AIBU to leave DH and start a family?

[spottedinthewild]

Need some brutally honest advice .. DH & I have an adult DSD, no children of our own. I am 34F and desperate to start a family. It consumes my every thought, and has been a constant for the last 3-4 years. I love DH immensely and have no desire to be with anyone else.

I have had this discussion with DH so many times. At first he was adamant that he'd only consider adoption, that was fine. Now he is just not willing to even discuss it. He constantly tells me pregnancy would injure me (I have a spinal injury) despite my consultant telling me I'd be fine. It's clear he doesn't want children.

I have a well-paid job, good benefits and could easily afford to live on my own and support a child. I am considering leaving, using a sperms bank and being a single mum. Am I completely mental?

YABU - Don't wreck a life that is great otherwise, this feeling will pass!
YANBU - It won't pass & you'll regret it, you can survive being a single mum!

It's your call and you must decide what you want more, decent husband or a child.
I'm happily married, child free, don't know the feeling of wanting one (46 yo), so what you want is as alien to me as wanting to go bungee jumping.
But, only you know what makes you fulfilled.
🍀

A very good point, well made. I assume that was something that was obvious from the start.

He’s selfishly happy to run down your biological clock until it runs out. That is an awful thing for him to do.

Leave.

I would go straight
to the fertility clinic and see if this is viable with your egg reserve. Don’t delay. And then tell DH and if he still doesn’t want to, leave. Good luck! Don’t leave it any longer.

At the age of 34, I think time is of the essence. Don’t spend another year or two considering your options. If you are going to go it alone, the younger you are, the better.

I’d be seriously pissed off with him. He’s reneged on his decision and I can’t see how adopting would help. I think as you go through your thirties and early forties, the feeling of longing for a baby will only get worse.

I’m a single parent. My child does have a father but he’s on a practical level pretty useless and continually disappoints our child. I believe it would be easier for me to parent and less wearing for our child if he wasn’t in the picture. For this reason I say absolutely go for it, the perfect nuclear family is for most people a complete myth (perpetuated to trap women into providing free labour for men imo). But what is not a myth is that being a mother and raising a baby is wonderful and I would wholeheartedly recommend it. It’s hard but worth it x

YANBU. If you want a child and he doesn’t you sadly need to end the relationship.

You still have time to meet someone who does want a child, so may not have to go solo. But plenty of women have done it for decades.

Do you have life/medical insurance OP? If so then go for it alone I say. Also go to an egg clinic and have your egg reserves checked. I did that when I was 40. My reserves were good. I could have had a baby with IVF and a sperm donor but then we had a pandemic. I was almost going to fly abroad to a clinic. It all worked out too expensive. I'm okay with it for various reasons- I have a progressive health condition and I've not ruled out fostering and adoption. I'm single atm but I'd absolutely cut and run from a partner if I was ready to foster or adopt and they didn't want to. You'd need to be okay with being single or having a non involved partner- yes you might also possibly meet another partner who is involved but that's not guaranteed. Also build a good network through mum groups etc.

By the sounds of it the OP can offer a child love, nurturing, care, financial support and a stable home. Struggling to see the selfish part of this?
A child needs one stable, loving care giver to enable them to develop into healthy adults. Basic attachment theory.
Families come in all shapes and sizes, one parent or two, step parents, two dads, two mums, non-binary the list is endless.
I personally am raising two little absolute bundles of joy in a loving and secure home, they have amazing grandparents, aunties, uncles, family friends. A village.
I grew up with an absent father, I am a perfectly healthy, emotionally sound adult, well educated and thriving, as are my 3 adults siblings. All successful in life and certainly not damaged by the absence of one parent.

OP - I absolutely love single parenting and I wish you the best of luck. Build your village, find your support network and have your family. Solo parent or not, you will still be a family unit. Children are raised and educated in school with an understanding of ‘differences’ in family homes, they are a lot more open minded and accepting than most adults (thankfully). I go back to my first point, love, nurture, stable home, financially secure and your time and presence creates a healthy child.

You’re 34…

Your adult stepdaughter having children and making you a step-grandparent, in your thirties, is not going to make this go away. It risks making you feel worse actually, and there being a potential clash between you and your SD.

I’m going to say that not all women who are childless are regretting it by the time they are in their 50s.

The ones who don’t regret it are those who were very clear they didn’t want chikdren. It was their choice, not chosen by them by circumstances.

I think getting your head around it when all you want is a child (eg infertility) is a totally different ball game.

Id be very careful about the whole story around ‘women in their 50s I know are all delighted to have had children and now grandchildren’.
Let’s be honest, raising children is hard (with it wo a partner). You might forget how hard it was as they grow up and have children of their own, but there is no escaping that. I certainly have wondered why the heck I had mines at times.
You have no idea whether it will be a case ‘easy children. Just plain sailing parenting’ or ‘life is now hell because children has some SN very hard to manage or I now got a disability/chronic health that makes it 100x harder’.
And then children often move away from their home town as you won’t be seeing them and said grandchildren that much.

I really wouldn’t bank on that the Disney story of ‘and they were happy ever after’ once you have dcs. It might be utterly amazing. Or it might extremely hard work. You need to plan for both

But the OP wants children! Your life might be ok for you but if a woman want kids then in my experience that feeling doesn't go away and can't be replaced with weekends away! There is so much more to parenting than endless shrieking and wiping up poo and vomit at 6am! This you will never know!

This would suggest he never wanted children OP. If you are so keen to go it alone, I would do that.

No, absolutely not. None of the 4600 people in that fb group have ever taken a single second to consider the emotional or psychological impact on their children of being donor conceived or having a solo parent. Definitely none of us ever read books about it, made an effort to meet other solo mums with older children, sought private counseling or took up the offered (sometimes mandatory) "implications counseling" at fertility clinics. No one joined support groups or built friendships with other solo parents so their children would grow up knowing other children with similar family set ups. Nobody ever spoke to their children about how they came to be or bought any of the multitude of books specifically written to explain donor conception, solo parenthood, or family diversity to children. We all just merrily jogged down to the sperm bank and said inseminate me now please, I've just this minute decided I'd like a baby

@AdventuresInMothering and you went ahead knowing it can have an impact on a child.

I’d leave and have kids, id resent him too much if I stayed. I’d pay for all the help I could afried and manically preplan my life.

I find the hardest part of being a single parent is hostile co-parenting relationship o have with my exH and the impact it has on my Dd.
There is a court agreement forcing her to have more contact with him than she would like and the impact on her happiness has been massive.

If I could now choose to do it with a sperm donor rather than him I'd jump at the chance (obviously in my scenario I wouldn't want him to disappear from DDs life as that would also have negative impact on her forever - it's just so complicated!). But if I could start over with a donor so she didn't need to either have to deal with splitting her time between 2 families when she didn't want to; and without the alternative consequence of abandonment issues, I absolutely would in a heartbeat.

Would you are thinking of would've a much 'cleaner' situation with no toxic ex to deal with for the next 18 years and less impact on the child.

You have to ask yourself some hard questions about single parenthood, especially via IVF.
Who can help if you have a difficult birth & recovery?
Do you have family support to go it alone? What would happen if you got post natal depression or psychosis and you couldn't look after your baby?
Who is the emergency backstop when baby/child is sick or childcare arrangements go wrong (and they will)?
How flexible and understanding is your employment for time off to deal with sick child or emergencies?
How will you manage financially if child is disabled or needs full time care and you have to give up work? What support do you have to cope with a severely disabled child?
Who would be guardian for your child if you became seriously ill or died before the child is an an adult?
Who can provide a male mentor and presence in child's life?

I was brought up by a single parent and many of her friends faced these dilemmas.

I have a single friend who had a child alone as the father left when she was pregnant and he never met his son (or financially supported him either). She had a really strong network of family, her sister was prepared to take child on if anything terrible happened, and her parents & sisters & their husband looked after him in school holidays. Her Dad & brother in law were strong male role models in his life.
She was a high earner, had already bought a flat before he came along, with a job that allowed some working from home when he was ill, she could afford a childminder rather than nursery and later to cover after school care and even overnights when she had to travel for work. But she was still main caregiver for all the parenting, the difficult broken sleep nights, all the weekends when she seldom got much of a break. It affected her career progression and earnings as she stayed in one job for much longer due to the short commute and flexibility they offered. As an young teen he went through a period of serious depression, alcohol issues, mixing in a "bad crowd", school refusal etc and even with family & friends support that was a very scary time for her.
Overall she doesn't regret it, bit she was very honest that it was a lot harder than she expected. In addition, as a young adult he went travelling, settled down in a European country and has no plans to return to the UK. They are close and she sees him often but it's also not what she expected.

This burning desperation for a baby is hormones speaking. You need to be far more rational about such a huge decision.

I used to be very judgemental of single mothers by choice - until I ended up getting divorced and being a single mother against my choice. Now I can see the before and after effect of having a father in the home I'm convinced having the "wrong" father in the home is worse than having no father at all. If my ex disappeared from the face of the earth tomorrow I'm doubtful - at the moment - the children would notice. And I think ultimately- emotionally - it would have been easier on them for me to have used a donor than know they do have a father who has chosen to largely be uninvolved

If he had a vasectomy in his twenties that seems like a very loud message he didn’t want children in his future.

