The DNA test sent us both reeling, although it was no surprise.
We had spent five months fighting to get it done. We were almost certain my partner was the baby's father, but we were thwarted every step of the way, told not to try to break up a young family.
Wanting to know if a child is your daughter is apparently a dastardly thing. It was sickening, we were told, to want to know the truth and have the opportunity to form a relationship with your child.
We broached it as gently as we could with her family, and her new partner's family, simply because she had stonewalled us for months. We hoped one of them, just one, would implore her to do the right thing. We were met with death threats and other such behaviour.
We have five kids between us, now six. We work hard, provide for them, love them to pieces. We pay our taxes. We still don't know my partner's baby daughter, my step-daughter. She is six months old - her parents' relationship ended in the week she was conceived - and the legal system allows her mother to fob us off and procrastinate.
It is an inevitability that we will meet her, know her, help raise her, and show her what a beautiful, loving family looks like.
But her mother, who has lied and deceived, gets to set the agenda. Gets to stall time and time again. Hiding the pregnancy was bad enough, but she has added insult to injury by delaying DNA testing, and is now doing all she can to stall even initial contact.
It's been a roller coaster. And we have cried more and cussed more than we probably ever thought we could.
We keep reminding ourselves it's a long game. But I think we've both changed, in a sad kind of way. We both thought so much more of people. We've lost some of the faith in humanity we once had. And I know at times my partner, the father of this child we ache to meet and know, feels like he is nothing, he has no rights, and is nobody to the system.
I'm pretty sure there is no point in compulsory family dispute resolution with someone who shows no interest in even allowing the other parent to meet their child, let alone co-parent.
And in any event, that process should not delay initial contact. The system built to help ex-partners agree out of court about parenting matters post-separation seems ill-equipped to recognise and deal with less common and dysfunctional situations. Where one parent seems hell bent on denying another contact, why should family dispute resolution be required?
If there are safety concerns, contact can be supervised. But there is no reason a loving, decent, role-model citizen should be prevented from or indefinitely delayed in even meeting their child. Where is the common sense override in the system?
We are all the stronger for going through this. Our love and relationship is more solid than the day before this hit the fan, when we were blissfully unaware and didn't know what was about to unfold.
But we're still in a tunnel, with no apparent light, just with the warmth of our love, and the support of our equally appalled and shocked families.
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