When I met him, he had his two children 4 days a week, his ex had them 3 days a week.  However, she did her very best to spend as little time or energy on them as possible, keeping them in nursery for the maximum amount of time, at her parents when not in nursery. She did not bathe them, dress them appropriately, feed them, all things that were left to my husband to do. She was perfectly happy for my husband to do all these things, and generally had no interest in the children at all.

When I moved in with my husband, I started to help take care of the children.  We used to collect the children from school/nursery on his ex's days so they could have a bath, put underwear on them (something she didn't do for her 4 year old son when sending him to school) and generally spend some time with them. The ex didn't try to stop me from doing any of these things for the children, and when they were too poorly for school, nursery, would even drop them off with me for the day to look after.

However, from day one she did her absolute utmost to get the children to despise me, and to try to split my husband and I up.  I was alright to look after the children so that she didn't have to, but they weren't allowed to love, or like me.  She told my stepdaughter (2 years old at the time) that if she hugged or kissed me she would get a disease and die. The abuse through the children went on, and on my stepson's first day at school she turned up (we had no idea she would be there, otherwise I would not have!) and started threatening to 'knock me out' in the playground amongst all the parents.  Luckily, although we had a couple of very minor setbacks, the children saw me as a wonderful new addition, and quickly grew to love me, despite the ex's best efforts.

This progresses to a year and a half later when my husband couldn't collect the children, and told her in advance I would be collecting the children (to which she supposedly had no problem) she stood screaming at her window with the children at her side, swearing and yelling that I wasn't named on the court order, I had no right to collect the children, and she would not give them to me.  Fine, I walked away.  Two days later I had the police ringing my doorbell arresting me for supposedly scratching her car.  The charges were dropped as they were obviously false, and retaliation for me daring to try to collect the children.

When my husband and I got engaged, she told the children that daddy wouldn't love them anymore now that he was going to marry me, and when they didn't believe that she told them that when we got married, daddy was going to stop her from being their mummy, and was going to force them to have me instead.  Unfortunately for her, they both took this as a positive!

The handovers of the children were getting more and more volatile at the ex's house. When she came to our house the children were sent straight out without my husband or I coming out, but at her house my husband had to run the gauntlet of the ex and her family standing, holding back the children whilst they screamed and spat at him, threatening him with violence. It got so bad that we didn't want her on our property and the nursery agreed to us dropping the children off with them, and the ex collecting them 20 minutes later. This worked well until the day when the ex turned up with her sister 25 minutes before she was supposed to, and lay in wait for us. I was carrying my step daughter, my husband had my stepson, and neither of us had seen the ex until she came up behind me, spun me round, punched me, and ripped stepdaughter from me. We rang the police, who unbelievably would not get involved because it was a 'domestic issue' and a week later I had a leaflet posted to me from the police department with a list of all the resources that were available to me as a woman with a violent partner, and that I didn't have to suffer in silence.  Amazing!

It was at this point I made a decision I was never going to be involved in a changeover again. I only started going for support for my husband when things started getting really bad, but I decided it wasn't worth this, and he was going to have to go it alone. luckily, I have a wonderful brother in law who went to collect the children with my husband instead.  Whilst this was going on, the ex had decided she wanted to move back to where she was from, 200 miles away, and issued residency proceedings.

After a hugely stressful six months, where everyone told us that we would lose the children because she was their mother, even though my husband had always been primary carer, a case in which I was accused of hitting the children, and my husband and I were accused of trying to marginalise his ex, me trying to bully my way into being the children's mother, my husband almost had a nervous breakdown, the judge issued residency to my husband, based largely in part of the mother's negligence of the children, which at one point had social services involved.

We now have had the children full-time for two and a half years, they adore my husband, myself and their baby sister, and have an incredibly happy life. The ex continues to try to cause trouble at every possible opportunity, however thankfully those opportunities are now becoming less and less, my husband hasn't seen the ex for four months now, as his brother collects the children for us, and I haven't seen her for almost three years.