Posted By Anonymous.
I suffer an involuntary pang of jealously at every pregnant woman I see. Of course I’m jealous of the stay at home wife with a six-figure earning husband who has an decorator design the baby room and gets mommy massages and has her prenatal yoga class before her appointment with the midwife at the private birthing center, not that I know any of those in real life. I’m also jealous of the young unwed mothers in the grocery store with their pimply baby-daddies dragging sullenly behind, of the cute girl I used to like until she married some ugly “godly” dude and went crazy and moved to the Middle East to live in a mud hut, and of the friend who can’t afford the two kids she has with her good-for-nothing husband and who deliberately got pregnant again on welfare. I don’t envy these people’s lifestyles, I am really grateful for my own husband over any of theirs, and I don’t want to be them, but why do they get to have kids and I don’t? Don’t bother telling me the problems and stress that their ill-timed pregnancies will bring, don’t tell me how smart it is to wait until you are financially stable to have children, don’t give me statistics about how waiting a few years can make all the difference. I want babies. I am really getting obsessed with this, experiencing feelings of longing and anger several times a day as I think about or see pregnant women or moms with young kids.
My husband wants to have children, and more than just one or two, or I wouldn’t have married him. But he wants to wait until we are more financially secure (i.e. have a house, not just renting) before we do. I understand the wisdom in that. He wants to have some time to ourselves (we’ve been married a year and a half), to be free to sleep in on weekends, to be able to buy tools and furniture and such, and have two incomes. I understand the wisdom in that. These are good things, and a lot of that does stop or at least slow down when you have kids. His thoughts make sense and his plan is designed to bring us and our children the best. But I don’t care, because I want them now. In addition, my PCOS could make getting pregnant take longer, so I worry that waiting even a few years will impair my fertility and reduce our chances of having our own. If that happens, I will be mad. Like marriage counseling mad. I’ve told him all this.
Bottom line, I don’t trust my husband and I don’t trust God to give me good things. I’m so selfish, but if I don’t try to fulfill my desires, who will?
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21 comments:
Although you are desperate for children, listen to your husband. you will really never be truly financially ready for a baby, there are too many variables but if you force the issue before you at least give him one of his concessions you will be at marriage counseling mad anyway but it will be HIM that is mad. How old are you? are you over 30? because if you arent then you have plenty of time. give him a year to get you a house, if you dont tell him you cannot wait and want to have a baby.
I hear what your saying. Life seem painfully unfair in certain areas. All those people who don`t want or appreciate the beautiful miracles they are given and all the people who would give anything to be blessed with a child. I think if you and your husband can work out a compromise that it will be better for both of you. Maybe if you have certain goals to meet before you start trying to conceive you both don`t get exactly what you want but each get part of what you want. I think compromise is the most important thing in a marriage. I wish you good luck.
I would suggest you consult your ob/gyn with your concerns about waiting to conceive children, especially if you already kknow you have potential fertility problems (and PCOS IS a potential fertility problem). What an ob/gyn has to say will either reassure you that waiting a couple of years won't make much of a difference, OR it will validate your concerns and force you and your husband to reevaluate what's really important to 'have' before you have children.
I wish you luck.
Wow. To Michael - you don't sound very patient. In fact, you pretty much just bashed the poster. I don't think a man will ever really be able to understand what it feels like to be a woman and have the intense desire to have children. Regarding your comment about a year and a half being "just on the border of time" for a man to figure out whether or not he wants his WIFE to be the mother of his children. That is the most absurd thing I've ever heard. If a spouse is only figuring that out when they are already married then good luck to that marriage. Pretty sure that's something you might want to talk about BEFORE you take that step.
I completely understand your feelings, although I am in a completely different situation than you are. I describe the feeling as "achey uterus". I just recently blogged about a dream I had, pregnant with babies. But I'm not married, I'm not even close to having a family.
Perhaps you can compromise? Kick the pursuit of financial stability into high gear, give yourself X amount of time towards that goal, Like a year maybe? and THEN start trying. So it gives you a little chance to get settled, and if it takes a little while to get pregnant that is just more time to keep working on setting up your life.
Michael - no name-calling.
