in thinking that lots of you must have had "surprise" pregnancies which were actually secretly deliberate?

[oliviadehavilland]

I have. Twice.

I was (still am!) in a long term relationship. DH wanted children but "not just yet". I very much wanted them, like yesterday, and got fed up of waiting for DP to decide he was ready (it had been several years since I had first proposed trying to conceive).

We had the space and money and I was very sure that he'd be a fantastic father once it was a fait accompli.

So I stopped taking the pill and blamed a tummy upset when I got the "surprise" BFP a few months later. He has never been any the wiser.

Then, two years later I did it again.

DH loves being a father, often says it's the best mistake we ever made - not that that is the point, of course. He would be beyond devastated and furious (rightly) if he were ever to discover my deception.

I'm not defending my actions. They were wrong and deceitful. I calculatedly decided that if I never told a soul (which I haven't, until now, and have namechamed specially) then he'd never know. I made a judgement that it would work out well for us - far better imo than if I'd spent years getting resentful and unhappy at his unwillingness to commit to actively trying to conceive.

I know several women who have had surprise pregnancies due to contraceptive failure etc. None of them has ever said to me that it was deliberate on their part but I reckon that for some (most?) of them it must have been, just like me.

I'm sure that this happens a lot, just no-one ever admits to it. So I'm wondering...are any of you prepared to admit to "tricking" a partner into a pregnancy? Or am I way off beam and in a teeny tiny minority?

Perhaps you should tell him yourself..surely a friend telling him would piss him off all the more??...

Why tell him? What's to be gained?

A friend of mine did this to 'trap' another friend- she was madly madly in love with him- he was on a reboud from an 8 year relationship. He didn't want children until 30. She got pregnant and round at Hers one night she produced a full pill packet and laughed and said 'no wonder I'm in this condition!'
anyway, he freaked out and moved 400 miles away and has spoken to her since she told him- her dd is 6 now.

I feel quite sorry for all of them- for him for being put in this position when I know he is a genuinly nice person, for her for beig so mad about someone she did this, and most of all for her dd who will never know her daddy.

I do think there is a difference between a married woman who's husbands do want children and a silly girl doing it 2 months into a 'fuck buddy' relationship doing it imvho.

Hasn't spoken to her*

I am broody as hell and my partner is not ready for children. Guess what? I respect him; I love him; I just got an implant fitted.

OP, you're despicable.

Needing to trick him twice says it all really

I must abed now (as DC2 will be wake fr a feed soon) so I'm not ignoring any subsequent posts, just snoozing.

it is only the best outcome until he discovers the truth, which has a nasty habit of always coming out. when he discovers the truth and realses you have been lying to him for however many years, will it reall be the best outcome? it is an outcome but not the true outcome.

OK, but what about the hypothetical situation that someone in your position had confided in a friend ?

Seems they would be equally justified in letting the partner know if they felt a positive outcome would result. No ?

agree clairedeloon. clearly the first child still didn't convince him that he wanted children.

All 4 planned; ds1 was planned at an unusual stage of our relationship and I stopped Dh before unprotected sex and said directly 'if I get pg it's a baby not the sports car you;ve been savuing for'

He said he would prefer the baby.

Couldn't be doing with deception.

I just couldn't live with the bollocks...the fakery (I know it's not a bluddy word)..the lies..no matter how happy he was it would be a decietful (sp) happiness..I would have to tell him and bare the consequences..

i understand the desperation OP..but i would just say it straight..'I'm not going to use contraception love, I want a baby'..with the onus of contraception on him.. how long would he last if he loved and desired you and ran out of condoms

well i was going to answer this sensibly about contraception failure. But this seems to be some mad trip but the op to justify what she has done. if you need to go to these extremes to convince yourself what you did is ok because other people do it. It is obviously wrong and you re feeling guilty about it.

I have little respect for dishonest people. Cant bare it, even if the dishonestly is for supposeidly politeness reasons. What you did imo just shows how little respect you have and had for you DH.

