I am pregnant with my third baby and am not okay. I want this baby, I’m 16 weeks and know it’s a boy and I know I can have him and love him. But I am really struggling. I had left my ex partner but made one bad decision to sleep with him and got pregnant, on contraception and with a previous diagnosis of infertility.
When my daughters were younger, he had a drinking problem. I can’t go into it all as I am too emotional but it was traumatic to say the least. I don’t know how to describe what I feel but it’s like I am consumed with these sad and guilty feelings. My daughters are 4 and 2 now and are happy, beautiful, amazing little girls. I keep looking back at when my youngest was little and my heart just hurts so much. I am so angry and upset that his behaviour tainted so much of those early months/years with her. That COVID meant it was just us alone. That he gaslighted me into thinking I was insane and had a personality disorder. I really believed him, I questioned whether I was a fit parent at times. I can’t often admit all of this but this pregnancy is forcing it out of me and I don’t know who to speak to or how to approach this so I have to write it here. I saw videos and pictures from her first birthday and they’re physically painful to look at. I thought he’d be home for the day but he wasn’t. It was just us. I made all this food for me and a one year old, all the decorations and trying to do a party for just us. Everything we did, we did alone. The videos seem so quiet and lonely now. The ones of her second birthday are the same. We do have family support and I am so so grateful. But I am angry. I didn’t do anything wrong yet I’m on a third pregnancy of going through this all alone. My ex is very different now, he does not drink and hasn’t in over a year and his awful behaviours are gone. There is too much that’s happened for us to be together though. He is genuinely sorry and eaten up with guilt by what he put us through. I always thought him recognising it would help me but it doesn’t. I see these pictures and videos of these innocent babies and toddlers and hate that I couldn’t give them more. That these sacred moments have just been ruined by him and his actions. I can see the deep pain in my eyes, I dread to think how much I must have passed on to them without meaning.
I don’t know what I’m hoping for by saying this but needed to put it somewhere. I have regrets and guilt about other things in my life, of course, but this was their baby and toddlerhood. I’ll never get it back and I can’t change it and I’m finding it so hard to accept it. Looking back I WISH I had the strength to leave. I wish I’d taken them and myself away from feeling that stress of him not coming home, of him acting so out of character, of him cheating on me countless times but never admitting it so I thought I was insane. He had been the perfect partner for five years before we had children and it changed him completely, I felt like he’d died. I feel so guilty that I was consumed with not wanting to lose him that I have let my girls down and now I’m bringing another child into this family with separated parents and a mum with limited means. I am just gutted with how I’ve let things get. The only thing that matters is them and I feel I’ve messed it all up.
Just to note, he was never abusive physically to me and never abusive in anyway to the children. I just mean being alone for so much, and them being around all the stress and unhappiness. I’m just so low.