maternity prostitute - continued

[curlychips]

Hi everyone

Firstly, thank you so much to everyone who offered advice on my previous thread ('H thinks I'm a lazy, gold-digging prostitute for wanting a year's maternity leave'); I asked MN to remove the thread because I revealed a large amount of personal information and became worried someone from RL would identify me. Apologies if I didn't reply to later posts - I think MN removed the thread before I read them.

So, since then, I have been feeling extremely wobbly as the overwhelming view (ok, unanimous) was that H is a twat.

Based on a recommendation from kenobi, I have just emailed a counsellor - I'm hoping she can help me with the massive anxiety of walking away from a marriage and from TTC with IVF in a few months. I thought my life had a plan and now it seems like everything might be up in the air.

I need to know whether this is my only chance to conceive - I know it will be grim having a baby with H, but surely better than having no baby at all, ever. If the endo gets into my womb, I am well and truly screwed.

I don't even know whether I actually want a baby now or not. I did, but now I associate it with fear and anxiety - H has made me feel like having a baby ruins your life, plunges you into poverty, traps you at home forever (although I actually like being at home), ruins your body etc. I don't care if I stop being a size 8, but he is waving around the implicit threat that he won't want to have sex with me any more if I am over a size 8. Charming.

Also the thought of meeting new men makes my chest hurt. I am only 27 so should get a grip, but I find the whole prospect extremely daunting!

So, how do I cope with this? Also, does having a baby really ruin your life?!

What's his relationship with his ex wife, the mother of his existing two children, like? Not good I wager?

Do you want that for yourself and your children? Thought not.

Have you left him yet?

as someone who has been down the infertility rollercoaster, I think it no excuse at all to leave your common sense by the back door

get a grip

OP - I think having a baby with someone who really doesn't want one - and who is treating you like H treats you probably would only give rise to fear and anxiety. And if you do decide to separate from him it could potentially be a nightmare - as others have said.

But in a "normal" relationship, children do change life, you have to take their needs into account, you have a responsibility to provide to them, it can be very tiring at times (especially if the main carer works full time as well) - but for normal, reasonably adjusted adults there is nothing which isn't manageable and you get all sorts of rewards - not just back from the kids, but you become more involved in your community, you rediscover how to be silly and have fun (well I did) - and for many people it is actually a spur to success - because you want to do well for your children. Financially, it might be harder in London, but it's certainly not impossible (loads of people manage!) - and you have family and support networks around.

I can't comment on your chances of conceiving - but I do know one person with endo who was told she would never have kids - and is now the proud mother of 10 year old (she must have been about 30 when she conceived).

Having a baby doesn't ruin your life at all but having it with the right person is hard enough! Wait for someone who will support you through thick and thin. You can do it!!

Would echo what most of the others have said. Your situation is beyond advice on the internet (be it harsh, well-meaning or somewhere in between.

I think you are being deliberately naive. Quite likely you have not had a happy or stable upbringing yourself which is why you are trying to convince yourself that having a baby with this person would be better than no baby ever. I would suggest you access professional help in real life (start with your GP) - request a referral to a psychologist or other therapist. Then you can start to deal with the real underlying issues.

fwiw at your age I was pregnant with a man with some of the same traits as your partner. at the time I was devastated to miscarry the baby. This man eventually left me (long story) and went on to have a baby with someone else. Apparently he was "too busy" to attend the birth or visit the child for some days. Although apparently now he is involved but in a somewhat manipulative and unpleasant manner to say the least.

Thankfully I managed to move on, with professional support an good friends. I actually "gave up" on having a partner or child, and although I was disappointed I actually had a sense of peace and security. I did have a happy ending, with a dh and 2 dcs. However even knowing what I know now, I would have preferred to never have dcs than have them with my ex.

By all means get support on here, but priortise getting proper support in real life.

Would echo what most of the others have said. Your situation is beyond advice on the internet (be it harsh, well-meaning or somewhere in between.