Or maybe the fact that she had to do it twice confirms her story that her DH is an indecisive procrastinator.

If he was happy twice to have unexpected babies he can't have found the first one too appalling.

I find the preciousness about the exact timing of children a bit odd.

They were married and planned to have children one day. The OP hastened something her DH wanted anyway.

It wouldn't have been my approach, I prefer direct, but I think the people telling the OP it would be better if her children had never been born are verging on men's prerogative fundamentalism.

Neither of my dds were planned. I don't really get what it means to be married, in your 30s and wanting children, but to not be "ready" yet, especially when your continuing unreadiness is a source of sadness and frustration to your spouse.

Why not just see what happens?

The whole ttc, making big decisions about exactly when to do it, joining a thread about "waiting" to do it. It's all a bit loopy.

I was beyond desperate for a baby for years. I was 20 when I married a none-child-wanting-dh, who was 26.

I didn't think it mattered because I was naive enough to believe that all that mattered was our love & that it would be enough for me.

At 22 I got the serious baby wants. It dominated my life a lot.

Dh still didn't want them.

It would have been SO easy to stop taking my pill & have an 'accident'. But it didn't even occur to me. Plenty told me to do it, but I didn't, because I couldn't betray my dh like that & I couldn't bring an unwanted baby into this world.

He had a turnaround, and at 29 I had dd1. He is the most amazing father. 5yrs later we had dd2.

I am so pleased that I waited for him. I took a huge risk tho, as there was never any guarantee that he'd want them. But knowing he was fully involved in their planning, was to me, a huge thing.

I can't believe how anyone can trick someone into having a baby. And that includes my sister. She got pregnant 'by accident' by her then bf. I knew she was throwing her pill away the didn't flush!

He confessed to me that he was with the wrong person. But he made his bed too, he could have taken precautions. And as much as I love my niece, I wish she wasn't bought into this world under such deceit.

agree with the precise planning aspect what will be will be. But he should have had a choice in the matter. It was the fact that she took away the choice that has upset people not about the timing. She lied about contraception. if she had been honest and given him the chance to chose to use alternative contraception if that was what he wanted, i dont think anyone would have batted and eyelid.

It takes two people to make a baby surely it takes 2 people to make the decision to use contraception.

Mind you there is the spin off. My DH deperatly wants a baby aibu to not tell him i am secretly taking the pill. It could be deemed as less contriverisal in one repect as the woman has to go through the pregnacy but whether it is fair on the dh would be another question.

Surely a realtionship should be built on trust and communication. with both situations how can there be a firm basis to the realtionship. To me they are everything.

it is bad, you are tricking someone who is not ready into the biggest commitment they will ever make , if it were the other way around and someones husband forced them to get pregnant and he was posting it on here there would be an uproar , you are very lucky it worked out for you and you can tell yourself what you did wasnt wrong but it was and i think you know that

For those who forget the pill..I used to never forget.

12ys before having dd1 & the years in between having her & TTCing for dd2, I never forgot 1.

But after dd2 my memory is pretty knackered & I don't trust myself. I can't have the coil (dr advised against it after I had an infection with Mirena) and don't want other forms, as I don't trust what I don't know.

So, I set my alarm on my phone on repeat. Every day it goes off at the same (just as it is now) & I go & take my pill.

Easy.

I think it probably happens more than women admit. I also think it is totally unacceptable. The answer for men is to not have sex unless they are prepared for the result - that's a tad unrealistic though.

OP, if you had split with your DP after your accidental pregnancy, would you have claimed for child support?

I think accidentally on purpose pregnancies are a bad idea, my one friend who did it was divorced not long after (her DS is gorgeous though).

However I just wanted to address the cynicism about condoms splitting - I was with my first boyfriend for years and I would say one in 25 of the condoms we used, split! I was also on the pill so it was ok (we were teenagers and quite keen to avoid babies). Also had another boyfriend where we had a lot of condom trouble with splitting/falling off, some men aren't a standard fit, as it were. Ahem.

