I'd already addressed.

This has been sort of the background to the past few weeks, but we were talking and getting on okay, there was tension obviously but nothing that was too bad and we'd gone back to focusing on trying to find the money to get the bits we need for the baby (we still have most of our daughters stuff in the loft, even if its a boy spending a few months with pink tights under its sleepsuit or onepiece coat isn't going to hurt it), its just a cot and sterilising equipment that we need essentially (oh and nappies as she wants to buy those reusable ones). Then Friday everything seems to have gone wrong all at once.

I went to work thinking it'd be a normal day, she was off work and our daughter was off school as its half-term here (she's back on Monday 5th), I've not opened the shop very long and I get a phone call, theres a bailiff at the door. I can't really do anything about it, the store I work at operates single cover during the day. Then a couple of hours later, just after lunch time, I get another call, I need to come home immediately theres a social worker at our house. I try to call my boss, serving customers in between and trying to keep a cool head, eventually I get through and I'm told to close the shop, tell customers I have to go to the post office for change and go home, she'll come over and re-open the store.

So I run home and the woman from Social Services is upstairs with our daughter, my partners downstairs I ask her if everythings okay and I get a frosty look so I go up stairs and chat to the woman. The house is an absolute tip, our daughters not tidied her room at all (despite me asking her to before I left), there's dirty laundry on the landing (immediately above the stairs) with one of the dogs asleep on it, the ferrets cage desperately needs cleaning (I was intending to get to that after work as my partners vomits if she goes near the cage when it needs cleaning, I don't think the baby likes the smell...) and our daughters bedding is rather dirty, turns out she hadn't wiped herself properly so there was poo on her bed sheet and she'd not told anybody.

The social worker points this all out and I try my best to honestly explain and hold my hands up that I've not kept on top of things, I tell her that my partner works alot of hours and works odd shifts, has just finished a five day stretch and suffers with bad fatigue during this pregnancy already, she's also concerned about my partner, she apparently started telling our daughter they were there to take her away from us like they did before. I explain that she's only reacted like that because she's scared and gone defensive. But she's still not happy, my partner goes upstairs and the social worker asks me some very personal questions that I answer but am absolutely livid about "Do you argue?" "Is there any domestic violence in your relationship?" and "Are you sure your daughter is yours?" That last one in particular really pissed me off but I kept a cool head and answered that I know she was.

She then points out what she wants doing today and says someone will pop by over the weekend to check on us and heads off, I help our daughter tidy her room and I get the landing tidy. Whilst doing this the phone rings and its the social worker again, she's coming back. When she gets here all that needs to be done upstairs is a bit of hoovering. I dig for more information in regards to why she's there, apparently someone contacted them saying they were concerned about our daughter. That she's "always asking neighbours for food, doesn't eat properly, her clothes are too small, she's always dirty and she's being bullied by other kids in the street". I tell her we're aware of the bullying, both when she's playing outside and when she's at school and we've spoken to the children involved and their parents for the ones that live in our street (its the same kids involved) and we've gotten the school involved. She then looks at our kitchen, which I'll admit has never been tidy but its always been usable and accessible, the fridge is also always well stocked and theres always access to fresh fruit, our veg rack is always full of a mixture of potatoes, carrots, sweet potato, onions and peppers and we keep fresh herbs on our window sill. I tell her that in the freezer theres a mixture of frozen chicken pieces (legs, thighs etc), pre-made meals (home made, not shop bought) like sheperds pie and things like fish fingers and sausages plus a collection of frozen veg and I tell her that its simply a case that our daughters always hungry or that we tend to eat at about 6:30 so if she's at a friends house before that then she hasn't actually had her tea yet and as we have problems getting her to sit and eat a whole meal we try not to give her snacks when she gets home from school. She's also seen from the clothes that were previously scattered on our daughters floor (taken out of her wardrobe and drawers when she's been getting dressed which she's not put back) that her clothes aren't too small, after this she then leaves again and restates that we'll get a visit this weekend.

By this point its about half 4, my partner then decides to tell me she feels ill, I probe and ask if she has any idea why and it turns out that during the time I was helping our daughter with her room she's taken almost her entire prescription of the beta-blockers that the doctor had her on for her work related anxiety. I'm livid, what a way to make all of this even worse!

