I love my husband too much to have a baby

[willyoutakethisrose]

I’m a new user and I’m hoping someone will be able to give me some advice.

I’m 30, my husband is 31. We’ve been together for 10 years and we’re currently trying to work out if we want to have a baby.

The thing that most holds me back is that I worry that my husband and I are too happy to introduce another person to our dynamic. We are an incredibly happy couple - we’re very in love, we have very healthy communication, we’ve been through some extremely difficult times together (serious illness, bereavement at a very young age, moving cities for one of our careers etc.). I don’t mean this to be saccharine but I genuinely don’t know any couple who seems to be as happy or get on as well as we do. Our relationship is the absolute best thing in my life, and I don’t want to do anything to jeopardise that. Every time I think about having a child I just can’t help but feel like this whole new person would ruin it - I don’t know how we would add a new person to our dynamic, I hate the idea that we wouldn’t be able to talk as much, and most importantly (and weirdly, I know) I hate the idea that my husband might love the baby more than me and put the child ahead of me. I also can’t imagine I would feel like that either, which makes me feel I would be a bad mother.

I’m being really honest in my above thoughts because I’d like to know whether anyone else has ever had these fears? All I ever read online is that babies ruin relationships, and when I speak to my friends who have babies they often say that they don’t get to talk about anything apart from the babies, and they never seem to spend any time together any more. One of them told me that I would love my husband more after a baby because “nothing he’s ever done will ever make you as happy as when he brings you a cup of tea after a long night”. That just makes me feel so sad inside that our relationship would be reduced to that.

I’m an only child and I’ve always struggled with the idea of “sharing” love. I think I can only see having a baby as being forced into sharing the love we have for each other, and therefore diminishing it. The very close friends I have spoken to about this laugh and find it insane, which it is, but it doesn’t change that I feel it.

My husband doesn’t really get my line of argument - he thinks if we decide to have a baby it will be fine and he won’t love me any less. He also says that if we had a child our relationship would still be the most important thing to maintain to make a happy, stable home and he thinks it wouldn’t be hard to do that because we’re so strong and happy and have such a good foundation. But everything I read online says it’s so hard to maintain a good marriage when you have a baby…

Any thought on any of the above would be appreciated, even if anyone has any advice on where I can go for more help and clarity with any of these thoughts.

Parenthood completely changes the dynamics of a relationship. Our marriage was pushed and pulled to the edge and back with sleepless nights, bickering, having to take time off with sick kids, lack of money, no help from family etc....

But it made us stronger and gave a deeper respect and love for each other. You look at the child you made together and its the best feeling in the world that the love you share has poured over into this walking talking gummy dribble monster . In a way I feel like it immortalises your love, creating a generation of people who wouldn't be there without you both.

But if you even have these thoughts of "I wont be the centre of my husband / mothers world any more" I only see you resenting the child. I can't say any of that crossed my mind and I was also an only child.

Give it another couple of years. We’re 34, married for 10 years + 2 years dating, and have only decided on children this year. Holidays, galleries, rock climbing, “freedom” can only bring as much fulfillment and we found ourselves craving more. We truly want to share the life and opportunities we have created with our children, otherwise there is not much sense to keep on going and achieving more (for us).

This seems to be a really weird way of looking at love to me. Love isn't about priorities.

My DD is 16 now, so is fairly self sufficient, as such my focus doesn't need to be on her anywhere near as much as it did when she was 3. Just because I'm not keeping an eye on her to make sure she's not running into the road, doesn't mean I don't love her as much as I used to.

Equally, DP sometimes gets unbelievably bad migraines, that mean I need to keep a close eye on her. As a result I sometimes have to tell DD that she needs to get a bus to her mates house, rather than me give her a lift. My priorities have shifted, but that doesn't mean my love has.

You seem to see love as this finite resource, and that someone loving two people means they're only able to give you 50% of it. Thats really not how it works. If someone has a second child, they're not taking love away from the first one.

Is love a performative act for you? For my DP it is, she needs proof to know that I love her, and if she hasn't had any for a while, then she gets a bit insecure. I'm not talking big stuff here, just chucking the kettle on because I know she's due home in a minute. Or yesterday, she took the car for a service, so took the car key off the key ring. I know she struggles with putting it back on, so I just did it when I had a minute last night.

I on the other hand don't need that sort of thing. Don't get me wrong, its appreciated, but I'm not going to start worrying that DP doesn't love me if it doesn't happen for a while.

Having small kids does change things. For a good few years, you don't have time for the performance. Your focus is on the kid, because it has to be. But that doesn't mean that you love your partner any less.

Guys I really can’t thank you all enough for how generous you’re being with sharing your own experiences and stories on this thread, as well as your thoughtful advice. I have lurked on Mumsnet for a while and I was worried people would be really awful to me, but I am so grateful for all the advice I’m being given. I feel quite emotional that people are taking the time.

