To struggle to cope with not having a third.

[happymondayagain]

My husband doesn’t want to have another child and I do. His reasons are extremely and almost unbearably practical - and undeniably a third child costs more than stopping at two, and although obviously for many this isn’t the only factor by any means, for him it is. We could afford it but we will (like anyone) be more comfortable with fewer children. That being the dominant factor to consider is mostly due to his personality. He is, as a person, quite averse to compromise. He can’t help that. He lives in a calculated manner and has calculated that this is not what should happen next. I don’t particularly want to discuss the reasons since he has made his mind up and has been quite clear it isn’t up for any further discussion.
What I would like to discuss and ask for advice on is the fact that I am struggling to accept this decision and it has left me feeling extremely sad on a daily basis, and utterly resentful of him. He accuses me of not loving the two we have - he has no reason to say this other than that I would like another. I think he is saying it because he knows it hurts me, and to try to get me to change my mind (or at least stop talking about it), rather than because he actually believes that I don’t love them. My perception that he has been emotionally almost illiterate about this is not helping me to feel that this is a mutual decision. He considers me somewhat pathetic, I think. He doesn’t wish to know that I’m upset about it because he finds expressions of emotion difficult to manage and even to tolerate. He is in general a wonderful father and husband and I would like our marriage to survive this with more ease than seems likely at present. But at the moment I resent him hugely - just as he would do me, I imagine, if we agreed to have a third.
I’m sure this isn’t an unusual situation. So how can I overcome the way I feel?

Would the children be close in age? I'm only asking because if you have 2 close together then another who wouldn't be able to play with them as the gap is too big then that could cause problems in itself as the third child might feel like an only at times

The solution to this is counselling OP. You cannot resent your DH for not wanting to have another child, it's a perfectly valid choice given you have two already.

I live with the ongoing emotional tug of war of feeling increasingly sad for not having second and third kids and then feeling increasingly like a complete wanker because I also feel extraordinarily lucky to have my one.

I was in this situation for years, we eventually split and divorced (not because of this) and I never got the longed for third child, even now I wonder what would have been. I know how you feel and in 7 years I haven’t once stopped wanting a third but it’s impossible as a single parent with no support.
You need to think out all options, is your current family dynamics your priority? Would you risk ending your marriage for a third? Going it alone with a sperm donor for example? Bringing a child into the world unwanted by the father would be an awful start for them and it’s likely he wouldn’t stick around. Does that image make you glad you had your third or sad you lost the family you have now? This isn’t meant in a patronising or rude way, they’re the thoughts I was told to consider to help think rationally with your head over your heart.
Given my time again I would have gone for it, i regret not using a donor straight away but I’m heading to my 40s now and my 2 children are almost teens. You can’t force your husband but it doesn’t mean you can’t have the third if it’s important to you.
Ignore the comments of ‘be glad you have two’ no one has the right to tell you that, everyone’s situation is personal and incomparable.
If you need to chat any time feel free to pm me

Could you get a pet, so you have something little you can love and care for?

You could ruin your currently good family dynamic and your husband might leave.

This absolutely. I always wanted 4 kids. When I got pg with DC3, DH panicked. He worried about coping with the stress of 3DCs, when 2DCs could be hard enough. He doesn't cope well with stress and was genuinely worried that our marriage might not survive it. However we both decided to go ahead with the pg, and had DC3.

DC3 can be completely and utterly wonderful but also has autism and MH difficulties. The stress of coping and dealing with this has been (and still is) phenomenal. DH was right. Our marriage has barely survived and there have been countless moments when he has wanted to walk away because he really struggles to cope with the difficulty of having a volatile, autistic child in addition to the 2 older DCs. I genuinely think that the only reason he has stayed is that he knows he willingly made the decision himself to have DC3. If he felt I had forced him into it, I think he would have have walked away long ago.

DC1 and 2 get on fantastically and are great friends. DC3 doesn't really get on with either of them and the family dynamic is very difficult. Everyone has to make massive allowances for DC3 and their autism affects what we can do as a family. Much as I love DC3 to bits, life with them can be very difficult and I can see how it would have been so much easier had we stopped at 2.

I feel incredibly bad/guilty for posting this as DC3 really is hugely talented and amazing in lots of ways, but the stress on the family has been huge. Do not underestimate this. Just because you have a lovely dynamic with your older 2 DCs, it really doesn't mean a future DC3 will slot nicely into this. If your DH is saying he doesn't want a DC3, it is a massive risk to take.

