I just want his baby, what can I do?

[MandyMarr]

For as long as I can remember DP has been immersed in work. I won’t say what he does as maybe outing but basically he works very hard, very very long hours and I have made many sacrifices for his job while also trying to hold down my own pretty high flying career (not a boast, just trying to emphasise how much effort I have made to support him when I have had my own stuff going on).

In fairness to DP, when we met it was abundantly clear that his job was absolutely central to him. It’s meant I’ve had many evenings in a quiet house, I have holidays with friends mostly, maybe once a year with him and they are short, we will have dates once a week but basically his job is like at third person in the relationship.

He recently brought up children, said he was ready as he’d ever be, joked about wanting to be a stay at home dad (he definitely wouldn’t be!) and said he’d be happy if we had an accident. He is absolutely not the type to plan something like this, he flies into panic when I mention ANY sort of planning. He’s said before when tipsy that he wouldn’t want to ‘try’ for a child as this would cause him stress and anxiety, he would rather it just happened. He’s made this clear a lot.

I really want to have a family. I’m fully aware he will be a great dad but I will be left to do the leg work. I’ve always known this. I am ok with it.

Do I just become lax with contraception? All I can think about now is a child but I know if I have a formal ‘let’s try’ chat he will fly into panic and obsess over it and it will be very very stressful. But I’m also sick of taking every stage of our relationship so slowly when ultimately he makes it clear that he wants me and a child and a future.

Thoughts? I’m feeling so fed up tonight.

I'm a modern social worker so maybe biased!
But honestly I think there are more negatives than positives in this particular situation.
It is better to have two committed but low income parents rather than high income but disengaged ones.
I would suggest it is better to start with one single committed parent rather than one parent who is already struggling to communicate with the other.
It is okay if one adult wants to run their life around another but this isn't a healthy way to raise a child.

That isn't to say that OP and her DP couldn't successfully raise a dc but they need to be able to clearly communicate and they should start before trying for a dc.

I just find this really patronising. sorry.

Come on OP, you just wanted everyone to agree to have an ‘accidental’ baby.

Don’t.

Tell DP that age is not on your side and you want to start trying for a baby in the next three months. You can start a negotiation from there.

What sort of a relationship is this where you can’t be honest about this?

I don’t know either @Alcemeg but I have no experience of ASD so I’ve stayed well away from that topic in any of my comments because it would almost certainly be wrong.

I agree with you, women have, by large, done the bulk of the parenting throughout history and we’ve thrived as a species; I suppose I wanted to respond specifically when OP said ‘it can’t be that terrible because so many women do it’ and I wanted to highlight, it can be. But I’m still here because I am procrastinating 😂

@FTEngineerM I knowww! It could be fraught with danger. But isn't having a kid fraught with danger? Because your husband is an arsehole. Because you have no money. Because you don't really care for your child and accidentally got pregnant when pissed.

This seems a very very very OK situation compared to lots. Maybe not ideal, but hey. What is ideal?

I look around me and see (with my judgey little eyes) billions of people who should never have had kids, if going by high standards. Am I going to stop them? No. OP's situation sounds pretty good on some fairly crucial levels.

Oh for sure, me too. But I think if those people were on MN asking for advice, we'd probably tell them that too .

I agree OPs situation isn't awful, or rather, it could easily be much more awful. Neither of them are abusive or addicts so they're doing better than many. The only point I've made on this thread is that OP should be prepared to end up a single parent (as that's often easier than being a "single parent in a relationship with your child's father") and consider if that's still what she wants, as she seems to enjoy her life and love her partner a lot right now.

Can only speak for myself but I had a whole rake of "daddy issues", especially as a teen, that I can now see stemmed from feeling abandoned as a child and resulted in questionable expectations of men. And I'm not sure what difference Dad choosing work versus Dad choosing drugs would have made. Both make it clear how little you are worth to men. It could have been worse, of course, (I'm convinced him staying would have been much worse!) but it's not only "the worst" situations that create problems for future children.

@winched I get where you're coming from! But actually, my daddy issues come from him being over-engaged. I'd much rather he had taken no notice of me, especially during my teenage years 😋

this is what I'm saying, really: what is the ideal situation? I honestly don't see why the OP and her partner are disqualified from having children because they don't tick all the boxes on some 21st-century scale. 😎

Patronizing or not if you aren't even able to talk about having a baby together without panic setting in then you are miles from where you need to be to raise a dc together.
There are plenty of crappy parents, not sure that is reason to not care if your dc is also in a crappy situation.
Dc are pretty resilient and cope with most things but it isn't surprising if people on this thread have pointed out OP's situation isn't great.
I'm inclined to agree OP might be better off starting as a single parent from the get go and not someone already bending their life out of shape to suit their partner.

I don't think anyone is trying to be patronising, we're just trying to point out (from either personal experience or from the situations of our friends or relatives) how difficult it can be if your children have ASD as there is a higher risk if one or both parents have it. Also how it can be easy to resent a partner if you are struggling with the children and they are always working, whilst you need support and you aren't getting it. You never know what it will be like. It may be easy, it may be very difficult. I have one very easy child, and one child who needs much more support. Looking after them is worlds apart. If I was in OPs situation with my easier child, it would be fine, life wouldn't change that much. With my other child who needs more support, I would find it incredibly hard and I would need my partner's support on an emotional and practical level. I wouldn't be able to factor in my partner's needs, as OP currently does as I'd be far too busy giving the additional support to my child who needs it.

[quote MandyMarr]@LivingLaVidaCovid no I don’t have a spare 300k but I have 20k left on a mortgage that I could pay off at any time, I have two rental properties with an income, a wealthy family who would be there IF needed. As I said, it’s not massively wealthy but to be honest, I’d have to be extremely poor to not consider this because of money. Yes money helps but my god... life is too short!! If I spent the next 50 years planning for this in a precise perfect way, even then it wouldn’t be perfect!

I think the thing that has amazed me about this thread is that people seem keen to tell me it’s terrible and hard on a regular basis. I know that, not first hand but I know that my entire world will be different and hard and relentless. I still want this with DP. I don’t actually care about fancy holidays and trips and spare cash and nights out and peaceful evenings in the bath. Yes, I may look back and think if only I could have a night to myself. But believe me when I say I have indulged myself in life for a long time, I’m quite happy to give all that up for a family.[/quote]
Parenting is HARD, there is no question about that, but its also easy and average and complicated and strange and hilarious and tiring - in all honest - exactly what you make it! I had 3 easy children and 1 "hard" one - you cannot predict what kind of child you will have, you cannot predict what kind of parent you or your partner will be, or what kind of grandparents yous parents will be.

The only predictable thing about the above is its unpredictability.

People have children in all kinds of situations and cope. I don't understand some of the more negative comments you have received here, I may be naïve myself, but I think you should do what the hell you (and your partner) want. No one here can tell you what it will be, the naysayers wont be correct, neither will the yaysayers. What they can do is tell you what it was like for them - and you make your own judgement - you know your dp better than anyone.

If you were my daughter, I would however recommend marriage before children - unless you can be 100% sure that if anything happened to your partner you would be protected.

(in all honest I found being a parent of 4 pretty average except for when the DH went away for a few months at a time the first time it was a huge shock but ok and the second time was a cakewalk, now they are mostly adults its a little more scary)