Third child or divorce AIBU

[Stephjea]

Hello all,

This is a long one so please bare with me.

My whole life I have wanted daughters. I can remember being a little girl picturing my adult life with 3 daughters by my side.

Fast forward and of course it's sods law that I have ended up with two boys (who I absolutely adore and wouldn't change for the world).

However, this longing for a daughter has not and will not ever go away.

I am now 35 and desperately want to try for a third.

My husband is point blank refusing - according to him due to financial, emotional and logistical concerns.

I appreciate the first 3 years will be tough but I can only see passed this and my longing for a daughter.

I am absolutely broken and just can't see how we can get passed this.

I don't want to break up my family and don't want to put my children through divorce but can't see how I am going to move on from this.

I feel absolute resentment towards my husband and I spend my days crying. I just can't accept I will never have a daughter of my own.

Please no comments on trying for a third won't guarantee a daughter - I know this and don't need to hear it.

To add some back story. My husband is a few years older than me and wanted children before me. I wanted to wait a few years before having our first but understood his want and need to have one there and then. I feel like I compromised for him but now he won't for me, which adds to my resentment.

AIBU to be so disappointed and resentful that my husband won't budge for something that means the absolute world to me?

I appreciate I can't force someone to have a child and appreciate his concerns are equally valid. But right now all I feel like doing is leaving him which I can't and won't do due to my boys.

Yes she’s on number 10 now and I have a feeling she might be pregnant again, pretty sure she is. I don’t know if this will be her last. It’s mad how that happened, if you tried to throw a coin 10 times you’d struggle to get it to land on heads 5 times in a row and then tails 5 times in a row.

Thank you, thank you and thank you for validating what I am feeling. I am grieving.
It is impossible to understand the emotional ramifications of something you haven't experienced.

Just to add a few reasons why I would suggest therapy:

Your intractability about therapy and your black-and-white thinking ('I can't get past this', 'no comments about its being a third son', eg) both suggest that you are front-loading your argument in an attempt to defend against something you don't want to look at. If you can stop people in the thread from asking awkward questions, then you won't need to answer them fully for yourself.

You are stuck in a memory - a very vivid one; one that is very much alive for you. I wonder what this is about, and whether the memory is associated with a time of life or an event, that had a significant impact on you. I wonder further whether this desire to have a daughter is in part a desire to re-live something in your own childhood, or to try and correct it. If so, that is a tremendous unconscious burden to place on the shoulders of an infant - no matter how much you believe you're protecting them or how much you believe that this is a straightforward urge (because I doubt that it is).

Not just your husband - but your boys - will feel your resentment. I'm afraid there's no gentle way to write that. We can believe we're hiding things from our children; and that our love for them will shield them from our innermost feelings and thoughts. We are not; and it will not.

Finally, my sense is that you will resist therapy as much as you can, because a part of you knows that it will unravel something that you want to keep bound up. I hope you ignore this powerful impulse, though. I hope you do decide to go.

I have two girls myself and I totally understand why you feel the way you do. I do desperately want a third but my husband also says no.

remember if you do divorce you also won’t be able to have a child because you’ll have no man at all. Unless you could get a spent donor but even then it’s not guaranteed

i wanted to use a surrogate but again my husband doesn’t. However I adore my husband and couldn’t ever imagine leaving him.

I'm going to go against the flow here, but I wasn't worried about gender. I'd always wanted 4 kids and I suspect we had our first and my dh wondered if we'd gone 1 too far already. After our second was born he refused to countenance any more. We rowed a lot. I couldn't get over the idea of not having a least one more. It got to the point where, during a particularly nasty row, he informed me that he didn't need my permission to have the snip and I retorted that I didn't have to use his sperm. We compromised and had one more.

I didn't threaten divorce, instead I sat him down and explained that whilst I understood his reluctance I couldn't change the hormones that were running through my body and that we could endanger our relationship. We talked it through carefully. I don't feel it's fair to force another, but neither do I feel it's right for him to deny your feelings.