@ Michael - Bad form. Bashing a person who wants children and who has a condition that can seriously impact your fertility? Bad form. And that 1.5 years is just BS. You should wither go into marriage wanting children, or not. Ya don't get to decide something like that 1.5 years in. Extremely Bad Form.
I agree with Anon @8:49, to consult with your OBGYN. Get a real, updated opinion on your condition and the likely impact on your fertility, and bring your husband to that appointment so that he can ask questions, too. Remember too, people have been having babies without money or "stuff", and thriving. It is tough, but having children is tough regardless.
Good luck, OP. I wish you all the best in your journey to motherhood.
Sigh. I hate to delete comments, but as I said in comment at previous post - this is meant to be a safe space. You can disagree with a poster, you can offer advice they might not like, but finger-wagging and name-calling are no-nos.
(to Adrienne)
As much as I hate the "you couldn't possibly understand because you're not whatever", I will grant that you are correct. A lot of the desire to have children, for women *and* men, is a biological drive that is fundamentally different in nature.
I shouldn't have "bashed" as much as I did, and stuck to my point better. That was wrong of me. OP, I'm sorry about that.
Still, I think there it is an important point to return to from my original assertion (which you called absurd).
Adrienne, sorry to be the first to tell you this but no matter how much a man *wants* to have children with the woman he marries the day he marries. There's additional intellectual and emotional layers of deciding to proceed on that original desire. Just because we marry doesn't mean everything all at once. There is a process that does take months (for some) or years (for others) to traverse those additional layers.
Assuming that a husband doesn't have doubts about committing even deeper into a relationship that is a year or two old is an absurd assumption to make.
I can understand where you're coming from - but at the same time, you need to chill out.
Things happen the way they do for a reason - and you stressing out about this and panicking about it and getting irrationally angry at pregnant women is only going to add to your difficulty in getting pregnant. Maybe you should try to focus on something else.
Also - it's not exactly fair of you to tell your husband that you basically already blame him for any unforeseen and potential issues with you getting pregnant. Do you really think that'll make him want to have a baby right this second? It's not going to make him ready any faster, it's only going to seed resentment between the two of you - resentment about something that doesn't even exist yet.
Chill out. Try to stop thinking about it so much. Babysit, or volunteer somewhere with kids so that you get your kid quota but still get to sleep in a little on weekends until BOTH of you are ready for kids.
I have to agree with the idea of going to a ob-gyn with your husband to discuss exactly how difficult it will be to become pregnant and how long the process may take. Information is power and can help you make well balanced decisions.
I also understand the powerful desire of wanting children and then having great difficulty in realizing those desires. To me it's a miracle anyone gets pregnant and stays pregnant and gives birth to healthy children.
However, the best lesson I have ever learned, that has helped me the most is this: try to be happy at whatever point you are in life and not "WISH" it away for another time. Enjoy this very precious time you have now with only your husband. Don't base your happiness on a period in your life than hasn't happened yet. It's so easy to say, "Oh I'll be happy when I get pregnant." Or, "I'll really be happy when this pregnancy is over." Or this, "I will reach true happiness once the baby is sleeping through the night."
It is so easy to think everything will be better at some point in the future when we have gotten what we think we want most. Try to enjoy NOW and then any additional blessings are just that: additional.
Been there, done that, and I know there's nothing that can be said to make it better. It always helped me a little to be able to think about all the advantages my baby would have if we waited a few years, and now that we're finally officially "trying" it seems to have been worth it. But you have my sympathy.
Oh my goodness! Please don't wait any longer. We waited a few years to start "trying", and then it took us 3 YEARS to conceive DD. 3 LONG emotional years - I would sometimes call in sick when my period started, because I was TOO SAD to go to work.
Since then (5 years), we haven't had any "luck" with having a 2nd child. I can't help but think that if we had started sooner, when I was younger - it might have been easier. And now DD cries because she wants a little sister. And DH and I have a deal that we would not prevent it, but we also would not seek medical help to have another one.
Given your condition, if you (and DH) want more than one child, you better get started!
Okay, my actual advice would be to first look up how much it would cost you for fertility treatments. Then sit DH down and say "Look, if we wait 2 more years, it will likely cost us $xx,xxx to have a child." Then suggest a compromise, say that you're going to give him xx months to get used to the idea and then you will NOT use birth control for xx months. And THEN you will see a Doctor.
