AIBU to leave DH and start a family?

I have been in a kinda similar situation to you, but I was much older and had my child in my 40's. The only regret I have is that I wish I made the decision in my 30's. Single parenting is very hard, the sheer exhaustion of having to do absolutely everything by yourself from night feeds to cooking and cleaning and making all the decisions by yourself. To begin with I was paralysed with fear when it came to making some decisions because I was so scared of making wrong decisions. The things that have made the difference for me is that I bought my own home before i had my child, have a stable career with a good income, have a wonderful village that has stepped in when I've been too ill to care for my child. I've also become very very organised and just do the best I can. I haven't regretted having my child!, even though it is very challenging. I've reasoned that you choose your hard. I know that I would have been filled with so much regret had I not tried to become a mother, I would have become incredibly bitter and angry so I choose the hard single parent road instead. My child is a joy, has challenges but had made life for me and my extended family so much more joyful. I'm happy to discuss more with you, although I can't seem to PM at the minute. Good luck OP

Not nuts at all

i was married. Had lots of private costly ivf and 5th round finally worked and have mini blondes who is my world !!

she is almost 8

last year I became a single parent - his actions but my choice and to say I’ve had enough

I didn’t expect to be a single parent
and yes it’s bloody hard work

but she is my world and I have no regrets about having her and every single day even now I count my blessings that I’m a mum v some friends who aren’t mums and wanted to be and now in mid 40’s it’s too late for them

a lot of woffle but trying to say I thought I would be happily married for years and dd living with both parents - but hasn’t ended that way

so do it alone. Ivf or iui or sd May not work - hopefully it will

You will have regrets if don’t try

My best mates sister was 39, single and wanting children so went through IVF (2 rounds - pretty bloody gruelling especially being on her own) but now has a 2 year old daughter who is absolute light of her life. I don’t know her well so 2nd hand knowledge but from what I’ve heard….. she has a strong local network of friends a couple of which are single and childless who have been invaluable support - physically being there to drive her to the hospital when she was in labour, stay over if she was struggling, babysitting and meal making. Her sister (my mate) lived a bit further away and had her own family to look after but in the first 3-4 months would go and stay with her one night a week most weeks and was on the phone to her A LOT. Initially going back to work was tough (at 7 months so quite early) and juggling was hard but actually once they’d settled into a routine life did then get much easier and she started to enjoy being a mum a bit more. I’m not sure when or how long for exactly but I know she paid for a night nanny at some point around going back to work when neither were sleeping much and also had someone every other day for the first few weeks and has a cleaner so I assume financially is pretty secure (& job would suggest decent income)

sorry long ramble but in summary, go for it but make sure you’ve got a good reliable support network behind you and ideally sufficient funds to bring in help when needed. On the flip side, I have a friend now in her 50’s who stayed with her husband in similar circumstances to you but he left her 2 years ago and has since had a baby with his mistress - she is broken as you can imagine so please don’t be that person.

I think you’re going to resent your husband if you remain childless with him until it’s too late. And I’d be worried about his attitude —- how come his medical “ knowledge” out ranks that of a consultant? He’s not being honest about why he doesn’t want children.

@LionME I am adopted, so I know what it is like to not know what your genetic background is. The rules were changed around adoption as it was known to have an impact on children not knowing their birth parents. The rules were then changed about sperm donors as again it is now known the impact that can have on resultant children (no more students popping down to the sperm bank to booster their funds)

The OP is all about her desire to have a child and what it is like to be a single parent. Not one thought about what it might be like for a child created by sperm donor

The timing is really confusing - I'm glad it's not just me!

My Ds is now almost 20yo.

i was in a relationship with his dad for years before we decided to have a child together

lazy fucker did nothing to help parent his son and in some occasions actively made my life harder than it needed to be.

its hard at times, but if you go into this knowing its on you, and potentially only you, your head is in a different place.

@spottedinthewild you absolutely can do this!

go ahead with the sperm donor option asap if that’s what you want and your DH can decide to get on the bus or get out of your way.

part of me would be raging at your dh if he were mine, so you raise someone else’s kid, but you won’t have one with me.

honestly, that bloke has issues. You’re best off out of it tbh.

I am sometimes annoyed by the way parenting is often reduced to wiping up poo and vomit. That's two years of parenting at the most. That's the easiest bit!
In your place, OP, I would leave and find someone else.

