Waiting to try to conceive

Just to add on to that message ......if we are lucky enough to have a big family Im a student paed nurse (nearly qualified yay!) so am fully aware of the many complications that can occurr. I'm a planner though so I just can't help thinking about it already
spottypyjamas it seems we are in a pretty similar situation I'm waiting to be financially stable and in a new job, currently looking at the moment so that I can hopefully have one waiting for me as soon as I qualify (Aug 2012) , OH is also having a career change and is about to do a hgv driving course so come the summer we should be a lot better off financially and moved into a new home that we plan to buy........but I feel so impatient even though I know its the right thing to do.
I have single friends but also have a friend who is pregnant and another who is TTC , and I have to admit I'm jealous .... neither have put any thought into it and had literally one day just decided ''yeah lets have a baby'' the pregnant one is in same situation as me however she is not a student they rent a flat and live off her DH wage and I have to wait and I have been longing for one for what feels like forever ....sorry if that sounds awful and I sound like a spoilt brat :(

Well all this talk and Ive always wanted a big family say around........5!Well we can't even have one yet so should really see how that goes first ....although I have told OH from day one that I want a big family and he has always been cool going along with it I hope when it actually comes to it he will still be the same. To be fair he's the laid back one and I'm the complete stress head so we shall see how it goes

Well I didn't get my last depo which was due to run out around Christmas day. I was spotting and bleeding after my second jab but it all stopped around the time the depo ran out and nothing since, had bad ovary pain last week though! Hoping that against the odds I get a normal cycle fairy quickly, had some period pain backache this morning. So just waiting for my periods to kick back in!

I'm really lucky that after a sulky/quiet spell DH will eventually talk to me about what's on his mind so I get to understand a little bit.

I think I might start the 3 child conversation now despite not even having one yet! I'd always assumed we'd have two if we were lucky enough due to ease - 3 bed house, family car etc but now Awayina has me thinking 3 sounds like a nice number so I might start to condition DH to my thinking now :)

Evilwater sorry to hear it, we can't use every egg, but I know how you feel.

Lottie that makes a lot of sense actually, you sometimes don't realise what weird macho pressures men are under. I guess coming at it from that perspective it's not helpful if your partner has managed to isolate her fertile days, so the pressure is on!

Thereisamum it is really common for women to want a third child and their partner won't. Your partner has made it clear that a more fulfilling love life is important to him at this stage in your lives; no matter how well intentioned you are, you won't be able to maintain the same level of enthusiasm once DC3 comes along. Realistically, is he likely to be willing to consider making some sacrifices in that area of your lives one more time?

You probably know which of you is most likely to get your way on this if you thrash it out and each have your say. If it will probably be him, then far be it from me to suggest an accident, but you appear to currently be in a position where you could engineer an accident without actually having to trick him iyswim. My DH has made it incredibly clear that he will not risk a baby, the only way we could have an "accident" would be if I went to great lengths to deceive him, or if it was genuine (ha!) so I'd caution you that once you make a big issue of it, the window of opportunity you appear to have now may be firmly closed.

Anecdotally on here, it seems many women do feel complete after DC3, or at least can better resign themselves to it being the last.

Lottie, I think you may have a point. I have decided that I will give it x months (not sure what x equals yet but it will be less than 6). Then I will be happy regardless and I'll know that I tried my very hardest to convince him so no regrets. I know I am being simplistic and part of me will always think what if, but at least I'll start to look forward and get on with other projects.

You sound more in control of your situation than I am of mine.

Chemise, being a book fanatic, I would take an in-house library as reasonable compensation for not being allowed to ttc dc3!

Well that's another month wasted.
Men are diffently not ruled by hormones. They can be insenvative jerks, but there you go.
They do not have that ticking clock, noisily in the background. Which by the way is driving me NUTS

Ew

Chemise don't worry, it's easy for anyone to forget about The Plan momentarily and absentmindendly say something like "this could be a library", it doesn't necessarily mean he's changed his mind. As men aren't being driven to TTC at gunpoint by their hormones, I guess it slips their minds most of the time, and it's a big deal to us when they forget. Maybe he didn't want to forget the whole conversation, but not necessarily forget TTC iyswim?

It depends, have you always discussed having three or has it been after you've had your first two. If he'd always assumed you were just having two maybe he's looking forward to having his wife back as kids are growing up rather than going back to sleepless nights and nappies x

Hi All,

I am an on/off lurker in this thread.

My brief history is that I am WTTC DC#3. Have been trying to convince DH for about 2.5 years now (DS is 6 and DD is 4) and he has varied from being completely against it with a passion, to 'saying' he would go for it for my sake but then changing his mind when it actually came to doing to the deed.

