number 3 on the way, am panicking, help!

[srce]

this is my first ever post on mumsnet and am doing it cos am desperate for advice. just found out am unexpectedly preg with no 3. DD1 is 4 and DD2 is 1, just! am absolutley shitting myself, my husband is going completly mental and i dont feel i can tell any of my friends/family yet.
please does anyone out there have any tips or advice on having 3? i think underneath the fear i am pleased, but panicked!
thanks in advance for any response.

Hi, srce, welcome to the coven welcoming bosom of MN !

Inspite your panic, I would like to offer my congratulations! Unplanned does not at all mean this pregnancy has to be unwanted and if you and your husband have only just found out, it will take some time to get your heads around this.

I had DS1 and 2 exactly 12 months (and 10days!!) apart, and there is no denying it was hard in the beginning but they are now best buddies. DS3 came along 4 years later; he will be 2 when expected DS4 will hopefully make an entrance.

The truth of the matter is that you will adjust. Your family and its dynamics will change, there will be a period of adjustment and you will cope.
I enjoyed having 3 for the last 18 months or so. The older ones were brilliant with their baby brother - and they are looking forward to another baby!

I think smallish gaps are nice for children to grow up together, and your children's age differences are not tiny.

I hope that you will very soon feel more pleased than scared, and that you can enjoy the rest of your pregnancy.

Hi srce,
How do you feel about it? Is the panic a reaction to your dh's opinion?
Congratulations hun, try not to dwell on the negative and think of all the positives (like the small age gap mentioned by Pacific above)
x

Congratulations on your pregnancy.

I have three daughters and it's just lovely - they are such a gang.

Just for now take some deep breaths and take care of you. You don't have to tell anybody else for ages yet and even when you do it's none of their business to be anything other than supportive. Get some folic acid tomorrow and start taking it and then just let everything else settle. Your daughters will adore a sibling and after all that's why pregnancy takes nine months - gives everybody time to adjust to the shock!

why is it unexpected?

hi ,i was in this situation only single and didnt think id cope.... it took a bit of getting used to but it was worth it..now they are DD1-21 DD2-19 DS-18 AND NOW DS-5 also a nan to 3 ,So congratulations .

thank you all so much for your replies. i am now a total mumsnet convert!
in answer to 1 question, its unexpected due to a fail in contraception, therefore i realise totally my fault and responsibility.
in answer to another, i think i am more worried about DH than anyone else, he is totally freaking out. he says he really didnt enjoy the birth and first few months of DD1 and DD2, even tho i thought he did ok. i thinky it is his reaction that is panicking me and making me question wherther we would cope. i think once he gets ova the shock he might start to look forward to it, but cant make him see that yet.
had a wobble at 4am when my 1yr old woke crying (bloody teeth!) but think underneath i am pleased.
thank you all so much for your support, cant believe its taken me so long to discover mumsnet!

srce, I got the impression from your first post that you were at least partially not-unhappy, if you know what I mean.
Re your DH's reaction: I think pregnancy complications/labour/delivery/fog that is first few months with a newborn are very hard on a lot of men, maybe more so than for a lot of women. It must be hard to see the person you love in discomfort/pain/frazzled/tired to exhaustion. And the "male" answer to a lot of these kind of problems is to want to "solve" them - when really there is no instant solution: labour you have to get through, babies will need to be fed in the middle of the night. AND he will have to share you with somebody who will be FAR more needy than he is - he might not like that either .
I know I never enjoyed the v young baby period, I much prefer the walking/talking child, but hey-ho, you cannot have one without the other...
I hope he will come around and the 2 of you can be a support to each other and enjoy the addition to your family.

thsnks pacific dogwood, i totally agree with your comments. he is very unhappy at the moment, but im sure its the idea of whats going to happen thats scaring him more than the actual reality ( if that makes sense!) both DDs were very good, i fed them and they slept thru from 4 mnths. theyve both always woken early, so the day is long! but they are very good. i feel that we will cope with this baby too, but all his panic is making me doubt myself.
he thinks im being selfish as he says he doesnt want this baby. am i wrong to hope that over 9 mnths he will come round to the idea? sorry this post is turning more into marrige counselling!
he actually said termination last night which makes me feel ill and feels selfish and so wrong. am i risking our marriage, argh!! maybe i will talk to a friend as feel my head will explode with all this.
what is it with husbands?!

