Is having kids worth it? Do women have crap choices? choices

[TwoTwitTuTu]

I'm 37 TTC baby 1.

Finding myself very ambivalent.

My partner of two years is committed and motivated. He'd be a great dad. He isn't perfect, he can be a little impatient and short tempered and obviously this will be worse with kids. However I do think he will be committed and motivated if we have a baby and I won't be left alone as many women are. Financially we are very secure and don't want for anything, so I'm incredibly lucky.

His family are a little overbearing, but nothing shocking. The usual MIL problems. I'm an only child,no parents around, but warm relationships with extended family.

For years I wanted to meet someone I could have a baby with and finally I have. We have been TTC for two months.

However I'm now finding I'm ambivalent about it, having wanted it for ages. When my period comes, I'm slightly relieved. I dread birth and dealing with the early years and sleeplessness and exhaustion.

TBH, I'm not feeling excited about the prospect of a baby, I think they're cute, but the 24/7 nature of it frightens me. Childbirth fills me with dread. Having to care for a young infant every single day sounds quite honestly exhausting. I don't know if this is because I'm 37 and just have less energy? I work as a professional currently in a job with long hours and could afford to give it up, but don't particularly want to. However my job is pretty technical and I wouldn't be able to do it on little sleep or part time so I think that would likely have to end.

I know my partner wouldn't quit his job. I also know if I said I didn't want kids he would probably split up with me.

I don't think I could be in a better position to have a baby though. Loads of women do with less.

However it's just looking a bit bleak from where I am, I feel genuinely tired thinking about the idea of a baby.

I think if I said I wanted to stop TTC I would fairly quickly find I am on my own with no nuclear family and no prospect of that in my life again.

I could meet someone and have a romantic relationship, maybe step kids, but that's probably the closest I would come to family if I decided I don't want a baby with my current partner. That sounds pretty bleak as well.

I keep wondering if I have slight depression or something as all of my choices as a woman just don't look that great?

Or do you think that maybe I'm just too honest with myself about the choices society presents us with and they are just kind of awful options?

I wouldn't mind being a father, but the mother role, or the alternative of being that crazy cat lady both look so unappealing.

I feel like everyone around me is married with kids and it just doesn't look great. I feel like everyone seems sorry for, or mocks the single women in their forties... What is actually a good choice here? What's the happy path? I feel like the problem isn't with me, I've had loads of counselling. I genuinely think it might be that the choices are bad.

... Does anyone have any wise thoughts?

I love being a mum and I have 4 children but, if I was you, I wouldn’t.
I agree with you; I think starting at 37 would be exhausting but mainly, you really don’t seem to want one and that’s not starting on a good footing.
I don’t think you’re being fair to your husband either, you need to be honest with him so he has the chance to meet someone who really wants a family with him.

It's impossible to say as the answer will be different for everyone. I think it is normal to have some reservations and worries, but similarly there's absolutely no requirement to have children if this isn't what you want, you can have an equally fulfilling life on a different path- its about what is right for you. I do agree with others if you don't want a child you should be honest with your husband, absolutely don't let his wants sway or guilt you into it as invariably you will absolutely end up doing most of the legwork and your life will be affected much more than his.

The comments about the state of the world, whilst I agree things are crap currently I don't think that they're worse than they have been through history- it's just that we have been fortunate to have some very good decades recently. I certainly am thankful to be alive today rather than in yesteryear.

Not worth it at all. And be in no doubt about the expense. Living in the SE you need a £100k salary at the very least to have any sort of life.

I totally get you, OP, I’m in a similar situation. Following with interest the advise here.

I wouldn't if I was in your position.
It's hard enough for those who were desperate to get pregnant and thrilled to be having a baby. You've only got to read posts on here about what happens when the baby arrives and reality sets in.

Having children is brilliant, they’re babies for about 5 minutes and wonderful adults for actual decades. I’m an only child but had 4, I feel I built a team for myself. We’re a neuro diverse family and things have been wild at times but it’s amazing.