Equally, and this is the most important part, you can't guarantee the sex of the baby. I know plenty of people that were desperate for girls, my mil has 4 boys because she was desperate for a girl. A friend had a girl first and loved it so much she desperately tried for another. She now has 1 girl, her oldest and 6 boys.

There are some quirky hacks out there but they only change the 50:50 by 1 or 2%. So female sperm swims slower than male ones so try to conceive early on, before you ovulate. The males die faster than the girls leaving just the girls to fertilise when the egg is released.

There are loads of others but this was the method I used!

Absolutely would not favour her nor would she be this "thing" I put on a pedestal.

Accusations such as these are bizarre.

Wanting a child does not mean I don't want the others. Would you say the same to parents wanting a 2nd after a 1st or a 3rd after a 2nd?

It has no correlation with not loving your children.

😂😂😂

You’re most welcome. You’re getting a hard time and it doesn’t surprise me as I’ve seen it happen on here a few times. There was a documentary around 10yrs ago now that was about gender preferences and one of the ladies on it was considering going abroad for IVF. It really touched upon the shame they felt because it’s so frowned upon in society. People make you feel guilty and say you’re ungrateful. One of the ladies in the gender preference group I was in had lost a baby boy age 6 months but it didn’t stop her longing for a daughter. I was delighted when quite a few years later I realised she had that baby girl later in life. Husbands generally don’t get it either. Rest assured some of us do get it, don’t let the judgmental comments get you down.

I actually know a man whose mother so desperately wanted a girl she dressed him as a girl for the first 11 years of his life!

@Stephjea

regardless of whether or not you can afford it OP, your husband does NOT want a third child.

him not wanting one, trumps you wanting one.

it really is that simple.

we can’t always get what we want.

I honestly think you need to get over the idea of having a daughter and focus on giving your sons a stable and happy family life. Perhaps therapy would help overcome the resentment to your DH. It's crazy to upset your 2 lovely boys with this desire for a girl which may never happen.

I am sorry that you did not get your dream but from the sounds of it you do have two fabulous sons, but the problem with a dream is that sometimes the reality is not what you have dreamed. I have a cousin who had 10 daughters, was desperate for a son, her last baby was a boy but sadly he was premature in the days when premature babies did not have such great odds.

I do wonder what might happen if you keep trying and end up with a string of boys? I also have friends who have been through IVF and then lost their marriages through the strain of trying.

I really do think that you need to talk to a professional to understand why the need is so strong and whether you can learn to live with or subjugate it. If it is not too difficult to answer, what do you think a daughter will bring to yours and your family's life and more, what would you bring to her life?

Can I add to @AThornAmongstRoses' very kind and measured comments that it's not just men who don't understand this overwhelming female need for a particular gender of child. Or a child full stop.

Maybe I just give up too easily(!), but I always told myself that if i couldn't/didn't have children for whatever reason, I'd accept it and find something else to do with my life. When I did get pregnant I really wanted a girl too, but I made a big effort to get over that because it would be so wrong, and blighting of everybody's lives, to be 'disappointed' in your baby's gender.

Trying for this 'dream' is a recipe for despair if you don't get what you want - and a two-edged sword if you do, because things almost never turn out how you expected.

So I agree with the people saying the best thing would be to get some perspective by talking this through with a professional. I don't think you will though, because a) you think the problem is to do with your husband and the biological lottery, and b) it would be asking you let go of a 'dream' you've had since childhood. All I can say is, I think you would feel more free and content without carrying this burden of having the 'dream' family.

I'm sorry but posting on Mumsnet is not what you need. You need therapy ASAP to explore why you feel so strongly about this and to come to terms with the fact that you will not likely ever have a daughter, and that is absolutely fine.

