Having a third child... or not. I feel so angry.

[YouJane]

I am really struggling atm. My DD is 3.5 and my DS is 5.5. I am 40 years old. I have been wanting a third since my DD was born and my husband was on board for trying for a year and if it didn't happen I could make peace with that. Now, he has changed his mind after 2 months TTC and is coming down on the side of not having another - I can tell he wants to say it but doesn't want to upset me. I understand his reasons and agree with some of them, the thing is that I'm not even sure I want a third now, for various reasons. I just hate the idea that my feelings on this basically have no bearing on the outcome - if I agree with my husband, great we're on the same page, no 3rd baby! If I continue to want a third, tough luck, same outcome, no 3rd baby. I feel basically irrelevant to this process.
I cannot bear the thought of this decision being made for me and I am so upset about it. I want to be the one who says '2 is fine actually' and then work my way through it. The thought that I have had to wait for 3 years + only for him to change his mind and be completely in control of the situation is filling me with rage right now.
My husband is trying to be understanding but I'm just angry with him; he makes all the big decisions in our family - I can live with it because he is much better at that stuff than me (really) but to have even this taken away from me is too much. I basically have to sit and wait for him to flip one side or the other and it's pretty galling - it pisses me off. I want to be ok with this decision and tbh I feel like I want to take it away from HIM and upset him like this, so he can understand how I feel. I don't even know if I truly want another (I'm all over the place) but I want to say yes or no, not him. It's up to ME if I want to flipflop, not him, but it makes no difference how I feel. It's so easy for men. Plus, he keeps trying to talk to me and I'm just a mess, I just want him to leave me alone.

I don’t think he’s selfish for disagreeing with me. The selfish bit was him giving zero consideration to me and my feelings/wants. Pregnancy was not easy for me, the fact that I was willing to go through it again should have been an indicator of how much I wanted another baby. He didn’t consider that because he doesn’t care about my wants, he just cares about the frankly minimal impact that another kid would have had on his (relatively large amount of) free time. None of our conversation about this was about what I wanted or the impact on me. It was all about him.

And as the OP says, it would have been kinder to me for him to be up front about it, but he wasn’t. He’s a coward who would rather say “maybe next year” over and over and hope that I forget about it. Again, prioritising his desire not to have a difficult conversation over my feelings.

It’s not a “weird thing with some women”, it’s a sensible conversation between adults. If my DH (or any man) would rather take the risk of a pregnancy than wear a condom then they clearly aren’t that against the prospect of another child.

The point is that you can put that in his hands and make contraception his responsibility. If he genuinely doesn’t want another child, he can take steps to prevent it.

The fact that my DH said he didn’t want another baby yet, but on multiple occasions decided not to use a condom that had been bought for him and left on his bedside table (as always, as condoms have been our contraceptive of choice for years) speaks volumes.

And FWIW @MammaTo, having consensual unprotected sex within the context of a happy, loving marriage is a wonderful way to bring children into the world and is generally the encouraged route to child bearing.

@heroinechic

i totally get what you mean, I just know that the majority of of the time most men would be stockpiling the condoms! Like you say those that deep down would quite like another kid wouldn’t bother. Insisting on condoms and banking on the man not wanting to use them is just not a foolproof strategy for having another baby that some people on here seem to think it is

I think your feelings are normal OP. Well, I felt exactly that way. I knew it wasn’t rational to resent my DH for having a perfectly valid opinion but I still felt like that anyway. Ultimately I knew that his opinion mattered and counted and I had to respect that. It was hard and it did have to do with me feeling powerless about several things, and always being the one to compromise. Or so I thought. I actually reminded myself (many times, when I felt this way) that he had two children mainly for me, as he was always a bit on the fence, not to mention cat number four and counting.

I totally understand this and right there with you. Mine is sadness not anger though xxxx

I agree. There is absolutely zero chance that my husband would deliberately have unprotected sex with me if he did not wish to conceive a child. Who are all these men who apparently lack any self control whatsoever??

They are few and far between in real life I think. Most would rather just have a wank than risk being saddled with a kid they really don’t want!