It had been almost a week since the emergency hearing and since I had seen my daughter. I had never spent that much time away from her except the rare business trip. I was now only permitted to see her with a supervisor present, and there weren’t any available for the first several days.

At this point I was under the impression that this would all be cleared up at an upcoming hearing, and I was just trying to stay strong enough to get through 2 weeks of nonsense. I was told that the supervisors were not overbearing and that I would barely notice them.

Since I was no longer allowed at the family apartment, I showed up in the lobby at my scheduled time to meet the supervisor. It was my first visit. I had missed my daughter so so much, and the emotion was welling up inside me. I felt like I could barely breathe. There was a seemingly nice lady sitting there waiting for me, and I relaxed a bit. Maybe she was a mother also and she would understand the pain that I was going through. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

As soon as I saw my daughter I hugged her and cried and cried. She had no idea anything had happened. I realized she thought that mommy had just gone on a trip for a few days. “Why are you crying, mommy?” I told her how much I missed her through my tears and how happy I was to see her. I scooped her up and put her in the Uber to take her back to my new apartment. But, the visit did not go as easy as expected.

The lady followed me. Everywhere. She followed me to my daughter’s room, she followed me to my grandmother’s room, she even followed me to take my daughter to the bathroom. She also kept telling my daughter what she should be doing as if I was an incompetent parent.

“You can take off your shirt, but you have to keep your pants on”

It’s the middle of the summer and its 100 degrees… why can’t the kid do what she wants? Is she trying to sexualize a 4 year old child taking her pants off??

“You have to keep your shoes on”

We are at the park and all the kids have their shoes off. What is the problem?

Visitation was stressful to say the least. And this was only the beginning of the misery. I came to realize that I was the criminal, and my husband was the shot caller. Over the next few visits I was told that she couldn’t drink Kombucha because her father would not allow it. I was also told that if we were playing at the playground and she had to pee, we had to go home. Apparently a 4 year old squatting to pee behind a tree at a park was inappropriate. I had to take her out of Central Park park kicking and screaming. I was told that I was not allowed to go anywhere with her or have any visitors. I was definitely not allowed to nurse her. She begged, and cried, and screamed in protest. For the short time that she was allowed to see her mother, she could not get the comfort that she craved. It was absolutely heartbreaking.

I dealt with it. I kept reminding myself that it was better than the unimaginable- not getting to see my daughter at all. She didn’t understand what was happening and she didn’t understand why she couldn’t stay with mommy. Every time the visitaion time was over she had to go back to her dad’s house without exception. She could not be late. She cried and screamed when she had to leave and I cried with her. The supervisor was emotionless and treated her like she was throwing a tantrum over a missing toy.

Little did I know that I was going to have to deal with this for much, much longer than just two weeks.

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