I don’t have anyone else to talk to and I need some advice or perspective. I had my first child at 18, she is now 16 and I fell unexpectedly pregnant with my current partner. We had a rocky time of it when we found out. Mostly due to the fact that I knew what I was in for and didn’t think we were in a place where we could have a baby. He had only just moved in and our very small house was struggling under the strain of merging two households worth of stuff. This along with other health issues I was dealing with, with my daughter and his mental health, it seemed better that we wait. However, he is 38 and childless and really wanted to continue with the pregnancy. On our way to London to have a termination at 20 weeks, I changed my mind and agreed I’d like to keep it, I couldn’t go through with it.
Now every problem, every household burden and most of the financial side of things have been placed on to me. He expects help with lunches, dinner and generally running his life outside of work and snaps at me (and even his Mum) if we don’t respond or help fast enough. He went abroad on holiday, alone, when I was 30 weeks pregnant because he needed a break from everything while I was trying to cope with depression and self harm. I’m now 37 weeks and I’ve had to sort all the baby stuff out myself, along with sorting the house out to make it work for us. He’s read no baby stuff and despite even his friends telling him he has no idea what he’s in for, he doesn’t seem concerned enough to check. I was signed off work for pregnancy related back pain and he expects my daughter to help rather than himself. He only lives here when he’s not at work because he needs a new car and has to be close to work (which I found and researched for him, he’s waiting for it to be ready) and I had to beg him to come home so I’m not alone all weekend. He just complained that if he comes here, all we are going to do is stay in the house and he wants to go out drinking. He doesn’t seem to understand that I’m struggling and at 37 weeks with back issues, I need support. I do love him but I feel like I’m going to end up doing this all over again alone and it feels awful having to beg your partner to come home. Do you think you can teach someone at this stage in life what responsibility is? I really don’t want to do it alone again. On top of this, he’s supposed to be my birth partner and when he’s not here, he’s hard to contact sometimes which scares me because I don’t have a back up.