I feel like Fleabag when she says that she wants someone to tell her what to do!

Have a think about going back to therapy - and shelve parenthood idea for now but rethink in 3-4 years when you are at least mid 30s and do it again if still unsure till late 30s.

You say you love doing things with your husband. Well, creating a family together is the best adventure you can have with another person you love.
You go all in together to do something amazing. It's entirely down to you both to commit and give it your all to make something wonderful together.

It's like being a team of two doing the most intense but the most important task of your life.
Yes children test you, and change things, and iit's a huge challenge, but they ultimately bring you as close as a couple can be.
No one else loves your children like you except your DH. It's an unbreakable bond. Much more enduring than marriage.

If you do it well and you create a loving home, happy children, wonedrful memories, then there is nothing that can come close to joint sense of achivement and fulfillment you feel together.

My children are now adults and every day I marvel at what DH and have achieved in creating this family. It odd because it's something most people are doing daily, but it also seems too wonderful for ordinary people like us to have managed.

The same is true for grandparents. If your mother and child have a close and loving bond, that doesn't detract from you, it's a reflection of the amzaing thing you've done in creating a loving family. IYoud did this. With your DH. t brings deep joy and satisfcation.

Your view of love seems quite childlike and based on you getting attention.

You can choose to live that that of course but I think you are missing up the opportunity for something much deeper, a deeper love you'd have for your husband when he is also a wonderful father, a deeper bond as a comitted team to lead a family, and a deep gratitude for the wider loving bonds you've helped others around you create.

Babies don't ruin relationships, they test relationships. If you're confident in your relationship with your husband you should feel safe enough to have children with him.

Whether you actually want children or not is a separate thing to consider and totally your choice.

@Patrickiscrazy I think most parents would agree with my reflection about not being able to go on if you lost a child vs the loss of your husband. It's a pretty un-controversial statement. I wish you well with your blissful life. Different life-choices are right for different individuals. We can respect other people's choices, even if we don't really understand them ourselves.

After we had dc, we had twins DH and I discussed that it felt like our old life had been burnt to the ground. We built a good new life and wouldn't go back.
But we didn't manage to slot twins into our DINKY lifestyle. We did have a totally different life.

We have had friends who never had dc and have good lives, they are much more like the life DH and I used to have.

I’ve read all your posts, OP. I really wouldn’t have a child, if I were you. Speaking as a fellow only child, I see serious self-centredness in some of your posts. I’m a bit like that too - in different ways, but I’m self-centred because I was the sole focus of my parents’ attention (and also my paternal grandparents’ attention as my father is an only child also).

This self-centred side of your character will definitely work against you in parenthood, when you constantly have to put another first.

I'll be really honest. DH and I were the happiest couple I knew. We were bonded.

When DS1 came along I had awful pnd and DS has a range of disabilities. I over-compensated by total utter focus on the baby. DH felt pushed out. He was resentful. We had a bloody awful 4 years. Awful. Beyond awful. It came close to breaking us many times. But we worked on it. I realised- and he realised- that we were a family unit. I came to see that I did not have to love one at the expense of the other. He came to see that his heart could expand to love us both.

We are a completely tight, loving family unit. DS has only made our life richer and our bond as the three of us stronger.

You don't have to have a baby. And you don't have to have one now. Whatever you decide is fine and don't think you need to adhere to anyone elses timetable. Other people are having babies- fine- that's their business. You don't need to think 'this will destroy us' or 'this will make us'. You can just be and change and adapt as a couple.

Don't overthink it I guess. And if it sucks for an awful long time- that may not be how it ends up either.

I do understand being able to go on if husband dies, however harrowing.
I respect others' choices, my stance comes from deciding to remain child free at around 13yo.

As pp has said, your heart expands.

However, what type of baby you get is totally in the lap of the gods and friends and relatives can turn into unrecognisable beings. I've had a quiet interested little angel who slept all night and ate all his veggies (although once he turned 2 he made up for lost time) and a right little horror who demanded my constant attention and worked on a 4 hour cycle leaving me a gibbering zombie (advance sleep deprivation will bugger your brains).

BUT this is your decision and hubby seems to have a rose tinted view of things. My advice is to take care of a baby for a whole week and then see if you like it. That's both of you. I would also say that if you're not desperately foaming at the bit to have a baby, then don't. Motherhood is tough.

Having children has ruined my relationship with my dh. We were so happy previously and I’d found my soulmate. Now I just do what I need to do to get through the day. We’ve been parents for 15 years now so this is not a harried toddler mum speaking.

