It had been two weeks since the emergency hearing and it was time to go to court again. My lawyer felt there was a fair chance of supervision getting lifted since we had prepared a solid cross motion and a top notch expert report. A highly respected child psychologist had looked through the videos and produced 14 beautifully written pages about the loving relationship between my daughter and I that she had observed. There was no evidence of abuse.

“Based on the encouragement of sustained breastfeeding (including for purposes of comfort feeding) by the national and international community of breastfeeding authorities, it is with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the Petitioner’s practice of child-led weaning (entailing the child’s on-demand access to the breast) is not deviant, developmentally inappropriate or harmful towards the child, and that it might have beneficial effects to the child, the mother, and the emotional relationship between them.”

The opposition had nothing. They had no expert report, and they had not produced the rest of the 10 days of recorded video from the cameras as had been ordered by the court.

I was extremely nervous but I did not see how this would not work itself out.

At 7:30pm the night before the hearing I got a call from my lawyer. “Opposing counsel has just emailed in an expert report”

What?? What expert could possibly have anything bad to say about me?

When I saw their expert report I could not believe my eyes. How was something so poorly written even allowed in court? The report basically said:

“I have seen the videos. This is abuse.”

It was only a couple of sentences and there was no basis and no explanation.

The next morning in court we were the first ones up. We had a new judge. The judge at the first hearing was just a stand-in due to this judge’s absence. He had never met us and all he had to go by was the paperwork.

I was so nervous I could barely stand, but I was excited to see the judge’s reaction to their late and shitty expert report. I couldn’t wait to redeem myself and for the judge to see that I am a good mother. I was ready to get my kid back.

As soon as we went up to the stand there was a bunch of commotion that I did not understand and the judge looked at my legal team menacingly. “I don’t have the paperwork. I’m not saying it’s your fault but I don’t have it”

I looked over at my husband for clues. What was happening? Did they mean they don’t have his expert report because it had been turned in too late? He just stood there, looking straight ahead, expressionless.

I came to find out that there was a clerical error and the court did not receive any paperwork from us. They didn’t have our motion, they didn’t have our expert report. They only had my husband’s paperwork and that is all the judge had to go by.

The thoughts ran through my head at lightning speed. How is it possible that a court does not receive notarized paperwork that had been turned in days ahead of time? Had my husband rigged this somehow? Was it my destiny to lose my daughter??

Luckily my lawyer convinced him to not make a ruling until he saw our side, but the piercing looks I received from that judge that day were indescribable. He was obviously convinced that I am a child abuser and he let me know it.

Opposing counsel argued that I should now be responsible for paying for half of supervision, and after some argument back from my attorney the judge settled on 60%/40% payment. Supervision is $150 per hour.

I walked out of there that day with no ruling, no change in supervised visitation with my daughter, and a new bill I had to pay for.

When I asked when the judge would read our paperwork and make a ruling I was told that it could be a week, or it could be six weeks. It just depends on how busy he is.

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