@spottedinthewild was his previous partner/wife much older than him? sorry, but getting confused because you say you go together in your 20's but has has an adult step daughter! he cant have been with her mother very long even though she sees him as her dad?

That’s fine as long as you know the reality of what you’re getting into. It will be very, very hard. Worth it of course, but hard.

Definitely do it. Not getting what you want out of a relationship will kill it stone dead anyway. You have to make yourself happy - nobody else is going to do it.

He doesn't want a child. If you do, then you leave.

If you'd like to learn about how being donor conceived and/or having a solo parent impacts children, I recommend any of the research carried out by the Donor Conception Network and the books "We Are Family" by Susan Golombok and "Raising Boys Without Men" by Peggy Drexler. I think it's important to speak from a place of knowledge and education on these issues not just make sweeping assumptions

I'm a solo mum by choice, it's really not hard. I think it'll be harder to be with someone who doesn't want to parent, as your expecting them to help so makes it harder if they don't. When you go into parenthood on your own, you know its all on you. I've now got two children, 3 years and nearly 3 months, currently on maternity leave.

It’s so uncommon for a twenty something to have the snip, that I wonder if in fact he is infertile. Maybe that is part of him stonewalling ?
If he definitely has had a vasectomy , it’s still very strange to suggest adoption when you are fertile. Is he most worried about the procedure he would have to go through ?
Whatever is going on he needs to be totally honest with you now. You’ve spent nearly four years, all your thirties, wanting a baby and that isn’t going to just go away. So some properly honest conversations. I was actually in a very similar situation. I was late thirties and DH wasn’t sure about a baby, he’s younger than me, he didn’t feel “ready” etc. I loved him but I did reach the point where I felt I would have to leave him, as I knew he would want a baby at some point, but that it might then be too late for me, and that I would hate him for it. I decided to give him six months (stupid at my age at the time really) without me mentioning babies, for him to work out what he wanted. In our case it was ok. He thought about why he was worried, and we got married, and luckily I got pregnant very quickly with my dc , at 40 and 42.
I do still occasionally feel resentful that I had our dc so late though. I would rather have had them earlier, got more time with them. It’s one of those things where it is impossible to have a compromise unless you both want a baby and are just trying to decide on timing . Tell your DH you won’t change in your desire for a baby, ask why he has strung you along for four years, why he agreed initially to adoption (in itself really strange, adopting , quite rightly, is a much more difficult and demanding process).
Then decide what you want to do.
I am curious though, why adoption ? I feel there are things here that don’t add up at all, that he isn’t telling you something. That there is something else, other than the actual baby, that is the problem. A deep rooted phobia, a trauma, infertility, something.

Would you consider adoption?

I don’t know what your spinal injury is but pregnancy can physically be very difficult.

You then will be carrying around a baby, as well as cooking, cleaning, mowing the lawn etc

Many mothers strain their backs by constantly lifting up the baby and that’s without a previous spinal injury.

If you adopt then you won’t be putting your body through the pregnancy, which may be more suitable for you.

It also means you can have more than 1 child, which I think it’s important if you’re going to be a single parent.

(I am a single parent to 1 child and I feel incredible guilt that they only have me and no siblings).

A few people have said it's hard as a single parent, which I imagine it is. It's tough enough with two sometimes. But you do need to follow your own heart. If having a child is the be all and end all, your relationship isn't going to thrive if one of you is the total opposite.

However, I'd temper that by saying you really need to think very hard about what you'll do if TTC with another person or IVF doesn't work. Will it feel as if you've thrown things away or can you settle your mind to that if it happens? IVF, as well as TTC naturally, carries no guarantees. Would you be able to settle, alone or with someone else, if you discovered you couldn't have children or it just didn't happen? What if a new person wants kids but can't produce? How are you going to know in advance that this wonderful new partner, who you also fall in love with, can, potentially, produce a child?

We had IVF for our DS. Ours was due to unexplained infertility (i.e no obvious reason why) so sometimes, whilst fertility levels are fine, as in our case, things just don't gel to produce a child naturally. It still took two attempts of IVF for me to get pregnant. And IVF shouldn't be approached as a walk in the park. Depending on what needs to be done, it can be intrusive (internals, egg harvesting etc) and painful (I had to inject myself in the stomach to stimulate the eggs ready for harvesting) and you need to take a range of drugs depending on what type of IVF you're having. I'm assuming you've looked into IVF and understand all that?