How old are your dc?
We were in a similar position op, I wanted a third and dp didn't so we haven't. Our decision was made about 2 ish years ago when our dc were 2 and 3, I was very, very upset at the time but 2 years on I am much happier- I think we did the right thing. Several things helped:

• Making the decision absolutely final. No more 'but what if...', the door was not left ajar, there would be no more babies. We discussed it over and over for 6 months and in the end the discussions became more and more exhausting and the outcome never different.
• getting rid of the baby things. As above really.
• could ting my lucky stars. We have 2 beautiful children. We are lucky.
• I often think of the reailty of three dc. My friend has three little ones and they struggle a lot, same resources going three ways, less time, less money, they just can't offer 3 the same opportunities they could 2.
• my dp is lovely and our relationship is strong. There was never any question of us splitting over it. There were many reasons why he didn't want a third and they were valid. He was right but has said that he would have liked another but it was mainly practical reasons, it sort of helps that we're in it together, in a perfect world we would have had three, but it wasn't meant to be.

I am in an almost identical situation OP. We have gone round in circles for a couple of years, and my husband has obsessed so much about how a 3rd doesn't make sense to him that he will just never get there.

I think, having gone through the anger, resentment and overwhelming sadness, I am now slowly beginning to accept it will never happen. It breaks my heart but I have no choice but to keep going, stay busy and be thankful for what I have including 2 beautiful kids and a full on career.

At the moment I can't see a time when I won't be sad about this every day, but I hold on to the words of @MatildaTheCat and believe that, at some point, it will get better.

I will say the richness our third child brought to family life, while sometimes fraught, remains a deep joy. With four family members there are six interpersonal relationships going on. Add a third child and it leaps to ten. The whole dynamic shifts into 3d and it's rather wonderful. Sharing out things that come in multi packs, however, becomes a nightmare!

@everycowandagain thanks for your words. I will try to hold onto that hope too. I also can’t see a time when I won’t be sad about it but at the same time I appreciate how selfish it may seem to some.

@mummmy2017 he doesn’t want pets either, in fact he may feel more strongly about that than a third child as he at least likes children!
@Ginqueen20 thanks for sharing. I really don’t think I would ever consider leaving over this or having a child as a single mother. It hadn’t even crossed my mind to do that.

I could have written your OP myself. I don't have anything useful to add because I'm in the same situation, but I'm hoping that as a PP has said, the yearning for a third child will hopefully just dwindle and become less difficult with time and acceptance of the situation.

DC2 is only 6 months and I'm hoping that once we're out of the baby stage and we get a bit more freedom back, I might find the idea of going back to nappies and night feeds bad enough that I stop yearning for a third so much.

Just like you, I can't explain my desire for a third in the same practical way as my DH can explain his reasons for sticking with 2. I'm the youngest of 4, so life was and still is always busy, full and exciting. There was always someone to play with, someone watch tv with, someone's birthday etc. Life was just full, that's the only way I can explain it.

I see my parents now who are surrounded by grandchildren, never alone on Christmas Day, mother's/father's day etc, always a houseful and that's what I want. My DH has one sister who lives away that he isn't close to, she has no children so ours are his parents only grandchildren and whilst we are very fair in splitting our time between grandparents, they often find themselves alone if we can't be with them because there isn't anyone else local.

Sadly we lost one of my sisters when I was about 14 to illness. I always feel so lucky that there were four of us because I still have a brother and a sister. My friend lost her only sibling to suicide, so she's on her own now and she feels so lonely. I know that's a horribly morbid way to look at it, but I'm so lucky to have such a big family.

There's no way I'll ever try to convince DH to have a third if he doesn't want to. At the moment, it's not a completely closed book but I'd say DH is 90% sure he's done at 2. We've agreed to not really discuss it until DC2 turns 1 because we wouldn't be planning on TTC until after then anyway and we both know there's no point in going around in circles until we're actually in a position to make a decision. If he doesn't want a third that will be that. There is no way I could bring another child into the world whose father didn't really want them, nor could I do that to DH or our existing DC.

I don't really know why I've rambled on so long because there's nothing there that will help you, but you're not alone.

@happymondayagain what do you think of @Trillis post?

FWIW I think it's a very valuable insight when you consider your OP

I have some sympathy with both parties. Ideally I would have liked at least 3 children, and preferably 4. My husband wanted us to stop at two (he already had one of his own).

We agreed to stop at two, which was the sensible and practical decision, especially given our ages (when we had the second, I was 38 and he was 10 years older). I know we were right to stop when we did, but even now (both children in their twenties) I still sometimes regret the lack of a 3rd and 4th.

Do your current children want a younger sibling?

Do they get a say too? After all, in later life you'll be telling them you can't afford something (maybe a lot of times) because they have another sibling.

Oh and you'll decide you need a huge SUV too. And on that note, do you really want to bring another child into a post no-deal Brexit, climate changing world?

Not surprised your DH isn't keen on fostering, you have to be a certain sort of person to be able to deal with very damaged children. Hats off to those who do, but I couldn't.