I’m 37, and have one child. She’s 10 months old on Sunday. I have never been fussed about babies, loved travelling for work and for fun, and for most of my life I assumed I wouldn’t have children which I was totally fine with. DH was on the fence but changed his mind after something traumatic happened, and after a lot of discussion we decided we would TTC but that we would only have one. When I got pregnant I cried, and they weren’t happy tears even though I got what I supposedly wanted! 😂 It took a while for me to get my head round it and I loathed being pregnant. I hated the newborn stage (but I knew I would, babies are bloody boring). It has been really, really hard. I got diagnosed with cancer when DD was 4 months old and going through all of that would obviously have been easier without a baby to look after. I am so tired and quite often feel overwhelmed by the fact I’m completely responsible for someone else and can’t ever have a day off from that. I’ve missed my old life more times than I can count.

BUT -

I really love my DD. It didn’t hit me like in the movies, I didn’t “bond with my bump” and when she was born I kind of felt like I was looking after someone else’s baby for a while 😂 but as I’ve got to know her it’s grown and in the morning when I go into her room and she smiles at me it really is the best feeling. When she learns something new it’s awesome. Yes she’s made my cancer treatment harder but she’s also got me through it. DH is an absolutely equal parent and I love seeing the two of them together.

She’s started nursery and I’m getting my sense of self back, I’m not back at work yet as I’m in chemo so I’ve got time to do
stuff for me. I went out last night with my friends, I’ve got girls’ camping weekends booked for the summer, I am still “me” and not just someone’s mum. Things are so much better than they were in the dark newborn days. Yes I still miss my old life but this new one has some great things about it too.

All that being said - I can’t have any more children now but even if I could, we absolutely wouldn’t. One is definitely enough. My mental health would be destroyed by more!

I think you're overthinking it, @TwoTwitTuTu. You say you're TTC, but you're not pregnant yet. You might not become pregnant. You or your partner might be infertile. You might become pregnant with triplets. So I would try to think less and go with the flow more.

FWIW, my experience is that babies are boring, and toddlers are brilliant. Primary aged children are ok, and teenagers are boring and frustrating. Adult children are brilliant, especially when they are all together.

Overall, it is by far the best and most satisfying thing I have ever done, and I didn't think much about it beforehand. In fact, if you'd asked me beforehand, I'd have said that it wasn't for me, as I'm not interested in babies. I would have regretted it very deeply if I hadn't had them, though.

Why exactly are you on Mumsnet, if you're so opposed to people having children?

It sounds like you don't want a baby. And that's okay.

But this stood out:

I wouldn't mind being a father, but the mother role, or the alternative of being that crazy cat lady both look so unappealing.

What do you think is the difference between the 'mother' and 'father' role?

You get to choose how you split your parenting responsibilities.

From day one, DH and I have split everything as far as possible. So there's never really been a case where one of us is 'more' of a parent than the other. Both of us did everything for DS, we combo fed so we could both do feeds, both did nappies and night wakes, we chose for me to stay home for mat leave but could have easily switched that around so I went back to work after a few months and then DH stayed home for the rest of the first year. Once I went back to work we both went down to four days so we could both have equal time at work and with DS.

Are you surrounded by examples of martyr mothers who do it all, are exhausted, get no thanks, while the fathers are off pleasing themselves and getting full nights sleep? That might be warping your view of what parenthood can actually be like.

He isn't perfect, he can be a little impatient and short tempered and obviously this will be worse with kids
**
the second half of this statement is the understatement of the century. You don't have to spend very much time on these boards to learn just how awful things can get for women who have children with an impatient & short tempered life partner.

Your part about how he expects to continue his career tell you everything you need to know about who he sees doing the grunt work. Again, read a few more threads, there's no shortage of examples of what life looks like when your partner thinks that dealing with norovirus is women's work an his career/hobbies shouldn't be affected.

So your post sets up a false dichotomy. The choice for all women isn't between being a downtrodden mother or a cat lady. Many women have excellent and fulfilling lives with or without children.

The choice - your choice- is whether to fulfil your partner's desire to become a father when it's more than apparent that all of the compromises and sacrifices would be yours.