6 months ago I decided to have a break from the issue for 6 months to see how we both felt after the time off discussing it all the time. 6 months on, I still feel as strongly and broached the subject with him again over Christmas. After a lot of discussion, he said he wasnt happy with our love life (usual story - 2 DCs, DH work FT, me working PT and launching a business so no time and energy to invest in the bedroom). I asked him if the love life issue was the stumbling block ( worried that if it's bad when we have 2 DC that it would get worse with another DC). He said it was.

So we have both made an effort. It hasn't felt like a duty, after all I wanted a better love life too!

So now I am choosing to assume that this means we can start TTC. Sorry about TMI but we did DTD without protection the other night but not sure if for DH it was a one-off. Daren't ask him the question because I don't want to hear an answer I don't like. So we will see how that goes.

My main question is - if DH doesn't come round, at what point do I give up and get on with my life? For my own sanity, at some point I will need to have a word with myself and decide that it's not going to happen and that I need to learn to accept that I can be happy without DC3.

I keep reminding myself that I have a lot to be grateful for - DS, DD, happy marriage apart from baby issue etc. I am generally a happy and content person - appreciate life and live in the moment quite a lot. I refuse to let this issue take that away from me so I will need to make the break at some point where I accept that DC3 isn't goign to happen and that life will still be full of joy regardless. Just maybe not exactly the way I had planned it.

Has anyone set themselves a target date/point/situation at which point they will throw the towel in?

Sensibly, I should decide that I will work on bedroom issues together with DH and if they remove the obstacle to TTC, then great, otherwise just give up and enjoy new improved marriage. Maybe I should give it another 2-3 months?

Help!

Evening all. DH and I are complete reversals. He is ready to start a family now (and even asked if he could have a couple of "russian roulettes" in January) but I am the one who is imposing the delay until June because I do all the finances, plus I'm the one that has to take time out of work and put my body through pregnancy etc (which I really don't mind and am totally ready for, just not until the end of spring). Now we have agreed a start date I can't think about anything else, I'm so excited BUT despite his initial excitement, my DH refuses to talk about it and get excited or discuss plans. I kept getting really confused as one minute he seemed excited when we discuss our future plans but when I try to talk about the details he clams up. I finally got to the bottom of this and, it may only be my DH, but his reluctance to talk or plan comes down to his fear that he will be infertile!!! He says he feels a little bit of pressure that men are expected to turn up and just "do the job" but no one knows even if we are able to have children so he worries that we'll get our hearts set on it then he won't be able to produce the 'goods' or it will take years. There is a family history of struggling to conceive on his side and we had always assumed it was the women but then his sister fell pregnant the first month she tried despite always thinking she could never have a baby so that has now left my DH with the fear that it might be him! Therefore DH feels he has to balance out of my excitement but thinking realistically. (Hope that made sense, I started to waffle once my fingers got going!)

Hello again to all- massive sympathies with everyone struggling with their partners' reluctance. Like everyone else, mine has seemed quite on board with the idea and indeed broody, deliberately making space for children, etc. with the caveat that a few things need to be sorted out first but then just this weekend he seems to have had a full reversal. We bought a house with a spare bedroom for children and now he's talking about turning it into a library- about which I am UTTERLY horrified as I eg: changed jobs to have an easier commute for if/when I am pregnant, made various decisions based on the idea I would be having a baby soon (moving to a more stable, if less interesting, part of the sector I work in, etc.) and now I have the horrible feeling he is totally off the idea. Which is pretty much a dealbreaker, if it's the case. Tried talking to him about it last night but he announced it "wasn't a healthy thing to talk about" and changed the subject.

I suspect he's just gone a bit wobbly about it- I kind of think males don't always realise that it takes AGES to make a baby. I mean, even if we got a BFP on the first cycle (unlikely) and everything went perfectly then we'd have three quarters of a year to sort things out.

Sorry about the rant, have been feeling very down about it for the past few days.

That's nothing compared to how smug I used to be about foolish women who leave TTC to their late 30s!

"More of a dream than a plan" - Sounds familiar Muffin :)

Whenever we used to watch self-builders on TV struggling with pregnancy and muddy DCs running around the site, we'd be all "as IF you'd ever do it with small children" and "Why do they always get pregnant before its finished - the fools" smug in the knowledge that our build would be complete long before DCs were even thought about.

Pfft.

Amen to that!

It must be extra tough being so isolated abroad, the "stuck" feeling must seem really magnified. They don't seem to get that life isn't some infinite timeline that we can just stretch out for as long as we like, till this magical utopia is reached when its the 'perfect time' for DCs.

At least you're over the first hurdle of actually pressing on him that you even want to start a family, I'm not even there yet.