Does that make sense?
Because you can't just spring it on him, and really, when you go see a doctor, he will ask how long you've been trying and will expect to hear 6 mos/1 yr before he'll do anything for you.
Oh yeah, and buy the book Taking Charge of your Fertility and start charting your cycles. Because that's another thing the doctors need to see.
Okay, I'm making a huge assumption here that you're overweight (it kind of goes hand-in-hand with PCOS). Please spend the next XX months working your butt off to lose some weight. It will help you get pregnant easier. And when you do get pregnant, your pregnancy will be easier, because you'll be strong and you'll be used to carrying the extra weight. Have you asked your Doctor for metformin (or equivalent)? The insulin resistance is a bitch to work against and anything that makes it even a little bit easier helps.
I hope you can convince your DH to start sooner rather than later. The odds are already stacked against you.
Good luck!
For what it's worth, this is what I would do with a bit oh hindsight on my side. 1) Get into good shape (if you're not already), I agree with the previous poster. It doesn't seem that important and is hard to do, but it would be worth it. 2) Talk to you doctor about your options and what you're looking at. 3) ENJOY this time!!! I adore my 3 children, I really, really, do. But they near drive my mad some days and oh how I miss the pre-kid days with my husband.
I like the idea of establishing a plan with your husband as to when you will begin having children.
The truth is that life is NEVER perfect. You will never have enough money, be financially secure, be established enough in your career, etc etc. Just when you reach this point, something always seems to go wrong.
As a mother to 3 kids, I can say that my husband and I have lived through job loss, paycheck-to-paycheck existence and, literally, a near death experience with over 2 years recovery. We are now very financially secure. However, what made life worth living and worth fighting through the tough times were our awesome kids.
I get the idea of waiting until you're more comfortable but don't wait too long. Life deals in ups and downs and the kids make it all worth it.
Two things:
First, you will never be perfectly ready, financially or whatever, for kids. There's ALWAYS something that could be better, more secure, etc. Waiting till you have a fenced yard before getting a big dog, reasonable. Waiting till you're in the perfect situation before even trying for kids, not so reasonable IMO.
Secondly, PCOS can be a huge issue. We started trying to have a baby the May before our wedding, and it took us 11 years to get pg. The only issue was my PCOS. Some don't have that much trouble, and there are so many OB/GYNs that know a lot more about PCOS now days, but still, you can't count on getting pg in the first 6 months of trying.
Here's the big thing. You are unhappy. Really unhappy. That's already not okay. Neither is giving him an ultimatum or tricking him though. So what to do? Well counseling is an option now. Not later, now. Not because there is a big problem, but because you guys might need some help coming up with a fair compromise. Hey if you can do it without counseling great, but I've always been a big proponent of getting an objective person to help sort things out when needed.
Maybe if there is a plan in place, something you can both work towards, with a definite end point it would make you both happier.
Best of luck to you both!
I was nearly exactly where you are about 4 years ago. I desperately wanted to have children, and although my husband and I agreed on the idea of kids, he wasn't ready yet. I worked for child protection at the time, and I can very clearly remember visiting a "cocaine baby" mere hours after he was born. After I met with the parents, I returned to my office and just cried. I couldn't understand a world where this woman could use not just cocaine, but any drug she could get her hands on throughout her pregnancy, and I couldn't even convince my husband that it was time to try getting pregnant.
4 years later, I have a 3 year old and a 1 year old. In hindsight, it was good that I waited for my husband to be ready. In that time, I did talk to him about my needs and desires, but tried not to pressure him into anything. I think with most major life decisions, I'm the rash, impulsive one and he tempers my enthusiasm with rational thought and we often land somewhere in the middle, which is right where we need to be.
Talk to your husband, express your concerns, and visit your OB/Gyn if you need to. I hope that you and your husband reach a happy middle ground at a time that is right for both of you. Good luck!
If we had waited until we were more secure (financially and personally) to have kids, divorce might not be something within arm's reach now.
It's a terrible thing to go through. And to go through divorce with children in the picture in even worse.
Take your time. Have fun being Mr. & Mrs., you have the rest of your lives to be Mommy and Daddy and you don't want any regrets.
Trust me.
I feel your pain... I was in your situation a few years ago. