Hello there mums (and I hope a few dads there too).
I'm very new to posting on mumsnet, so apologies if I'm long winded or if I make any crass etiquette mistakes but...
My DW and I have got ourselves kind of locked into a "no-one can win" situation regarding trying to conceive. Cut a long story short, my DW is desperate to have child no.2, I'm not so keen, mainly 'cos I wish we were about 10 or 15 years younger.
I'm in my late 40's and my DW is too. We have one ds - who actually is the world's best boy (I'm sorry ladies, you might think otherwise, but he is! :-)). Our "history" of ttc is "chequered". A bit like the old musical hall joke (remember I'm in my late 40s) "Honour, offer, honour, offer"... by which I mean that over the last 4 years we've gone through phases of trying, not trying, trying, not trying.
It puts a real strain on our relationship. We both love each other very much (I think :-/) but it really does strain our togetherness. Over this time my DW has had three miscarrieages, one was a "bit of a mistake", the other two were very much "planned" following nearly a year of very strained life during which my DW wanted to try again and I didn't, but after which I felt that the only way to move our life on again was to "give in" to my Dw's desire to try again.
(I've put "give in" in parenthesis to try to explain why I changed my thinking...it was more to do with having come to a decision which although I felt went against my intuition I was prepared to "go with". I don't want flak for this, but sometimes I find that women have difficulty understanding that men compartmentalise and can reverse their thinking, go ahead and embrace an idea they were against previously and try to make it really work, with enthusiasm.)
However, as I said, we're now in our late 40s and I think I'm too old (and my DW too). My DW doesn't. I worry about being the oldest parent in Primary school (although I guess I probably am at the moment), about HAVING to work until I'm 70+, I also worry about my DW having problems if she does conceive and go full term, about the child having problems, about how the kids might feel about having a dad who not only is old enough to be their grandad, but could be their great granddad! And now I'm sitting here listening to an article on the Jeremy Vine show about the effects of "losing your father" on kids...
Why post on mumsnet? Well as i said, we both love each other very much, but I guess we feel as though we are very much at an impasse now. I can't see a 'compromise' here. Either we keep trying or we don't. We're climbing the walls with each other. Nothing else gets discussed, nothing moves forward, we both know it's getting in the way. I s there a compromise? Is there something here that we're not seeing? Should I just 'get on with it" and agree to try again (again, again, if you know what I mean) and take each day as it comes? If I do, how responsible is that being?
Our friends tend to avoid this discussion (who can blame them?) partly because it has been going on for quite a while now and there's nothing new come of it.
I hate to say this, because it might sound wrong, but I guess we already know there is no set answer to this question, but I guess I might just be interested to see what other people's take is on this subject, try to look outside our own circle.