A MUM of seven who abandoned all her children before falling pregnant with an eighth is extremely irresponsible, a federal magistrate says.

The court heard the mother had set a trend of ending relationships and leaving children behind, the Herald Sun reported.

This included four children the woman ditched with their dad before taking up with another man.

The children were told their mother was going on a holiday - that was more than two years ago.

At the time of the court hearing, she had not seen them for seven months and, amazingly, one of her relatives claimed she was "a good mother".

"Nothing could have been further from the truth," the federal magistrate said.

The woman went to the Federal Magistrates' Court to support an application by relatives to spend time with two of her other children, who are both living with their father.

The federal magistrate said a month before the end of the case that none of the woman's seven children were in her care. By the end of the case, one child had moved in with her. Six of the kids remained in the care of their fathers when the federal magistrate handed down his judgment in the case in August.

The judgment was published this month.

The federal magistrate described the mum as "irresponsible in the extreme".

Asked what her four youngest children thought about not having seen her for seven months, the mother replied she did not know and that the lawyer representing the father of two of her other children could ask them.

"It was an incredible answer, indicative of any lack of appreciation whatsoever of the hurt that she had occasioned upon these four young children and, of course, in other ways upon the two children the subject of these proceedings," the federal magistrate said.

"The mother's behaviours in relation to this matter have been nothing short of appalling and while they may ... be able to be explained as a result of issues with her mental health and drug use, it is the mother and no one else who can remedy that."

He said the relatives who made the court application "set out, determinedly, to disparage and ridicule the father and his partner" and lacked appreciation for what he had done for the children because the mother was unwilling or unable to do so. He ordered that the relatives see the children only with the prior agreement of the father.