@Grumpyperson They aren’t really old enough to know. They would say yes and do ask for a baby sometimes when their friends have baby siblings, but at their ages it’s hardly very meaningful!

@GinDaddy Absolutely, there is the possibility of health problems in a third child or indeed in them developing in an existing child. But I am not asking for horror stories of third children. There are also plenty of horror stories of children dying and parents who always wanted 2 children being left with one or none. I can’t and don’t know what a third child would be like but to be honest this wasn’t a factor we took into consideration when having a second and I don’t really find it any more offputting now.

But as I said— Im not looking to be talked out of having a child. There are plenty of reasons not to have children at all, in fact. I agree. But I’m looking for advice and experiences of coming to terms with not having the family size I’d like, not for someone to try to persuade me that actually it’s not what I want after all. I have stopped trying to persuade my DH and he has stopped trying to persuade me as we are clearly not going to agree. I would like to make peace with this.

Before you had kids was the plan always to have 3 op? When was the decision made? As I said in my pp we decided 2 years ago and time has helped a lot, the kids have got older and easier and, well it's hard to explain but it just doesn't hurt so much anymore. I've talked about it a lot to friends and family, cried a fair bit on occasion, now I sometimes feel sad about it but more and more infrequently all of the time and it's a sadness not an intense longing like it used to be.

I'm in the same boat @happymondayagain and I think a lot of your resentment may be like mine was, because you aren't being allowed the chance to express your feelings on the matter without some sort of disdain or dismissal from your DH.

I had twins as my first pregnancy, it was a horrible experience and they ended up coming very early and were such low weight that they spent the first four months of their lives in NICU. I wasn't even allowed to hold them post c-section as they had to be rushed into incubators straight away. I didn't realise until I got pregnant with my third child how much trauma I had experienced with my lovely twins early life and the hardship of the NICU experience with them.

So when DH said 'no' to going ahead with my second pregnancy, I overruled him and said it takes two to make a baby, we were both willing participants in the act of creating baby 3 and I was not willing to terminate. Eventually he came around to being excited for our second son to arrive, but sadly, he passed away before he was born.

I had made every logical argument during the pregnancy to my DH about how I would cope with a 3rd child, especially when our twins were not even two at this stage and in my mind I had created that space for our third child in my heart and in my head, had done as many mental run throughs on how I'd manage whatever scenario I could envision. But I never got the chance to put those into practice. Since losing my 3rd child I am stuck wishing for one more chance, one more chance to bring a baby into this family, for DS and DD to have a little brother or sister, to be able to go through pregnancy and birth and hold a healthy baby in my arms the moment they come into the world, to heal a part of me that is broken.

But DH doesn't want to, he can't go through it all again, the pregnancy, the worry, the exhaustion, the financial strain and added to that now, the fear that we would lose another child (and his fear that he may even lose me).

I accept his reasons now, but until I got him to sit down and shut up for a minute and listen to my heartfelt reasons for being so obsessed with another baby, I hated him. Pure and simple, could not forgive him for putting his foot down with a resounding no, for being able to give his very good reasons for not wanting to try again, but not allowing me to express what I felt and to be HEARD by him.

So I started by writing it all down, then when I felt I had written it enough times that the core reasons and 'counter arguments' were solid and not fleeting, I told him that in order for us to move past this together, he needed to listen. Not to offer any more of his reasons as they didn't change, I knew them, but he needed to just let me speak. I reassured him that this was not my attempt to change his mind, but rather a chance for me to express my own.

We set a date to discuss it properly as he didn't like it if the subject randomly came up when he wasn't expecting it, as it would make him feel defensive and that's no way to have a meaningful discussion.

I said at the very beginning I wasn't looking for him to reason with me or add anything, could he just sit and let me speak.

I made it as non-critical of him as I could and when I had finally expressed what I needed to, I felt a weight lift. I am not saying this has cured my want for another child, but it has at least, made me feel valued enough by him to have been listened to properly. For him to have put his ego aside and just listen. I don't know if this will work for you OP but it helped us

Instead of thinking 'I want a third and he's stopping me' actually listen to him. Listen to his reasoning. Sounds like he's worried that you genuinely cannot afford a third without putting undue strain on your existing family. Is it fair to do that to your children? If anything happened to either of you tomorrow, would you be ok financially and practically? The only way to come to terms with this is to stop thinking about what you want and start considering what your family needs.

@taytosandwich We could easily afford it - it’s just that like anyone we would have more spare money if we didn’t have an extra child. We are very fortunate that yes we could manage on one income.

Thank you @NaviSprite, that’s very insightful and applicable. I really don’t feel listened to and that would change so much.

Your extremely lucky to have 2.
Try been in some people shoes the trauma of ivf etc count your blessings and concentrate on the ones you have.