I cant believe the genuine moral outrage on here about this subject.....Men just simply faff about when it comes to decisions and sometimes need a nudge in the right direction

I was an unwanted 3rd child. I don't know how my conception came about, but I know my mother didn't want me. She couldn't have an abortion & tried - unsuccessfully - to miscarry me, which possibly resulted in my cleft lip.

I lived, until I was 18 with my mother. It was hell.

I was rejected at birth.

She withheld emotionally from me, never told me she loved me, never showed me she loved me, any time I was upset she would tell me her own stories of woe, she 'attempted suicide' (she didn't take anything, just threw a bottle of paracetamol all over the floor, which I was left to pick up & counted while her bf helped her 'walk it off') when I was 16 as her then boyfriend threatened to leave her, which proved to me how little I meant to her, that she was prepared to 'leave' me for a man, left me in hospital at 9 to wake from a GA on my own, throwing up blood & refused to come back when the nurses called her, saying I was begging for her, refused to help me look after my cleft lip repair, wash it etc.

She never spent any time with me, would simply tell me to 'deal with it' when I was being bullied at school.

She took from me all the time, never had time for me, never taught me to cook etc, took most of my wages from me as soon as I had a job. Stole money from me, threatened to come to the church & destroy my wedding.

Told me, at 16 that she couldn't love me & never wanted me to be born & told me how she tried to bring on a miscarriage.

Finally, while I was staying at dh's aunt house before I emigrated here (Oz) she walked right passed me. Completely ignored me. And called my sister to gloat that she had done so. She knew I was leaving the UK.

Why did she do this? because she was forced to bring me into this world when she didn't want to. I am not saying that I am not grateful for having been born, but I would do anything now for a mother that loves me, that wants to hear about my news, my girls, my wedding day, my struggles. Someone to talk to who understands what is like to be a mother.

As a result of her treatment of me, due to lack of her bonding with me, we haven't spoken since I was 19. That's almost 20yrs.

THAT is what happens when you are forced to bring a child into the world, that you don't want.

It is not up to anyone else to decide when & if a man/woman becomes a parent.

OP, I think, given your situation and your understanding of it, you made a well-considered gamble and won. I don't think you are immoral, and I don't think life is that black and white. If I'd been in your situation I would probably have done the same.

The many strong posts in this thread that say what you did was black-and-white-terribly-immoral surprise me.

I think SPIDOOKLY wrote a very poignant post a page back saying how awful it is that so many woman, craving a baby with their body and soul, are denied what they want. Not only because they might not have a partner to have sex with, but by actually putting the means that stop impregnation in place, often so the man can carry on enjoying consequence-free sex to his heart's content when he has no idea of the emotional agony that a woman who wants a baby bears.
I find that heartbreaking.

It worked out well

Op, you can't say that! Because it hasn't worked out well...so far, it is working out well. You don't know what the future holds, you cannot guarantee that you will never tell your dh/children. So for now, you only have the evidence that all is OK for now

However, I sincerely hope & pray (not for you, for your dc) that they NEVER find out what you did.

The fall out will be horrific!

Interesting.

My now dh was adamant he didn't want children when we first got together. I knew I did. So neither of us took the relationship seriously, until we realised we really did want to be together.

However, I was in my mid-30's and just couldn't bare the thought of never having children so gave him the choice of leaving then before we got too serious.

In the meantime, I had a small pregnancy scare and did a test. I was with a friend (who incidentally later got pregnant with her new partner, and swears she was on the pill at the time), who suggested that perhaps me accidentally falling prengant might be the best solution all round.

It was at that point I realised I could never do that to him. He would never have trusted me (even if it really was accidental!), I doubt our relationship would have survived to be honest.

In the end, I wasn't pregnant that time. A few months later he decided he would stay with me and we would try for children. Thinking, at our age, it would take ages we made a joint decision to merrily throw away the pill packet - and I fell pregnant straight away!

Anyway here I am 5 years and 2 dd's down the line and I am so pleased that he agreed to having children. I honestly think our relationship would not have survived his resentment or suspicion.