We are another couple who shared the load equally. I'm lucky I started on Mumsnet way back when TTC so I had years of reading this board and learning where the pitfalls were.
We weren't married at the time so I was determined to go back full time so that if the unexpected happened, I'd cope ok. And I insisted on taking turns doing the dash to nursery when they rang to say he had a fever or took time off to stay at home. Apart from breastfeeding DH was as competent as me - but there was an assumption on his part that he was clueless about babies and I somehow was competent purely through giving birth but a quick chat put him right on that.

The baby/toddler years were tough. DH had endless patience, much more than I did. We were pretty solid as a couple, rarely ever fought but even so, there was the odd snap at each other when stressed. Because we were solid, and because we were doing it all equally, the baby years felt like we were in it together and it brought us closer together. But I could easily see if we had existing cracks they would have blown wide open.

I guess you have come off contraception to TTC? You may be feeling a bit different to usual because of that? Or maybe you were just in the mode of "I want kids one day" for a long time, without ever re-assessing whether that's what you still wanted, and now's the first time you've thought about it properly, seriously? Perhaps wait for a day when you're feeling particularly cheerful and dedicate some time to the subject, writing a list of pros and cons, etc. One technique I've heard of is "Imagine it's 5/10/20 years in the future and things have not panned out like you hoped. What is it that went wrong? Tell the story." Then imagine all sorts of scenarios.

I could meet someone and have a romantic relationship, maybe step kids, but that's probably the closest I would come to family if I decided I don't want a baby with my current partner. That sounds pretty bleak as well.
What is it that sounds bleak? I divorced when my children were teenagers. They are now adults, living in another town, so we see each other on visits, chat on Whatsapp etc. I'm not in a nuclear family situation any more either. That situation lasts maybe 20 years, if you don't divorce. Is it blood relatives that you'd miss? People round at Christmas? The family life in the first 20 years? Might be worth pinning it down.

The drawback of having children for me was that my exh turned out not to be inerested in any of the practical childcare/housework from the moment I was on maternity leave on. Previously he would have described himself as modern and believing in men and women taking on an equal share of the work. In practice, as soon as it came to him potentially needing to take a day off work for a sick child, or come home early so that I could go to work, it turned out that he was not up for any of that. With him failing to cooperate, my choices were extremely limited. (Being up late, childcare being hard work - I remember all that, but it feels incidental.)

I really wanted children, so did not have the dilemma that you face. Mine are now almost 26 and 24. Both have left home now, both have extremely good jobs, partners and successful lives.

The hardest things for me, was sleep deprivation. My son didn't sleep through until he was 8 months, and would wake almost every hour, 24 hours a day until then. My daughter was better, but still didn't sleep though until about 5 months. Then, for whatever reason, when I went back to work, they started to wake up about 5 times a night each, so I was up 10 times a night, with an 8am start to my working day. My "D"H refused to do any getting up in the night, and whilst he was generally a good Dad, he left most of the grunt work to me.

Raising them seemed easy enough at the time, they were very well behaved children. We exposed them to lots of things early in life, such as restaurants, foreign holidays, even long haul holidays, and they adapted really well. We also made sure we found decent paid for babysitters close by, so we could still go out and have adult time.

But of course, you put yourself last, until they have left home!! There are the baby years, the toddler years, the Primary school years, the High school years, and then the Uni years (where lots of financial support is needed, for at least 4/5 years).

I don't regret any of it, but now when I look back, I can see how full on it all was. The house is so quiet now, my laundry basket is never full, there's no toys, no chatter, no school runs etc. I can sit down with a glass of wine at 6.30pm, knowing that I don't have to collect someone from a club at 10pm. If I fell pregnant tomorrow, I've no idea how I could start that journey from day 1 again.

Being pregnant, I found very, very hard. So many restrictions on what you can do, what you can eat. With DS, I went from 8 stone to 13 stone, and couldn't walk more than a few steps at the end. Muscles across the abdomen are shot, meaning I can look heavy in that area. Also got an apron flap from a C Section (DS). When having my DD, there was no time for pain relief, and so I had none. Honestly thought I was going to die (no joke), and when I asked the midwife how many stitches I needed down below, she said "you don't want to know". Did recover fine from that though, with no long lasting effects.

I don't see much of my children, although we are very close and in contact plenty. My DS lives about 45 mins away, but his life is (quite rightly), taken up with work, his partner and friends. My DD lives abroad. We text every week. They have no need to provide any care for me and DH, as we are only 50/53, so they don't have the burden of having to "check in" regularly.

