My mother has often said she never felt more special than when she was pregnant with me. I was her longed-for first child – my brother arrived two years later – and she had me at the same age I am now, 36.She and my father had waited a long time to find each other and had been planning a wedding. But I came first so they made do with a Cornish register office – me growing inside her, them both over the moon. Sadly, when I recently broke the news to them that I was pregnant, I was feeling about as far from special as can be imagined.I’d never coveted the bow-wrapped future of marriage followed by the two children and picket fence that some of my friends had.I had, however, expected to be in a happy relationship by the time I became a mum. To be with someone I cared a lot about and who cared about me.I pictured sharing our nervous excitement at the positive test, the highs and the lows of pregnancy, the exhaustion and the boundless love for our newborn.What happened when I told my baby’s father, Shiv*, that he was to be a parent was mercilessly cold in comparison. On Valentine’s Day, I did three pregnancy tests alone at my flat in Glasgow. Shiv was about to go abroad for a ten-month contract working in the travel industry and there had been a stressful build-up with a lot to organise.I tried to gauge when the least ‘difficult’ time to break the news was, given his mood. But when he stalled about coming over the night before his trip – he only lived a short distance away – I was forced to tell him via a WhatsApp message.I only hope that one day I will forget his cruel response. ‘I don’t think I should come round,’ he replied almost immediately. Instead, he told me I should ‘go home and be with my parents’. When Lucy Holden told her baby's father she was pregnant, he messaged her saying she should ‘go home and be with her parents’ He blocked me on Instagram, deleted me on Facebook and blocked me on his phone, too. Instead of feeling special, nurtured, cosseted, I felt like I had done something wrong, writes Lucy HoldenHe didn’t reply to any of my other messages that night – or to my increasingly desperate pleas over the next two months.He blocked me on Instagram, deleted me on Facebook and blocked me on his phone, too. Instead of feeling special, nurtured, cosseted, I felt like I had done something wrong.He made it clear I was a terrible person and that I’d be embarking on parenthood alone. The news felt too raw to tell my parents just yet, and I’d had friends lose babies early on – a worry that only added to my fear. So instead I cried alone in my flat nightly, terrified and confused (I’d been on the Pill) and shocked to realise he wasn’t going to ask if I was OK.Such brutality hurt all the more because Shiv was one of the first people I’d really become close to since moving to Scotland from Bath, where my parents lived, four years previously. We had met through a mutual friend.He was 20 years my senior but, to my initial surprise, had never married or become a father.A wiser woman might have reasoned that when a man is still single in his 50s that tells you all you need to know about his attitude to commitment. Yet I knew he’d had relationships in his 20s that lasted six or seven years, and had discussed having children with those women.We became friends and within a few months ‘friends with benefits’. We’d had patches of seeing each other more seriously when I was single (he was always single) but he never let us be ‘everything’. He’d never call dinner out ‘a date’ and when I said something about us ‘seeing each other’ he told me we weren’t. And he broke things off if ever I got close to asking for more.Technically, we were free agents and could have dated others... but I would have forsaken all others if he had asked me. I have been on and off in love with him for years. So, while feigning nonchalance, I secretly agonised that he was seeing other women. When he blocked me on his phone, I almost lost my mind. Nothing makes you feel more desperate than waiting for a reply and being ignored, and then snubbed, and then cast asideIn the early days, I remember him asking me if I wanted children and I’d said ‘probably’. Meanwhile, as he grew older and relationships failed, I guess he wrote off having them.Still, I knew that he loved babies, that he got lonely and liked having someone around. It felt as though he held me at arm’s length only with words, not behaviour.When we were together, we had done everything a normal couple would do, despite him refusing to admit, ever, that we were one. He booked restaurants and cinema tickets. He spent a week with me in Bath when I dog-sat during my parents’ holiday.We spoke every day, had 100 private jokes and knew things about each other we’d never told anyone else. When he wasn’t working away, he spent most nights at my flat and, while he was bad at compliments, I knew he cared. There were little gifts, messages asking about my day, enquiries about my beautiful but ageing dog in Bath. His phone was full of photos of my cat.Meanwhile, my parents knew his name but had never met him. ‘He’s currently... getting used to the idea,’ I told them when I announced my pregnancy, not wanting to break their hearts as he’d so utterly broken mine. My dad laughed in a ‘Well, he is a man’ kind of way.‘He’ll come round,’ I told them.It was true that he always came back – sometimes after months of silence after some silly fall-out that usually marked the end of us sleeping together. But this was different.When he blocked me on his phone, I almost lost my mind. Nothing makes you feel more desperate than waiting for a reply and being ignored, and then snubbed, and then cast aside. Lucy's mum has booked five weeks off work so she can be at the birth, but it's still not clear if the father will be there It would have been appalling behaviour even without me being pregnant. But the fact that he was leaving me to deal with a situation he’d put us in too (never once did he want to wear a condom) amplified everything.The only time I got a message from him during the first three months was just before he blocked me. ‘Get an abortion,’ it read. ‘I don’t want any of this.’ Then he was gone, and I wanted to die.I’d never been pregnant before so I’d never had to try to understand my own thoughts on abortion. But now I realised that I simply couldn’t get one. I couldn’t take away a life growing inside me.And yet I’d never felt more rejected. Maybe it would be better if I wasn’t here, I thought; then someone who so clearly didn’t want a baby wouldn’t have to have one.On my birthday, no message came through. He was too cold, too immature, too selfish even to wish me a happy day. How different this Shiv was from the friend who had only ever been protective and damning of men who had treated me badly in the past. He wrote them off as ‘cowards’ if they failed to end things properly. As a ‘waste of time’ or worse if they didn’t realise what a good thing they had with me.He also had a lot of female friends and I knew he’d supported them in break-ups too. One of the messages I sent him said: ‘What do you think your female friends would think about how you’re treating me? What would you say about a man ghosting a woman he’d got pregnant if it was someone else?’ He didn’t reply.Instead, he ghosted me for two months; it was after another month that he blocked me. I began to ask myself some tough questions. What did I want? Did I want to do it alone? Could I do it alone?I was freelance and didn’t have maternity leave, plus I lived in a rental flat. My parents also lived 400 miles away. In the beginning, it all seemed far too unmanageable to think about.After a weekend with my brother, his wife and their baby, my dad, not a natural at emotion, texted me: ‘I’ve realised you must be one of those very brave people who really can do this alone.’There are things I still haven’t told my parents about Shiv’s behaviour but already he has caused Mum many sleepless nights.As for me, dealing with all the angst and the worry of being pregnant alone has been one of the hardest things I’ve had to do.For the first hospital appointment, I was the only woman there by herself. It’s protocol to ask after a mother-to-be’s welfare, but the number of times the antenatal nurse asked me if I was suicidal horrified me. When I told her what had happened with Shiv, she said it would be easier to list my baby’s father as ‘unknown’ because I didn’t know his family history, medical records or blood type etc. That threw me too.Three months in, he had still not messaged me but I could tell he had unblocked me on his phone because I called on the off-chance and it rang; he didn’t pick up.‘I need you, please Shiv,’ I texted. I told him I didn’t think I could do this alone.He replied saying maybe we could talk when he got home from his work trip in a week. The message filled me with a tiny kernel of hope.You might wonder at all these second chances I kept giving a man who’d proved himself irredeemably feckless. Yet, as he was the father of my child, I still longed for him to be involved.When he turned up to a restaurant near my house, after three days of cancellations, I got no hug, no real hello. He simply slumped down and ordered a beer.He looked awful and told me he’d been on a ‘bender’ for the past three months. ‘You lucky b*****d,’ I thought – escapism of any kind hadn’t been an option for me. Every day, I’d woken up thinking about the fact I was carrying a child whose father didn’t want it and didn’t want me. The child of a man who probably thought I’d ruined his life.That first meeting was a disaster. I had a panic attack at the table and he didn’t try to comfort me as he once would have. ‘I’ve not asked you for anything and I’m not going to,’ I told him. ‘I’d like our child to know you but I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.’‘I know,’ he snorted. ‘This is your choice, this is what you wanted,’ he told me, implying it had nothing to do with him.I left that restaurant table after 20 minutes, embarrassed at my public tears and more devastated than I had been when I arrived. For the first time, the idea that it could be better for the baby if he wasn’t in their life crept into my mind.What if he dropped contact with them just as suddenly as he had with me? A child would only blame themselves, and they might never get over it.A week after that meeting, I found out during my 20-week scan that I was expecting a girl. Once again blocked on his phone, I emailed to tell him and that’s when things started looking a little brighter.He unblocked me again – if you feel exhausted reading about this, just imagine how it felt to endure it.Another week later, I messaged asking if he would come to the flat just so I didn’t have to be on my own. I’d been in too much of a state to fly home and see my parents, as I’d planned to. He arrived and let me squash my face into his chest on the sofa and cry.That night, he stayed in my bed, though we didn’t have sex. Days later, I asked him to come to the next hospital appointment, expecting a ‘no’. Instead, I got a different one-word reply: ‘OK.’Soon after that he came to a ‘wellness check’ at a private clinic near my house and saw his baby on screen for the first time. He asked a lot of questions; I got the impression he was more comfortable with that than obvious emotion.Afterwards, he bought me dinner and gave me a birthday present, long overdue but so thoughtful in nature that I was tempted to forgive him.I was used to him blowing hot and cold, and it had always made me uneasy, but could I now hope that he wouldn’t disappear again?I’m six months pregnant now and I still don’t know what will happen, but we’re more ‘on’ than ‘off’ for now.He’s had two big trips away but we’re back to having dinner at mine. During the last six-week trip we talked every day. I’d sent him pictures of the baby things I’m collecting for October, when she’s due, and he’d ‘like’ them or say how cute they were.Maybe next year he’ll want to be at ‘home’ more, with us. Or maybe his work schedule will continue as it always has, and we’ll come up with some way of co-parenting.We don’t plan to live together – his flat is only a short walk away – and I wouldn’t ask about calling it a relationship.I got a ‘sorry’ once but it was hard to tell what exactly it was for. I made a baby calendar on my iPhone to keep track of appointments and key dates. Shiv accepted the invitation to follow it. Maybe ‘baby steps’ has never been more of a relevant expression.What I hope is that Kit – that’s what I’m going to call my baby girl – is able to get to know her father as well as she’ll know me and my parents.Some may wonder why I’m so patient with him but I love him and I like to think he won’t be able to help loving our daughter when he holds her in his arms for the first time.I think Kit might be able to transform his commitment phobia in a way I couldn’t. And I think all three of us will be happier for it in the end.My mum has booked five weeks off work to be my birth partner at the hospital, in case Shiv can’t be there, or doesn’t want to be, and help look after me post-caesarean section.Mum was at the 20-week scan where we found out the baby’s gender, because he couldn’t be. She cried with happiness looking at her granddaughter wriggling about on the screen. ‘It feels so special when your daughter has a child,’ she told me.Her joy makes me feel special, too, maybe in some of the ways she felt when she was carrying me. The fact that we get to do this together is the silver lining in all this.* Names have been changed.