I think you are being deliberately naive. Quite likely you have not had a happy or stable upbringing yourself which is why you are trying to convince yourself that having a baby with this person would be better than no baby ever. I would suggest you access professional help in real life (start with your GP) - request a referral to a psychologist or other therapist. Then you can start to deal with the real underlying issues.

fwiw at your age I was pregnant with a man with some of the same traits as your partner. at the time I was devastated to miscarry the baby. This man eventually left me (long story) and went on to have a baby with someone else. Apparently he was "too busy" to attend the birth or visit the child for some days. Although apparently now he is involved but in a somewhat manipulative and unpleasant manner to say the least.

Thankfully I managed to move on, with professional support an good friends. I actually "gave up" on having a partner or child, and although I was disappointed I actually had a sense of peace and security. I did have a happy ending, with a dh and 2 dcs. However even knowing what I know now, I would have preferred to never have dcs than have them with my ex.

By all means get support on here, but priortise getting proper support in real life.

DO NOT CONTEMPLATE HAVING A CHILD WITH THIS MAN.....

Having a baby is a lifelong thing...you need to get away from this man, he is abusive and horrible and I dumped a man for alot less than the things he has said to you. (fat ankles...the beginning of much more I thought...)

You do need proper help and support, you are not in a marriage anyway, you are in an abusive relationship.

Hold on everyone, she's had less than a week. Sometimes people seem to think people will see a thread on the internet and obediently reach for the suitcase. Yes, I think she should leave - but give her a bit of a break.

Curly - did you see my question about the pill and what it would do with your endo?

Bloody hell curly he called you that!!!!! And you want a child with this man . You need help you really do, and you need to leave him not have a child with him.

Curly there's more here of this polarised thinking that was talked about on the other thread. There are any number of truths between, a baby ruins your life and, a baby makes your life worth living.

One wise thing often quoted on here is - when a man tells you what he is like and what he wants - believe him! Your H knows all about children, he has them already, he knows what he wants in life (which he will only achieve frankly by ensaring 21 year olds for a few years at a time). You are not going to change him. He is not going to change.

I hope you are listening to what you are being told about what life will likely be like with him as a co-parent and, more importantly - there is a selfishness and lack of empathy about a decision to bring a child into the world with a father who is extremely likely to be a very poor father. Look how you've suffered with your own. Why would you want to do that to another human? Yes, you've achieved and it's good that you are on this earth but at least give a child a chance.

Finally, if you cannot ever conceive your own child (although it seems there may still be a lot of chance that you will), it does not make you a worthless person (you previously said that in your family only the people who have babies count). You may meet a man with children and become a wonderful step mother, you may adopt or foster, you may not have children (along with many other women) and still lead a good life.

you are so young and have your whole life ahead of you. My friend is 49 and she has two kids under 6, so you have plenty of time, my mum was 42 when she had me after problems concieving. I am her first and last. You need to sort your life out first, before introducing a kid into the equation. And certainly not have one with this man.

I'll repeat what I said on the last thread. Go see one of the numerous fertility consultants in London and find out what your options are. I really doubt it as clear as you think. It will cost but it will be excellent value to know what your options are.

If nothing else can sway you think of this: please do not inflict this man as a father on a child. Please do not do that to a child - it will make their life SHIT to have a dad like him. That should be enough to stop you.

And please ge away from this man and heal yourself from the damage and brainwashing he has inflicted on you. Please!

And keep us updated please as we all care.

Anyfucker's posts may seem harsh but what she says is very true and you need to act like an adult and take action. If you did go down the baby route with this man you would be doing your potential child a great disservice by inflicting him on them as a father and it would be so selfish of you. Please don't do this as it would be so unfair to a child. Get out and build your life. You are still so incredibly young you have no idea do you?! Get some counselling and make sure you make a better choice in men and stay the hell away from shit men!

I just want to say that what TrillianAstra said on page 2 is so right that it made me cry. Having, in the past, been in an abusive relationship I wish I had been able to read that all those years ago. Thank you, it made me understand a lot of things.