Good luck and fingers crossed.

Wow ViviPru, its like im reading something from my own situation....

Its crap to read someone else is struggling too but someway it provides a little peace in my heart that im not the only nutcase out there.

My hubbie and I were doing long distance for 4 years before we got married ( insert lunatics, crazy in love etc), before which he survived a very scary, near death cancer episode of 1 very long year where i gave up a year of uni to nurse him to health and he gave up his entire intestine literally! But we figured, hey, we have been through this cancer shit, we can do this long distance stuff. We got married and i moved over to the middle east to where he has been working since the cancer episode ( am presently in the ME as i type, so my isolation is more adept as have zero friends out here ( feeling very sorry for myself lately sorry).

Anywho, 6mths into marraige he quits to start the business and promptly sits on his blooody arse for 10/12 months and only in the past 6 months has he actively been doing something about it. Now its just about ready to go, its an online busienss, so it should ( knocking on wood) be ready to go in 6/8 weeks, once investors jump on board. Then hopefully money will start coming in and he will be more confortable with the idea of it all.

In the mean time, i had only been in the damn middle east 6 months, taken a job and now am stuck as i cant exactly move around jobs while im the only earner, paying mortgages( an appt he bought that im now paying off due to damn recession) and rent where we live, car loans and the usual stuff. So my career is stuck.

I'm not massively upset that my career has halted as im in finance so its quite a flexible job etc but im so bored shitless in my present job and no growth in the job that im just bored at it you know.....

So, i have to wait for his business to take off, earn some cash for him to feel ok bout me getting pregnant, even though i wont even be quitting my job as im the main earner etc etc. Its so stupid.

Even with this, im trying to scrimp and save small bits, even up to 300 a month of savings for my 'baby fund' as i call it, and he knows that i wont ever give him that savings. Its only for the 'baby'. He knows that!! I pay and support us for everthing else but any leftover cash at the end of the month goes for the imaginery baby

I pray that this bloody business gets a move on so that he can get a move on so that we can get pregnant FAST. I am so sick of waiting on him.. esp since he was sitting on his ass for so long just literrally doing nothing at home, and when id get home from work, id have to cook and clean etc, he would have done nothing. God, i nearly chewed my tongue off trying not to shout and scream at him. GRRRR
So i turned to my trusty friend...

Anwyay. I hope that all our DH can bang their heads together this 2012 and MOVE THEIR ARSES.....

My plan after finishing university was to get a job, save for a couple of years whilst living with my parents, then self-build a small place nearer to OH's family in Yorkshire, before getting married and starting a family. But the economic troubles started during my final year at uni, so it's more of a dream than a plan now.

Currently my OH earns enough to contribute to groceries at home, and to visit his family twice a year for his birthday and christmas. (Although a recent promotion means we may actually have £200 to save this month )

Yes, I guess I hadn't thought about it that way. Although DPs redundancy was more due to his director being a fraudulent, tax evading, deluded, selfish arse bit unorthodox in his business practices than the effects of the recession. And the length of time it has taken DP to establish his business is solely attributable to his perfectionism and painstaking approach

But our domestic situation has definitely been affected, we're about 20K in negative equity which certainly doesn't lend itself to making you want to throw caution to the wind and throw a couple of DCs into the mix when only one of you is generating an income...

Glad to read on this thread that you're settled and happy in the new job now, AC

Vivipru that ties in with what Muffin was saying, the credit crunch has a lot to answer for. It's at least part of the reason why I was trapped for so long in a job I hated, and it's certainly the reason we still don't own our own home (a real concern of DH).

Hello everyone. Hoping to join you all if that's OK?

I've been reading throught the thread, so nice to know so many people are feeling the same way as me, you start to think you're the only one don't you.

Some introduction... I'm 25, recently married. Wanted children always really. Hubby not quite as obsessed as me, he's pretty laid back. He says things though that makes me know he's excited, like at xmas he was saying there might be us 2 and a bump next year :). Most of my friends are still either single/dating and not really at the same stage as me. My sensible head is making us wait until June time, reasons being financially things will look a little brighter then and also if all goes to plan (i'm aware this isn't always the case) but a baby in warmer weather would be nice.

I've been taking the pill for 10 years and stopped it 4 months ago. Periods REALLY irregular, so hoping over time that will settle down. In the mean time i'm a bit of a hormonal mess, feeling like a spotty teenager again :(

Trying to plan things in the next few months (cheap things to save the pennies!) to distract myself from having to wait until June.

Lovely to meet you all! x

Hi all, not been around for a while but good to read everyones updates.

