To really really want a band aid baby

[DesperatleySeekingSanity]

Ive namechanged as I know how utterly ridiculous this is. I feel my relationship is deadwood, but DH is very adamant to ever leave the home/split because he believes kids need both parents. All my family around me believe the same so it just seems futile to ever think about getting out, seems like its never going to happen. There is no romance and we both seem miserable, looking back it seems the happiest times we had were when we were first married and had the children. Ive always wanted just one more but DH always says no. I just feel it may just be the thing that glues us back together and proves we DO love each other.

Youd have to have sex first.

.

Can you not try and maybe rekindle some of the feelings you first had and make a bloody good go of 'getting on'?

We have sex but it feels like emptying a bin or painting the fence iygwim.

"looking back it seems the happiest times we had were when we were first married and had the children" - thats because you loved each other then. Childrne are hideously hard owrk and if you donlt love each other I think its probably a sure fire way to decimate the relationship in one fell swoop - being sleep deprived alone and living with somoen you don;t like would surely be a shortcut to hell.

I'm not sure if YABU or not but..

I'm 99% sure that if we hadn't conceived ds, our marriage wouldn't have survived. Ds wasn't planned, a happy accident but we were headed towards splitting up. Since then we have moved, our lives have improved tenfold and we fell in love again. So I suppose ds was a band aid baby, albeit an unintentional one.

What fun not it must be for your dc to live with parents who stay together in a thoroughly miserable marriage merely because one of them believes that children need two parents living under the same roof.

And now you are thinking of bringing another dc into being in the hope that it will breathe life into the dead wood of your relationship?

Have you considered that if your plan backfires you will be locked into your loveless marriage for at least a further 18 years?

If you cannot rekindle the feelings you once had for your dh through couples counselling and/or taking time to talk and listen to each other, end your marriage and start living joyously.

but DH is very adamant to ever leave the home/split because he believes kids need both parents
A relationship is over when ONE person says it is. You don't need a consensus to split.

Deliberately bringing another child into an unhappy relationship is an awful, awful thing to do.

Don't think for one minute that another child will save your relationship, if anything it will almost certainly make you split I imagine.
It sounds as if you have nothing left between you and your DH anyway and it would be very unfair to bring a child into the world in the hope doing this will save your marriage.

a friend of mine recently had her 3rd child after a large age gap, she is in what she has always described as a fairly rotten marriage, and as far as i could see it was just a totally self destructive and cruel (to the child) act - she was within sight of potentially leaving as the children got older, but then tied herself even further into an unhappy marriage for another 18 years. i really don't understand it.

It is very selfish to bring another child into an unhappy relationship. Please don't.

If you are sure that your marriage is worth saving then you need to work on that before making a decision about having any more children. Have you considered seeking help from Relate?

YABU... If you can't make a relationship work with the existing set-up, it's not going to improve by adding another person. Babies don't necessarily turn back the clock to some happier time... if anything, the additional pressures they create just illuminate the cracks. If you want to stop being miserable you either have to work on the relationship as a couple or decide to call it a day. Btw... children benefit from having two parents but living in a house where mum and dad are constantly strained and miserable makes for a horrible childhood.

ok, your not getting along, and now you want to add a baby into the mix? all those pregnancy hormones are going to improve the situation? then add in the sleepless nights, added stresses? and you still think this will help? have you really thought about it? would you not be better to cut your losses and seperate now, that way you may just remain civil, I am not a fan of staying together for the children. its your life, maybe you know best? good luck

Things you can do to improve a struggling relationship or help you both to amicably identify that it is over:
Make time to talk just to each other.
Share activities you used to enjoy together before having children. Or take up a new shared hobby.
Seek couple counselling from Relate or similar.
Seek counselling individually to help you articulate what are the things that are making you unhappy right now. Maybe other stresses are weighing you both down and if those are addressed the relationship pressure change.
Make sex you both enjoy a priority and if it really is as bad as painting a fence say so and talk about what you'd like to change.