Jesus wept. So ultimately it is your decision whether you want to tie your future to your loser husband, but as previous poster says, don't inflict him on a child.

What sort of father do you think he would be to a podgy, slightly dim teenage girl?

I had a divorce when I was 30 because my ex h decided he never wanted children.

At that point, I thought I may never have children. But I also thought the very least I could do was give whatever children I had a father who really wanted them and didn't see a parent's caring for them as a financial climbdown.

He would be able to make your life hell for the rest of your life as the father of your child. I have a friend going through this, it's relentless. The solicitors' letters, text messages, endless criticism, blame and attempted manipulation. She worries herself sick over how her child is being treated when he's with his father.

Your child would be looking to this horrible man from birth, as a role model, looking to him as well as you to learn how to be a human in this world. Would you like that?

I have a friend like this and her children are now teens. This man has never given up trying to belittle and control her through them, though he's now remarried a couple of times over and has a couple more children. He's still a passive aggressive git, that's why he's been divorced 3 times now with a string of failed relationships.

She is Mormon and married at 18 and was pretty naive.

Having a baby. IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU!

Sorry for shouting, but I read your last thread, and the subtle approach doesn't seem to be working.

A baby is a person. A person who becomes a child, who then becomes a teenager and later an adult. They have an identity, a sense of self, and like all people where they came from and who their parents are is of paramount interest to them and strongly affects how they feel about themselves. How their parents behave towards them and also to each other (whether they are still a couple or not) also can have lifelong effects.

Growing up without a dad or with separated parents where you are shuttled around can be a big deal. It is hard to make it work where things are amicable or where it is unavoidable. Too many people on here can tell you all the gory pitfalls either as a child of such a situation, or because they only realised their partner was like your H too late after they had kids together.

You want a baby. It's natural, it's a biological urge. But please, if you can't leave him and not have a child with him for your own sake, then do it for the sake of your future children.

How would you feel if when this putative baby is all grown up it ends up hating you and holding you responsible for having either no father who shows any interest, a father who is horrid and controlling, or adores their father and becomes convinced you were the baddie and thus takes it out on you for the rest of your life? This is not fiction, these things happen to real people.

Could you get your eggs frozen or anything like that? Sorry I don't know how these things work.

On the issue with your H, if you read anything on this thread please read this. I didn't think that dads mattered. I thought it didn't matter if I had a baby with XP and then we split up, because I could just do it alone. Now I am doing it alone. It's fine, for me. It's great, in fact, for me! I barely have to see XP. It's not an issue. Me and DS are doing great, I'm doing a degree, we have a great little set up and we are happy. Things are fine, between us. The only gripe with the ex is he did used to use contact as another form of control

However - I have to deal with the fact that DS will have the stupid twat in his life for as long as he chooses to stay in contact, because it's very very difficult to stop contact unless the ex has a specific history of violence towards the child themselves. I have to deal with the fact he and his group of friends, who include wasters, drug dealers, rapists, and violent thugs (and no, I wasn't aware of most of this when I was going out with him) is going to be an influence on DS from an early age, however inappropriate I may find that influence. I have to deal with the fact that DS may pick up XP's horrible attitudes towards (e.g) women, drugs, money, casual violence, and there isn't much I can do about that except to offer an alternative point of view and hope to god he decides mine (and the other people I allow into his life, until he's old enough to choose his own role models) makes more sense. When he's a teenager, it's obvious who's going to be the "cool" one. I'll just have to hope that even if he does go off the rails, he comes back.

I feel lucky, in a sense, that XP hasn't bothered to see DS at all in the last 3 months, because he's too busy with his new family, the one which he created by getting his girlfriend pregnant on the first date (consensually ) 3 months after I walked out on him and he was apparently distraught. But if he really does never have contact again, or it's as sporadic as it is now forever, I have to deal with the fact DS is going to realise one day that his father discarded him as soon as he had a new family to attend to, and that is going to hurt him. It's made me look at the lessons I learned from my own father, and I worry that he's going to pick up the same things - that he isn't worth bothering with, that fathers don't matter, that men will always let him down?