Me and DH have a very full life though. We work, and when we're on annual leave we do some amazing holidays and always make new friends. Love a holiday to the Caribbean (Adults only hotels), or a city break.

Good luck with whatever you decide!!

I've always been fairly ambivalent about kids and cried when I found out I was pregnant (even though we were TTC ) The realisation that you can never go back to your previous life like PPs have said is just unlike anything else.

But it has been fine. Sometimes great and sometimes shit, but I've never regretted having him.

I think the main factor in that though has been sharing the load with a decent man. Splitting school runs, housework, weekend activities and making sure we each get time alone has meant I could enjoy parenthood rather than struggling from the pressure of feeling like the family dogsbody. So if you have your doubts about your partner then that is something to really think about.

And stopping at one. Whilst I would love my son to have a sibling I honestly think that I'm a better parent to him now then I would be if we had another - having him has made me recognise my limitations and think about how important it is to protect my mental health, for the sake of the whole family now really.

Wishing you the best OP.

Don’t do it, OP. A baby puts immense strain on even the best of relationships, and you might find yourself a single parent to a child you love but don’t really want. Whatever happens, you will find that raising a child is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.

Im divorced and single.
I woke up tired and grumpy this morning.

My very tall, floppy haired, handsome 14 year old son came into the kitchen and handed me a crumpled handmade valentine's card, with a shy grin on his face and said "Happy Valentines Day Mum" :).
Completely changed my mood and made me happy all day, it's hard sometimes, but so worth it for those moments.

@Nell1e Sounds like you’ve brought him up with some good values! 😋

You do realise you have just as many choices as a man? Ditch the guy, don't have a baby and live your best life. The possibilities are endless. There's many more paths than a baby or a cat!

Don't do it.

You absolutely do not need to have crap life choices as a result of having a child. But you do need to be realistic about your priorities/there only being so many hours in the day and you need to have an egalitarian and respectful relationship with a partner who pulls their weight in life. When I had my first dc, I was mid-way through a PhD, with one and then 2 small children, I still got my PhD on time, I did a lot of global travel for research work, I've taken on quite demanding roles in a top uni. My career has absolutely not experienced any setbacks, though I have been very particular about not working FT in most of these roles (less to do with children and more to do with mental health and wellbeing). Dh similarly started his own business after dc1 was born. 10 years on, it's a very successful company, he is still director, and he's also had a lot of career success. We've both travelled, we see friends, we get time to ourselves, we pursue hobbies we enjoy, etc.

But the early years are tough and neither of you will have loads of time for friends, hobbies, extra stuff beyond just keeping your head above water. If your relationship is a good one, with both of you taking on 50/50, you should still have time for yourself and you should still be able to work, assuming you can source childcare (whether through family help, paid, flexible working). I think that thinking through the realities of childcare now is key, because it's what will allow you both the freedom to do the things you want to do while being parents.

This sounds like a man who wants kids as a way to control his partner. Im seeing a big coercive control risk here.

Being a woman doesn't mean you have to want kids. 1 in 5 women don't (some childfree by choice some not). There's plenty of other things you can do with your life. Btw, you sound like you may be childfree imo. And just being guilty into feeling otherwise.

Please stop trying for a kid you are at best, 'ambivalent' to the idea of. It smacks of societal brainwashing that we're all 'supposed to' have them. Good thing you're questioning it but ffs stop trying in the mean time xD

Also, what's 'bleak' about a partner who loves you and wants the same lifestyle? Or a step family? Do you think having kids is the only way to have a 'real' family. Because again, thats just bs sociatal brainwashing. Have you never loved your pets? Friends? Other family members? 'Family' is subjective. We can create them in a myriad of different ways.

Trust your gut. It seems clear you know pregnancy and kids are not something you want or feel you have the energy for and you're just frightened to claim your own needs. Your needs matter. It's your life. You can choose so many different things than mothering.

Got those vibes too unfortunately.

Could you plan to go back to work full time and hire a fanastic nanny plus some night help. Basically spend your whole salary on amazing help as it sounds like the baby stage is what’s putting you off.