Hi srce! Ithink it is OK to say congrats on your pregnancy?

I have 3 kids, now 9 and a half, 7 and a half and almost 6. When dd2 was born, ds had not turned 2, and dd1 was a couple of months short of 4.

I got pg due to a massive contraception failure - my mirena coil slipped into my cervix and then fell out altogether. It was a huge issue for us as I was very ill while having ds with a kidney condition - which also affected me with dd2, and had me in hospital every months of the pregnancy and regularly for 2 years afterwards. It was awful.

I also suffered badly with every child with PND. SO it was very worrying for us all when I got that +ve test with dd2.

I can't pretend that the first couple of years (seriously) were not hard - they were awful. Dd2 was a good baby, but I was in hospital very often, suffered a huge amount of pain (kidney stones), and the PND was crushing. It did put a strain on me and dh, especially as I had really put my foot down about him NOT having a vasectomy after ds was born - he was sure he only wanted 2, I just wasn't able to commit to that right then. He ended up having the snip when I was 7 months pg with dd2 - by then, we had had a lot of medical advice about the likely effect of another pregnancy on my kidneys, and knew that whatever the outcome, we were never going through this again.

But now. Well, its great. We have 3 kids at school, they are all fabulous. Dd2 has been a real blessing to the whole family - she was born just 2 weeks after dh's Grandma died, and has her name, and this was immensely healing for the whole family. She is loving, gorgeous. clever, arty, musical etc .... she has a long term hip problem which has made life quite hard for her sometimes, but is always cheerful, loving (so many kisses! and "I love you Mummy"s). We would not, under any circumstances, be without her.

If you sat me down today and said "well, you can have a 3rd child, and this is what she would be like ... but this is the price you pay to have her" then I would say, with no esitation, that I would have her. The price has been hospital, pain, depression, tears, dodgy marriage for a bit (on my side - dh said he never had an issue with it) - even SS involvement when I was on strong painkillers - I would do it all again in an eyeblink for my gorgeous dd2.

No pressure! Have a look at my profile for pics of my fabby 3children.

Hope you can work it out. My dh was very sceptical, btu he too is now delighted with out lovely family!

Just wanted to add - termination was never an option for us (for religious reasons, but also just - it happened, it must have been meant)

I would also like to give you a big totally non mumsnetty (hug). It is so traumatic and hard - I know!

thanx weegiemum, i am pleased to be pregnant, and really dont want a termination, but am worried about my marriage. DH having major meltdown, thinks this will be 'the end of us' slightly overdramatic, but hes fuming and in a panic that this has happened and that i wont consider a termination. argh got to go, scraming DDD2, will be back

Firstly congratulations, I think you have already decided that you are having the baby.

I am currently pg with number 6 (30 weeks), (map failure) I cried for days after finding out, but I also knew that I could not have a termination, DH was quiet for a couple of weeks, but I think he was more worried about me than anything as I found out I was pg the week before my mum died. So I was under alot of stress with her illness and then having to arrange her funeral.

My dcs are 11, 9, 5, 2, and 1. ds2 will be about 18mths when the baby is born.

just want to say thanks to all who have posted me lovely msgs. really helped to calm me down in my panic. now if only i could calm down DH life would be ok! what is it with men, they panic when things are out of their control. hoping he will soon come round to the idea of baby no.3, well in 9 months at least
i am now a total mums net convert, and if i can figure out how to find other threads will soon be chatting away!
fingers crossed for a happy family in 9 mnths time, if slightly larger than planned!

Hi srce. I have 3. DC1 was 2.6 and DC2 was 14 months when DS2 came along.

I was really panicked like you at the prospect of 3 so close and it is hard work but very rewarding. DC3 just fitted into our family routine and is a very easy going baby (now 8 months)

My DH was worried too and admitted that he didn't really think about it whilst I was pg and doesn't really like the birth/newborn bit but when DC3 was born he concentrated on looking after other 2 and I concentrated on newborn. He wouldn't be without DC3 now.

We too had contraception failure though and are now expecting DC4 so may be posting a similar thread about 4 soon!