I don't know whether you think this kind of stuff doesn't matter, or whether (like me) you didn't even consider it. But seriously, if you're going to go for it alone, then actually go for it alone. Use a sperm donor. If you're resigning yourself to the father not being involved then at least pick one you know won't be trying to control you through access all the time, or who won't be there being a bad influence on your child for the rest of their life. You can make as many mistakes as you like when they only affect you, when it's your potential child, you can't understand yet how awful you will feel when you realise that your mistakes irrevocably affect them. I wish someone had told me this.

Hi there Curly,
I skimmed your previous thread but didn't post. I must have read most of your posts in it + only a few of the responses, but I think I got the jist.

Please forgive all the well-meaning but foul-mouthed people on here. What they say is mostly true, but how they put it is unfortunately rather blunt and often patronising, which is probably the last thing you need in your fragile state of mind.

I was where you are now for 2.5 years, we were both young and luckily not married, in fact we weren't even living together. I got pg by accident and had a miscarriage, I wanted the baby and was devastated. I spent a week in the hospital and in all that time HE HADN'T PICKED UP THE PHONE ONCE to find out how his pg girlfriend was doing. He then blamed me for having miscarried (WTF?? He didn't even want the baby?). Then, pointing at a photo of a pg woman's belly in a magazine he said, "and you REALLY wanted to look like this did you?" Etc., etc. Like all people in an abusive relationship, my self-esteem was completely eroded. It sounds bewildering to me now but I actually prayed to God to give me the strength to stand by this bastard!! I eventually walked out on him and oh dear, I actually felt BAD about abandoning him!

ONLY A MONTH LATER, I was feeling much better and could smile again, and was ready for a new relationship. So don't despair, you'll heal too, and it may only take months not years.

So, to your question of how you get through this. I'd say certainly get councelling (which it would seem you're already doing) and give it a good try, if the councillor you're now in touch with is of little help, try another one, don't just give up on councelling altogether. Your friends and family should support you too, especially if as you say your family all loathe your H.

If you do finally settle on packing your bags, get a few weeks' holiday! That way you could both escape the situation at work, get some breething space and switch your mind off your H for a while. You could of course get a holiday right now (as someone mentioned, one way to do it is to ask your GP to sign you off - mine helped me out twice when I was bullied at work while pregnant!), but your H is probably only going to put you through hell over it anyway, so it may be practical to only do it if and when you do decide to leave him. (And like everyone else, I really hope that's what you'll do!). Don't worry about the money, you said you have savings, you also have a steady job so you'll be all right.

You should CERTAINLY get a quality assessment of your fertility chances and options. If the situation really is that you have to act now, consider IVF with donor sperm. I'm not sure whether the NHS will have a problem giving you IVF treatment as a single person tho. HOWEVER, in case you may be thinking of getting pg and then leaving him, don't. Because if you are legally married (I'm assuming you are?) at the time of conception, he will automatically have parental rights. Whereas if you conceive a baby out of wedlock you have the choice of whether or not to grant the biological father parental rights.

I absolutely understand your urgency to become a mother- where I come from, people tend to marry and have kids in their 20s not 30s, so when I had DS at 27 I really felt like an "older" mum. Looking back though, I realise I wouldn't have been ready for it at 21, 23 or even 25. That said, when you really really want a baby you'll do the best job you can even if you're not truly ready. So try and get your head straight now, and if you then decide you still want a baby, go for it. JUST NOT WITH THIS MAN.

Does a baby ruin your life? Truly and certainly not. They change your life beyond recognition, yes. But people who dare say that their kids have ruined their lives should never have become parents. Because they are selfish bastards and shouldn't be allowed near kids.