Things you shouldn't even think about to improve a struggling relationship:
Create a new tiny helpless human being, whose immediate demands will add immeasurably to your existing stress and make it much much harder to do any of the sensible things above. Even if having a baby gives you the warm fuzzies children are not glue they are people.

Bad, bad idea.
What an awful thing to do to a child - to bring it into an environment without love and expect it to mend that.

This made me think of something my mum said to me a few months ago.

I told her that I was thinking about having another baby when my only child starts school in September. I said (lightheartedly) "I know it would be silly to have a baby to replace the one going to school!"

My mum said "People have babies for all sorts of reasons, and that is not a bad one."

I'm sorry, but I think yours is a bad one.

I think its a terrible idea.

You wouldn't be turning the clock back to some happier time when you were first married, happy together and embarking on a family. You would be bringing another child into a family where you are already unhappy and dissatisfied and feel no joy in your marriage.

I imagine from your op that there would also be a fairly significant age gap with your existing children. I have several friends who have gone on to have a 3rd or 4th baby a long time after their first ones- and these are friends in quite happy and stable marriages - and you know what? All of them have found it a lot tougher than they expected. After the excitement of falling pregnant with a 'late' baby, and the novelty of the newborn wears off, the daily grind kicks in- raising a child is hard work, particularly when you already have older children who are at quite a different phase of life and aren't going to want to live through the whole baby phase again with you. Of course, no one is going to turn around and say they regret a child,but in their more honest moments, I have heard these women say it all turned out to be a lot harder, particularly the new family dynamics,then they predicted. And these are families where the parents are still in love and supporting one another! So god knows what problems you will run into when your marriage is 'deadwood' already. It wont save your relationship, or even give it a boost - only the two of you can do that, if its salvageable . It would just be deeply unfair to knowingly bring another child into an unhappy marriage

Another one for a bad idea.

My parents stayed together for the sake of the children. It was awful. They didn't argue much but ours was a miserable house full of bitterness and resentment and very little love.

My mum resents me because she only had my brother so that I would not be an only child (like she and my dad) but she was very ill during both pregnancies, was hospitalised several times in my early years as a result of complications from the pregnancy and admitted that she only had children because it was "what you did". But then, they only got married because my mum was 21 and it was "what you did".

Everything that has gone wrong in my mum's life; including her staying with my dad (she has told me many times of the day she drove off and only returned because she couldn't leave my brother and I) and him subsequently leaving her, has been attributed to me as I was the first born and my brother only existed because of me so none of it is his 'fault' .

It's a miserable existence and has affected me my whole life. At least my parents were young and stupid and didn't understand what they were doing. You would be doing it in full knowledge that your marriage is a sham.

Alpine I dont really see the need for that comment?
I do love my husband and I know he loves me, we are just a product of our culture I guess (asian) where people get married, have kids and stay together. I would love another child and it would be loved as much as my other children.

I think whatever the culture, a child' deserves to be born into a relationship which is alive, not emotionally dead, as you say yours is. I don't doubt that you want a baby, someone to focus your love and affection on, perhaps even more so because your adult relationship is lacking that. Your last post reads as not dissimilar to a teenage girl desperate for a baby. It's not a case of whether or not you love your baby- of course you would. So would your husband. But wanting another baby just to fill the emotional void in your life is incredibly selfish. The child deserves so much more than that. Try to see beyond the 'i want a baby and of course I'll love it' to the bigger issue of bringing a child into a relationship which you are actually miserable in.

yabu - dh's sister was a 'band aid' baby - not a happy ending.

the fact you are calling it a "band aid" baby is awful its a selfish thing to think about doing

Sorry, I don't think the culture is relevant. If you and DH have agreed to stay together for the sake of the children you already have then I think you need to make that as easy as possible by not having another child.

If you are both resigned to being together, why not make the best of it and try and rekindle something? Start 'dating' each other, find a shared activity/evening class something like that that you could do together to find something to talk about.

I just don't think that having a baby is the answer. If you are able to rekindle something and rediscover your love, then that is when a baby would be appropriate. Good luck.

get a puppy fgs. not have a baby.