Pregnant with number four and afraid of husbands reaction

[happyasasandboy]

Hi,

I don't know whether this is the right place to post; it feels like a mix of larger families and pregnancy choices and relationships, so I didn't know where to post.

I am pregnant. If the baby is viable then it would be child number 4, with the others being aged 8, 8 and 4 years.

My DH and I have never really talked about children since our first excited "let's go for it" with number 1 (which turned out to be number 1 and number 2). After the twins were born, I was open about wanting more; and while never saying he didn't want another one, DH was obviously reluctant. At that point I explained that I wasn't going to use hormonal birth control due to too many complications in the past, and we used condoms for a while.

Eventually he stopped using condoms, which neither of us talked about, and I conceived. I lost the baby in an early miscarriage and was devastated; he said we could try again while we were still in the hospital. A few months later I conceived DC3, which I think DH was concerned about though he completely dotes on all three DC now they are here.

After DC3, it took a while to get our sex life back on track, but we didn't use condoms at all. I was fine with this, as I was fine with having another baby. We didn't talk about it. Since about 6 months ago, I've been meaning to talk to DH about getting the snip as the age gap between DC3 and any further baby would be quite large and I've gradually accepted that DC3 would be the last. I haven't ever found the moment to raise it though.

So now I find myself pregnant, with no idea how to talk to DH about it. I don't know how he'll react, and TBH I don't know how I feel about it. There would be an almost 9 year age gap between my oldest two and DC4. Is that mad?

Financially we are fine. We could house/feed/entertain four kids. Obviously each would have less, but all would be fine. I would reduce my days at work from full time to three days, but I was planning that anyway,

So I am worried about talking to DH about it, confused about whether to continue with the pregnancy, and feel like I can't raise it with DH until I know how I feel about continuing or not.

I am really not looking for people to point out that we should have talked about so many things along the way and we got ourselves in this situation; I know that. But what do I do now?

[missyB1]

What about some pregnancy counselling before you tell him? You could ring around some of the charities that offer this? Or you may have a local NHS women’s centre that offers it.

[happyasasandboy]

Do you know which charities offer it? I tried BPAS but the first in-person appointment for a general chat (which might lead to a counselling referral) is 16th Jan and first phone one is 21st. That all feels really late to be making decisions.

[rachelfrost]

I can’t offer any advice apart from suggesting that the age gap between eldest and your current pregnancy wouldn’t be a problem. It’s not huge and 8 year olds can be more hands on which gives them a chance to be caring and responsible. Not your main problem I know but one less thing to worry about?

I think you need to talk it through with someone, anyone, so that you know what you think and get your words right: just to practice.

Try and work out:
Why would your husband object?
What would your answers be to his objections?
Why haven’t you spoken to your husband in the past? (Are you scared of a certain reaction such as anger?)

Your post has lots of reasons why a forth child would be manageable and no real counter argument. What does that mean?

Good luck

[EverythingNow]

I can't advise on the telling but I have three dc and am 9wks with number 4. My dc are 18, 9 and 7 so I've done huge gap, small gap and now doing huge gap again as youngest will be 8 when baby arrives.

The positives between 1&2 we're that dc1 school runs meant we got into a routine of school run, baby group, lunch, nap/tidy house, school run. I got 1-1 with the baby and dc1 when baby eventually went to sleep. She was helpful and understood me giving my time to the baby was because it was helpless.

If your Dh was having unprotected sex, and clearly must understand the implications having 3 already, he must understand this was likely to happen. My DC3 was a surprise, and I was worried about telling him as dc2 was 7 or 8m old. He was fine, possibly because we planned to have another eventually and because we hadn't used protection albeit only once.

Good luck xx