To be worried about paternity!?

[NewlyConfused]

I've name changed for this as I know my DSIL uses the site and it's likely to be outing. I have a two year old. He was conceived, I had assumed, the first time I had sex with my husband after we got back together after a breakup. I was on the pill and we used a condom. I had regular bleeding during the pregnancy which meant I didn't find out until the second trimester and also made dating via periods impossible. The dating scan put the conception as with my husband. However, I had been dating a man for a couple of months and the last time I had sexual contact with him was during the previous cycle. I wasn't on the pill and we stupidly had PIV before putting the condom on. I realise this was idiotic. I bumped into him last week and I think he looks far more like my child than my husband does. This made me think about the fact that the baby was very large for his gestation (literally off the charts), to the point that I had to have extra growth scans. He's also measured at least 90th percentile at every health visitor appointment. I was relying on the dating scan but I'm now concerned that this might not be as secure an assumption as I'd hoped.

AIBU to assume that my husband is definitely the father based on the dating scan?

You had unprotected sex with a man you were dating whilst not on the pill, and a short while later you had sex with hubby whilst doubling down on contraception. Yet you assumed the father of your child was hubby?

Surely on some level you must have known it was unlikely to have been from your husband? Perhaps assuming the child would look more like yourself and so paternity would never be challenged? Clearly you need to get a paternity test asap and take it from there. Unfair on everyone involved leaving this as a question mark.

Essentially, yes - I realise that seems ridiculous. I was so ashamed that I'd been so irresponsible that one time that I doubled up afterwards. I absolutely wasn't thinking I'd get away with not being questioned, though - I was just overwhelmed with relief after the dating scan. I have a long cycle and there were 5 weeks between the two events - even slightly later scans have an error bar of about ten days max as far as I can see, so completely accepted the dating scan result.

Well I think you need to tell DH and get DNA tests done.

How do you think he will react? Did you already have DC?

Wouldn't it be obvious from early scans how pregnant you were? I mean the difference between 12 weeks and 17 weeks must be huge?

And to go 5 weeks over?

But yeah, looking at the facts.... the unprotected sex was far more likely to make a baby than the double contraception.

Is this a bear you want to poke?

Assuming you restarted your marriage with honesty, and told him you slept with another man, I think a DNA test is definitely in order.

Otherwise it'll come out in the end anyway if he joins an ancestry site when he's older.

Well, that's why I'm asking whether I'm being unreasonable, really - I don't know how big the difference between those scans would be. I would assume it would be massive - it was one of the reasons I believed the dating scan so firmly. And the baby was born at 38 weeks, so wasn't, say 5 weeks early.

Definitely don't want to cause unnecessary hurt, but as another poster said, it absolutely doesn't seem fair not to let my husband know about my worries

Does he know you slept with the other guy or will it come as a surprise?

Thanks, yes, I think you're right. He knew I was seeing someone. It wasn't an affair or anything, we'd been properly separated and living apart.

I suppose I was hoping someone with medical knowledge would say 'there's no way a dating scan could be out by 5 weeks' or 'dating isn't an exact science and only informs the due date, not conception' or something and the upset of a DNA test could be avoided. If it turns out to be the later, I'll absolutely do the right thing and get a test, of course

This is a bear that absolutely NEEDS to be poked. What OP wants is irrelevant.

DC has the right to know who their biological father is. DC and biological father have the right to form a relationship. DH has a right to know if the child he is raising is his. The longer this is left unresolved the more damaging it could be.

OP needs to come clean, own up to DH, get the paternity test and prepare for the potential consequences.

Agree with this, almost unheard of to be 5 weeks late - your body would have exploded!

Based on when the baby arrived, how long was it between that date and when you had sex with the first guy?

Tell your husband, it’s not fair on him or your baby to keep this as a secret. I know somebody who did this 35 years ago now and as her daughter got older it became more and more obvious to her that her husband isn’t the father. The worry and guilt eats away at her and she has told me she wishes she had just been truthful from the moment she got pregnant and dealt with the fallout.

DC has a striking resemblance to the man you had unprotected sex with. Moreso than DH whom you doubled down on contraception with.

You had sex with the two men in too close a proximity that can be defintively ruled out by a dating scan.

Confess to DH your uncertainty about DC parentage and get a paternity test done asap. Your marriage is a sham if you continue to hide this from him.

Agree with this, almost unheard of to be 5 weeks late - your body would have exploded

The baby was born at 38 weeks though, so it's not impossible that 38 weeks was really 42/43 weeks

Also agree...I'm definitely concerned about getting the right answer, not the easy one. It was 273 between the last time I had sex with my boyfriend and when my son was born. That would be 301 days between previous period and birth, which would have made it 20 days after the due date based on the LMP! Thank you so much for asking this - I don't know why it didn't occur to me to work that out! 20 days overdue would have been VERY obvious I assume!!

Dating scans are only judging the size of the baby and making an estimate based on that. That’s why even when you are certain of the date of ovulation they will still change the EDD based on the dating scan not your dates.

The range of typical gestation can be anywhere from 37 to 42 weeks, or longer, it’s just that we pick 40 weeks to be the due date.

I think it’s clear there will always be doubt - but is it worth disrupting everything? Is your husband a good dad? Is the relationship good? I’d be inclined to leave it alone as there’s enough reasonable doubt both ways and if it gets discovered later then so be it but not cause this drama.

Your child deserves to know who his biological father is.

273 days is exactly 39 weeks, so for pregnancy dating that would mean you were 41 weeks pregnant when the baby was born as when you conceive you are classed as 2 weeks pregnant. Totally possible that your boyfriend is the father it would seem, sorry.

You don’t see the problem with a child being potentially lied to their entire lives about who their father is?

You're classed as two weeks pregnant? Is that based on the average cycle, though? Given mine was a lot longer than average, would the LMP be more important?

And to add, if it was 5 weeks between the events, then the most pregnant you could’ve been if it was your dh baby would be 36 weeks at the baby’s birth

By which I mean, base on the LMP, my son would have been born at 43 weeks, which I assume is very unlikely

My cycle was considerably longer than 5 weeks, so the 38 weeks he was born at (based on the bleed I had after having sex with my boyfriend) would mean the dating scan matching up with the second bleed being the LMP. It's all a bit confusing in terms of bleeds as I continued having a bleed on a period-type cycle well into the second trimester

Yep, pregnancy is dated as 40 weeks from lmp, so on average you conceive 2 weeks later and then at time of your missed period you’d then be 4 weeks pregnant. Long cycles make LMP far less accurate. Most accurate is usually the first dating scan in that case (if done in first trimester). Can you remember when that was and the exact amount of weeks and days pregnant it said you were? If so, work back for, that, so for example of it said you were 10 weeks 5 days, then count back 8 weeks 5 days and see where that puts the potential fathers.

I’m no expert but there’s no way a dating scan would be out by 5 weeks.
for a start, baby wouldn’t have survived bring 5 weeks over his/her term.

Could you get a paternity test without telling your DH? I don’t know how these things work, and what they need to do the test…

If it turns out he’s not the father then obviously you’d have to tell him, if he is then you could just move on.