I can’t find the original post but somebody said something up thread about my issue possibly being with becoming a “mother” and not liking the place that has in society. I’ve been thinking about that and I think that’s extremely tied up in all of this - I don’t want to be “Freddie’s Mum” and not ME. I don’t like the idea of my husband no longer seeing me as me, the full person, and primarily as the mother of his child. I think that’s why I can’t connect with people who say they love how their husband loves them more after pregnancy because of what they went through - I guess something in me rejects that because I have always wanted to be loved and respected for what I bring to the table as a person, not a biological role I can fulfil.

When I look around in society it seems like we don’t value mothers very much, and certainly don’t value or recognise them as women outside of being mothers, and I fear that dynamic would be transferred into my personal relationships with my husband and my family as well. I have a lot to reflect on!

Love for anyone is like planting a seed and tending it til it grows. The seed doesn't 'take' from something else, kill off other plants around it, in order to grow. It's a potential. If you water it and nurture it, the potential becomes a tangible thing and it expands and expands.

When you met your now dh, you didn't suddenly stop loving your mum or your dad. You just grew a new love and now you have even more love than you did before. It's like that.

When I had my first baby (she's nearly a teen now), it was right around the time of the Malaysian Airlines disaster (well, both of them). And I remember reading about the families who lost children. And I remember being so overwhelmed because I would be absolutely devastated if my child had been lost on that day. And I actually found it really difficult to deal with because I realise that I'd lived my whole life, 30 and a bit years of it to that point, not even knowing someone who now I loved more than anyone else. Like I didn't even know at 22 or 28 or whenever that I could experience love like that and that I was yet to even meet the most important person(s) in my life.

And I guess it raises the question, if you could go back in time and never meet your dh, would you rather just never meet? Have some sliding doors moment where that day you met, one of you decided to stay at home, and it never happened, just because you couldn't imagine how you could ever love someone that much? When you met him, the love grew from the potential. It didn't get stolen from someone else.

That said, relationships do change when children come along. I don't think they change for the worse though. I mean, life changes, you don't have the freedom, time and money you will once have had. Things get more stressful. You will argue more. But life isn't meant to be all rosy and just about coasting through. Your happiness will come through different things, but that doesn't mean you'll be less happy. It will just be different.

You don’t really want to have a child, OP: it’s becoming clearer with every passing post. They’re all overwhelmingly negative about what becoming a mother will do to your life.

So don’t have one: it’s not conpulsory.

I think this is quite a valid fear. There is no easy solution to this; we all work it out on our own.

@willyoutakethisrose When I look around in society it seems like we don’t value mothers very much

This is definitely true and it is part of why motherhood is so challenging. We are doing the hardest job and yet we are not valued for it. I also think we grow up believing that 'having a career' and material positions are more important so the idea of motherhood seems less than. I struggled with the loss of identity after having my children. However, I have now realised that I have lots of aspects to my identity and they all contribute to who I am. But being a mother is life changing and other worldly in a way that no other person, thing or experience can match.

I genuinely am not saying this to be mean or cruel in any way shape or form, this is just purely an honest opinion based on what I've read. You don't sound like you want a baby and, more importantly you sound like you would rather the attention be on you rather than on a baby? Again, this is with no malice intended at all, but you genuinely sound too self-focused to share your life with a baby and that's absolutely fine! There's nothing at all wrong with being that way. Plenty of people are and know within their soul that they prefer to be focused on themselves. It's entirely your choice, even if your DH wants a baby it is still your choice as it's your body.
I regularly wonder what my life would've been like if I'd not had DC and I have to be honest and say I get a pang of excitement at the thought of all that freedom! Even though I would never ever regret having my DC. Best of luck OP

I don't think kids ruin a relationship, but I think they do change but not necessarily for the worse.

There's nothing like watching your partner be a good father, it makes you love them more.

Wow reading your replies after mine

About not wanting your mum to love your child more then you

You mentioned dh May love the child more then you.

I mean this kindly but you have some serious issues and def need to talk to someone. /therapy

and please don't have a child as they will soon Reliese you don't want or love them or that you are insanely jealous of someone else loving them

No offence taken, don’t worry! That’s basically what I’ve said about myself, and the crux of what I’m trying to work out.

It’s the family thing for me I think - some posters have said to visualise life in 20/30 years time and that’s where I can see a family with a child and I can feel that I may want to have created that. A baby is the sticking point. I don’t know if I want that. But you can’t have one without the other!

Enjoy each other and this lovely phase now rethink next year. You may find actually you want to move onto the next stage together at a later point.
You’re not too old.

Posters saying “there’s nothing like watching them be a good father, it makes you love them more” are kind of confirming my concerns. I just don’t know if I want the main thing I love my husband for to be his ability to be a coparent. That doesn’t feel like valuing him as a full person, more an accessory.