Can you identify what it is you feel you'll have with a daughter that simply isn't possible to have with a son? I think doing some reflection on this might help you get to the root of the issue here. What specifically is it that you feel isn't possible with a son but is with a daughter?

I suspect the OP had a traumatic relationship with her own mother, and she desperately wants a daughter to fill the gap that she never had in her own childhood. Essentially she longs for a strong mother-daughter bond which she never had as a daughter herself, but she wants to at least feel it as a mother instead.

It’s at this point I now don’t believe the post

my mate has 12 children on 19,000 a year!

"Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed about being married to Brad Pitt.

It doesn't mean that I don't love my husband, I'm just grieving not being married to Brad.

Other people just don't understand the emotional ramifications of not getting exactly what I want."

OP please consider the real meaning of what you are saying and seek out some people in real life that you can talk to. Pay for counselling and invest in your mental health.

It sounds like there's a different problem in your life than the limitations of your two beautiful children and the husband that you love.

I can see you are in pain op, but it is a mental anguish all of your own making.

Children should not be used as a tool to fulfill a selfish fantasy or in response to 'fix' a mental health issue.

Yup. This

Absolutely would not favour her nor would she be this "thing" I put on a pedestal.

Accusations such as these are bizarre.

Wanting a child does not mean I don't want the others. Would you say the same to parents wanting a 2nd after a 1st or a 3rd after a 2nd?

It has no correlation with not loving your children.

But it's not a third child you want, is it? It's a first daughter. A first daughter wouldn't stop you loving the two sons you already have. But a thrid son might end up feeling less loved and less wanted than he would have if he'd been a girl.

Would you be trying to find out the sex as soon as possible? If it was another boy would you consider terminating if it was an option available to you? If yes, then there is your answer.

Hi OP, I haven’t read the full thread but have read all of your posts. I just want to post the perspective of a “third boy” whose mother desperately wanted a girl.

My MIL had 3 sons - she desperately wanted a girl and kept trying, then stopped at 3.

Unfortunately in our society it doesn’t take a huge amount of imagination for the third child of the same sex to wonder if perhaps they’re not exactly what their mother wanted (whether that is true or not). He grew up to be a very bitter and angry teenager because he felt unwanted. I don’t know enough to know whether his mother fed this feeling intentionally or not, but as he became more angry, she became even more resentful that not only was he not the girl she wanted, but he wasn’t even a “good” son.

He is now completely NC with the whole family - we don’t even know where he lives. It has really hurt my dh and his other brother, who tried to make him feel accepted but they weren’t his mother. His dad is heartbroken that he’s been cut off too because his son blames him for bringing him into the world knowing he might not be good enough for his mother.

It’s desperately sad for everyone involved.

Regarding your situation OP, if you were to go through with this, without selective treatment you are risking this situation, but it’s also worth thinking about the emotional burden on your whole family if you do seek out treatment and it doesn’t go as easily as you’d hope. Considering IVF for any reason would require a huge amount of emotional support between you and your dh, and if he’s not 100% committed to the idea, he could end up resenting you at least as much as you feel you resent him now.

I hope you and your dh find a way forward with both of you feelings.

What if he gave in and your third was a girl would you then push for a fourth or divorce?

You keep saying how much you love your two boys, but then your desire for a daughter indicates that they're not enough. If they were, your happiness and love for two beautiful boys would make this fantasy disappear.
I strongly suspect that you will get pregnant with a girl soon, but I wonder what will then emerge to replace that particular longing, probably something else. Follow pps advice - get counselling.

But suppose OP has therapy and realises that after all of that that after all she just would like a girl, for whatever reason she does want one.

My 'foster' cousin had a daughter at 14 which she had to give up and the father's family raised it abroad. She went on to have 2 sons but when she was 40 was in a relationship and had a daughter, who's doted on and is the apple of her eye. Anyone who knows her and what happened to her knows she's grieving her first born daughter whom I don't think she's met again, but if it makes her happy having her daughter now, then all well and good.