I phone NHS Direct and chat to them and they (obviously) tell me to get her to the hospital, luckily her symptoms aren't too bad, she's very sleepy and feeling dizzy and had only vomited once, not passing any blood. They put her on the various monitoring equipment and begin to make arrangements for her to stay in over night, at first she's accepting of this but as time wore on she grew more difficult and eventually attempted to discharge herself. She removed her drip etc and whilst my daughter and I were ushered off to the family room she wandered off. Once they'd tracked her down and calmed her down she agreed to stay in over night but didn't want either of us to see her so I took our daughter to get some McDonalds as we hadn't had any tea yet (there was a perfectly good joint of beef in the oven prior to all this happening, but as it was now about 9pm it was ruined). Got home, got my little girl to bed and continued with housework, I phoned the ward to check up on how she was forgetting she had her mobile phone with her. Eventually I was tired enough to just fall asleep. She phoned about 3am and we had a brief chat, she still felt dizzy etc and she was hooked up to the monitoring equipment, they'd done a quick check of the baby and everything appeared okay but the midwife etc wouldn't be able to do a thorough check until the morning.

Saturday; I carried on trying to make the house absolutely spotless, eventually one of the weekend agency social workers arrives. He's afraid of dogs, great start there... especially as they don't really listen to me, I'm not the "alpha". He seems happy with what he can see and seems happy with our daughters mood, as far as he's concerned my partners at work. He did do something that irritated though, our heating doesn't work properly. We get no heating downstairs, our housing association have been aware of this for years and have made pathetic attempts to repair it (replaced the pump in the airing cupboard twice and banged the pipes a bit), social services are aware of it as I told the lady that came Friday and I'd told this particular gentleman just five minutes prior about the problem, hopign they'd give the housing association a kick up the [censored] to get it fixed. He then mentions that you can smell dog and ferret (I was about to clean the ferrets as he got here) and that maybe we should open windows a during the day, I tell him its not really an option when the house is cold pretty much all day long because of the heating issues. Once he leaves I phone and let her know how things went, then she says she wants to go to sleep so I say goodbye and leave her be. I try phoning again later that afternoon but she wont answer, a couple of times it goes straight to voicemail so I assume that she's talking to a doctor and that they'll let her out soon. A couple of hours pass and I try again, her phones switched off, so I phone the ward thinking that her battery has died. She doesn't want to talk to anyone and doesn't want any visitors but they do tell me they're keeping her in until Monday when a psychiatrist will talk to her, I ask if she needs anything bringing in and eventually pack up a bag of toiletries, clothes, bed clothes a couple of books and something of hers that she normally clings to when she's feeling particularly down and drop it off at the reception to the hospital ward she's on and a get well soon card from our daughter (I felt it best I didn't sign it)

I phone again that night, roughly around midnight and leave a message telling her we both love her and miss her and that if she wants to chat then to phone me and call her back.

Today I cleaned nearly the entire kitchen of any evidence of grease that may have built up, all I've got left as far as I can see is to clean one more work surface, make my way through the mounds of washing that we always seem to have and try and sort through our daughters toys, plus clearing up the garden as theres some dog mess out there... most of that will have to wait as the bin is full and won't be emptied until Tuesday. Another Agency social worker stops by and again seems' happy with the place and doesn't make any negative comments. I've tried to phone my partner but she's still not answering, I'll give her a try again later and if not succesful will phone the ward to check on her progress.

I'll admit that I have to do all of this alone, and thankfully after chatting to my boss (who brought up her girls on her own, they're both in their mid to late teens now) she's gave me the week off work and told me not to be concerned with work. But I feel really really saddened and worried by every aspect of whats happened over the past few weeks but particular the past few days, I knew she wasn't happy at the moment but I never dreamed she'd go as far as she has done (she has done similar in the past but it was with paracetomol and that was when things were at their worst the first time round with Social Services), I feel dissappointed in her (and feel guilty about doing so) and am incredibly worried about her, the baby and the outcome of it all once Social Services get the report from the hospital. I'm certain that telling them she's been at work during these weekend visits was the wrong thing to do but telling them that she was in hospital was too hard to say, its been hard enough talking to my boss (who I'm fairly close to, our whole workplace is fairly close) and posting all of this, I'm not sure I could tell a complete stranger face to face.