I just wanted to jump on to say hi to freckly, and say you're not alone in your situation with your DH as mine is very similar

DP and I have been together 8 years and have shared a dream to self-build, so that has always been #1 priority before anything else. Once that was sorted, the other major life steps would follow (although the post-self-build plans have always been sketchy at best - we've never discussed marriage or starting a family, other than him insisting he's not ready for kids whenever OPC visit!)

2.5 years ago we set a deadline of April 2012 to have the funds in place and to have found a plot. Then a year into the plan (which was all on-track) DP was made redundant and decided to set up his own business. I have always been in full support, but like you was not expecting it to take this long to get it up and running. He's now been in the process of building the business for 13 months (although he didn't start in earnest until about 10 months ago as we had the small matter of an employment tribunal to deal with).

I feel like our entire life has been on hold. The 30-Month Plan (as we called it) has completely gone out of the window. The money I'd previously been saving each month has been going towards supporting us while he has no income, and of course he's not been able to save. The only thing we've discussed and agreed on is that we would now prefer to do the self-build much later down the line when we can do it with a healthy budget rather than the absolute minimum we'd been planning.

So now we're at the point where the business is starting to take off. Website, supply chain, and manufacture is all in place and he has his first major client meetings all lined up for the next two weeks. He knows I'm chomping at the bit "to get on with our lives" but I don't think he realises that for me, that means marriage and starting a family. We've never had that conversation. I don't think there would be any point before now as my being self employed means no Mat leave and while he's been setting up the business, it would have been completely insane to think about changing our circumstances so dramatically.

Its all feeling a bit like limbo-land right now. I'm 33 in two months and really feel like I can't delay things for very much longer. I've seriously considered an 'accident' too, freckly. At Christmas, I ran out of the pill and missed 3 days, he was aware of this. We used other methods, but it would have been easy to 'forget'. I couldn't bring myself to though, as I really want this to be a joint decision, I want it to be an adventure we both set out on together, with our eyes open.

I know we really need to have a frank conversation about where we're going. But I know I just have to be patient that bit more until he's invoiced his first few jobs and is feeling more secure. I've started the conversation in my head countless times. But I'm quite unsure as to what his reaction/stance is going to be... [fear]

Argh, not a good day for broody rockchick here... Having a big massive sort out of ds's clothes as still got everything he's ever worn shoved in the floor wardrobe. Well, I came across a pair of pj's that I remember going out to buy when he was a few days old as I had bought mostly age 0-3 months (he was predicted to be big) and they were massive so had to make an emergency trip to tesco! Next thing I found was a t-shirt age 12-18 months that dh went and got the following day as we had some vouchers and he thought he may as well buy stuff that wouldn't fit for ages.

Well, holding those in each hand, I ended up sobbing because DS is now in 9-12 months but it only feels like 5 minutes ago that we bought both of those items... I know, it's sad of me, but I just can't believe he's nearly out of babyhood and is becoming a toddler, I really can't wait to start trying for another baby! I love DS so much and can't wait to share that with another baby as well!

Good rant! You took the words out of my mouth!

Yeah mine does like to know whats happening but he is more selfish, he likes to do what he wants, when he wants and its my fault too cos i give in and go along with it.

But for the first time,im putting my foot down and stomping my foot and not letting this go and i dont think he likes it one bit, plus he has the control over it by the fact that he just avoids me like the plague.

God forgive me but i did consider even letting an 'accident\ happen cos i know that when we do get pregnant, (ok so he will make a crap person to take care of me when i am pregnant as its like pulling teeth for him to get me a cuppa tea now)but by the time the baby arrives, he will be a superb dad.
So i will be brave and admit the thought crossed my mind bout having an 'accident' but to be honest, its not worth the grief from him when i tell him im pregnant, plus i want us to both want this baby etc etc. But i dont want to get to a stage where i am resenting him so much...

In my mind i am giving him a deadline until July, to get his bloody business sorted out, cos after that, its just being ridiclous but in all reality, there isnt much i can do.
I hate this!!
I hope by July the business will have taken off and then it wont be so scary to him but right now,its still an 'idea' so i understand that he feels he cant provide for the kid and for me, and he has been supoprted by me for 2years now, which he doesnt seem to mind but obv isnt ideal when a kid comes along...

I just hate that i have to wait for him, plus i have no one to talk to as no friends are going through this and no one would understand. So im on these websites trying to find some solace, wondering if its making it worse or not.
I know ppl say, 'oh dont nag him, leave him alone til he is ready' well you know what, fuck off, you try waiting for so long for soemthing you are DYING for, and your DH KNOWS how desperate you are but still purpously delays with some bullshit excuse, which changes every few months.... i cant fucking keep quiet!

Ok moan over! Sorry