You have to follow your heart - it sounds like your relationship with your DH isn't working, he doesn't seem very supportive TBH. But, whilst the grass CAN be greener, I hope it is, it doesn't always work out like that. You need to be pragmatic and think that through or you'll drive yourself insane.

Good luck whatever the future brings you.

You want different things and if your desire for children is that strong, I don't see how you can stay together without resentment tearing you apart. Your step daughter having children won't make this feeling go away for you, it might actually make the longing worse to see someone up close who has what you desperately want.

Do you have much support from family or friends? I'm due with my first baby next month and having a relatively uncomplicated pregnancy but at times it has been really tough and having my partner with me as moral support and looking after me a bit has been invaluable. With the added complication of your spinal injury, I hope you have people around you that can help if you have any issues during pregnancy that make it hard to look after yourself. That goes doubly once baby arrives.

Have you had counselling befute having chikdren to resolve your iwn issues?
No, like most people right.
And yet those unresolved issues will have had a huge impact on your dcs. And you decided to have children wo doing the work first? 😱😱

Of course it has an impact on the child. Just like your iwn upbringing has, the fact one has anxiety or some health issues. Or that you have decided to have a child late in life (so Theyre more likely to be wo a parent very early on) etc etc….
All of us have circumstances that has the potential to be a huge negative impact on the child.
And yet we still have children.

If he had a vasectomy in his twenties that seems like a very loud message he didn’t want children in his future.

I used to be very judgemental of single mothers by choice - until I ended up getting divorced and being a single mother against my choice. Now I can see the before and after effect of having a father in the home I'm convinced having the "wrong" father in the home is worse than having no father at all. If my ex disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow I'm doubtful - at the moment - the children would notice. And I think ultimately- emotionally - it would have been easier on them for me to have used a donor than know they do have a father who has chosen to largely be uninvolved

You have to ask yourself some hard questions about single parenthood, especially via IVF.
Who can help if you have a difficult birth & recovery?
Do you have family support to go it alone? What would happen if you got post natal depression or psychosis and you couldn't look after your baby?
Who is the emergency backstop when baby/child is sick or childcare arrangements go wrong (and they will)?
How flexible and understanding is your employment for time off to deal with sick child or emergencies?
How will you manage financially if child is disabled or needs full time care and you have to give up work? What support do you have to cope with a severely disabled child?
Who would be guardian for your child if you became seriously ill or died before the child is an an adult?
Who can provide a male mentor and presence in child's life?

I was brought up by a single parent and many of her friends faced these dilemmas.

I have a single friend who had a child alone as the father left when she was pregnant and he never met his son (or financially supported him either). She had a really strong network of family, her sister was prepared to take child on if anything terrible happened, and her parents & sisters & their husband looked after him in school holidays. Her Dad & brother in law were strong male role models in his life.
She was a high earner, had already bought a flat before he came along, with a job that allowed some working from home when he was ill, she could afford a childminder rather than nursery and later to cover after school care and even overnights when she had to travel for work. But she was still main caregiver for all the parenting, the difficult broken sleep nights, all the weekends when she seldom got much of a break. It affected her career progression and earnings as she stayed in one job for much longer due to the short commute and flexibility they offered. As an young teen he went through a period of serious depression, alcohol issues, mixing in a "bad crowd", school refusal etc and even with family & friends support that was a very scary time for her.
Overall she doesn't regret it, bit she was very honest that it was a lot harder than she expected. In addition, as a young adult he went travelling, settled down in a European country and has no plans to return to the UK. They are close and she sees him often but it's also not what she expected.

This burning desperation for a baby is hormones speaking. You need to be far more rational about such a huge decision.

I find the hardest part of being a single parent is hostile co-parenting relationship o have with my exH and the impact it has on my Dd.
There is a court agreement forcing her to have more contact with him than she would like and the impact on her happiness has been massive.

If I could now choose to do it with a sperm donor rather than him I'd jump at the chance (obviously in my scenario I wouldn't want him to disappear from DDs life as that would also have negative impact on her forever - it's just so complicated!). But if I could start over with a donor so she didn't need to either have to deal with splitting her time between 2 families when she didn't want to; and without the alternative consequence of abandonment issues, I absolutely would in a heartbeat.

Would you are thinking of would've a much 'cleaner' situation with no toxic ex to deal with for the next 18 years and less impact on the child.

I’d leave and have kids, id resent him too much if I stayed. I’d pay for all the help I could afried and manically preplan my life.