The main thing you need with a baby is support. It doesn't have to be from a partner. It can be your mum, sibling, friend or a neighbour. So long as you get a helping hand, or at least a shoulder to cry on when you feel like you're on the brink of insanity (and that happens a lot, but it's perfectly NORMAL). It takes some tough cookie to bring up a baby entirely on their own, but so long as you get some support it doesn't really matter where it's coming from.

All the best to you,

you are an intelligent young woman and you know pretty well what you need to do, you just need some courage to do it.

Who knows maybe you'll go on to become a domestic abuse councillor not totally alien to what you're doing now :)

(Rant over)

curly

it would be the absolute height of cruelty to give your future child this man as a father.

The man you're looking for? The one who's going to help you through your fertility issues and be the loving husband and nurturing father and excellent role model and life partner?

IT'S NOT HIM.

He's told you as much. We've told you as much. Your own perceptions have told you as much. You know you have to leave him. You know you shouldn't repeat the patterns of your own childhood.

Don't you dare give your poor baby such a horrible father. I wish I could hop into a TARDIS and find your mum and say the same to her, so that you wouldn't be going through this - but I can't. You can stop the pattern, though. You can STOP the pattern.

Find out what your options are from a GOOD fertility clinic, and if you decide to go it alone, do it with GOOD sperm from someone who won't use that sperm to make your life (and your poor child's life) a living hell for the rest of their days.

You can do this. It's scary and you're in transition and your whole world has probably done a huge paradigm shift - but you'll cope. You know you will. You've got everything ahead of you, just the moment you get this abuser out of your life for good.

Have you told someone supportive in RL about this stuff?

Op, this was my reality of having a baby. Fell pregnant very easily, had scans and had very high risk of downs syndrome, had further tests and scans for abnormalities, was sick every day of pregnancy, had a three day labour ending with induction after dh had a discussion with doctors. Now have a 6 week old baby that for the first 4 weeks of her life refused to be put down so only got sleep through dh holding her, she feeds constantly still as is a comfort eater making it difficult to even get off the sofa most days. Have one cracked nipple through bad latches at night which makes feeding extremely painful at the moment and she has just developed reflux recently, cue 6 hours of screaming and trying to get to sleep today.

What I am saying is that having a baby is bloody hard work! Yes some babies are easier than others and some pregnancies are better than others but I don't think I could do this without my dh. Even friends who have had babies who follow a more regular pattern have had days where they have wondered how they are going to cope. Yes it's wonderful but it can also be relentless and my dh has been my rock and my sanity.

My heart goes out to anyone who has to go through this by themselves, let alone with an unsupportive partner. This is just a different perspective on the reality (without even going into what ivf has been like for some of my friends) and another consideration for you that having a baby may not be the rosy delightful image that you have in your head. Although when she smiles at me, she makes it all worthwhile..

OP ..... sorry to be brutal, given your anxieties about conceiving but do you want to "have" a baby, or be a mother ? There is a big difference you know.

Most women can have babies - doesn't automatically make them good mothers.

If, as you fear, you can't actually physically conceive your own baby, there are other options to consider. In some respects, you are actually lucky - yes lucky, because, at the age of 27 and capable of earning well, you are in a far better position to explore all other options re: becoming a mother than many other women, who are excluded from the possibilities of adoption/IVF/surrogacy/deliberate single motherhood etc due to their age and/or financial situation.

What I'm trying to say is ...... for God's sake, this is NOT about YOU having a baby at ANY cost ....... even if that cost is inflicting a bastard of a man upon a poor innocent child for the rest of their life. You have no right to do that - though ultimately no-one can stop you more's the pity if you are determined to get what you want. This "man" is not the ONLY answer to your wish for a baby.

If you want to be a MOTHER - as opposed to "simply" getting pregnant, then your first duty should be towards the wellbeing of your child ..... doing all you can to ensure your child is given the best possible life. You would be totally failing in that duty were you to conceive with him. It would be an incredibly selfish thing to do IMO.