Have you had counselling befute having chikdren to resolve your iwn issues?
No, like most people right.
And yet those unresolved issues will have had a huge impact on your dcs. And you decided to have children wo doing the work first? 😱😱

Of course it has an impact on the child. Just like your iwn upbringing has, the fact one has anxiety or some health issues. Or that you have decided to have a child late in life (so Theyre more likely to be wo a parent very early on) etc etc….
All of us have circumstances that has the potential to be a huge negative impact on the child.
And yet we still have children.

You want different things and if your desire for children is that strong, I don't see how you can stay together without resentment tearing you apart. Your step daughter having children won't make this feeling go away for you, it might actually make the longing worse to see someone up close who has what you desperately want.

Do you have much support from family or friends? I'm due with my first baby next month and having a relatively uncomplicated pregnancy but at times it has been really tough and having my partner with me as moral support and looking after me a bit has been invaluable. With the added complication of your spinal injury, I hope you have people around you that can help if you have any issues during pregnancy that make it hard to look after yourself. That goes doubly once baby arrives.

A few people have said it's hard as a single parent, which I imagine it is. It's tough enough with two sometimes. But you do need to follow your own heart. If having a child is the be all and end all, your relationship isn't going to thrive if one of you is the total opposite.

However, I'd temper that by saying you really need to think very hard about what you'll do if TTC with another person or IVF doesn't work. Will it feel as if you've thrown things away or can you settle your mind to that if it happens? IVF, as well as TTC naturally, carries no guarantees. Would you be able to settle, alone or with someone else, if you discovered you couldn't have children or it just didn't happen? What if a new person wants kids but can't produce? How are you going to know in advance that this wonderful new partner, who you also fall in love with, can, potentially, produce a child?

We had IVF for our DS. Ours was due to unexplained infertility (i.e no obvious reason why) so sometimes, whilst fertility levels are fine, as in our case, things just don't gel to produce a child naturally. It still took two attempts of IVF for me to get pregnant. And IVF shouldn't be approached as a walk in the park. Depending on what needs to be done, it can be intrusive (internals, egg harvesting etc) and painful (I had to inject myself in the stomach to stimulate the eggs ready for harvesting) and you need to take a range of drugs depending on what type of IVF you're having. I'm assuming you've looked into IVF and understand all that?

You have to follow your heart - it sounds like your relationship with your DH isn't working, he doesn't seem very supportive TBH. But, whilst the grass CAN be greener, I hope it is, it doesn't always work out like that. You need to be pragmatic and think that through or you'll drive yourself insane.

Good luck whatever the future brings you.

Would you consider adoption?

I don’t know what your spinal injury is but pregnancy can physically be very difficult.

You then will be carrying around a baby, as well as cooking, cleaning, mowing the lawn etc

Many mothers strain their backs by constantly lifting up the baby and that’s without a previous spinal injury.

If you adopt then you won’t be putting your body through the pregnancy, which may be more suitable for you.

It also means you can have more than 1 child, which I think it’s important if you’re going to be a single parent.

(I am a single parent to 1 child and I feel incredible guilt that they only have me and no siblings).

It’s so uncommon for a twenty something to have the snip, that I wonder if in fact he is infertile. Maybe that is part of him stonewalling ?
If he definitely has had a vasectomy , it’s still very strange to suggest adoption when you are fertile. Is he most worried about the procedure he would have to go through ?
Whatever is going on he needs to be totally honest with you now. You’ve spent nearly four years, all your thirties, wanting a baby and that isn’t going to just go away. So some properly honest conversations. I was actually in a very similar situation. I was late thirties and DH wasn’t sure about a baby, he’s younger than me, he didn’t feel “ready” etc. I loved him but I did reach the point where I felt I would have to leave him, as I knew he would want a baby at some point, but that it might then be too late for me, and that I would hate him for it. I decided to give him six months (stupid at my age at the time really) without me mentioning babies, for him to work out what he wanted. In our case it was ok. He thought about why he was worried, and we got married, and luckily I got pregnant very quickly with my dc , at 40 and 42.
I do still occasionally feel resentful that I had our dc so late though. I would rather have had them earlier, got more time with them. It’s one of those things where it is impossible to have a compromise unless you both want a baby and are just trying to decide on timing . Tell your DH you won’t change in your desire for a baby, ask why he has strung you along for four years, why he agreed initially to adoption (in itself really strange, adopting , quite rightly, is a much more difficult and demanding process).
Then decide what you want to do.
I am curious though, why adoption ? I feel there are things here that don’t add up at all, that he isn’t telling you something. That there is something else, other than the actual baby, that is the problem. A deep rooted phobia, a trauma, infertility, something.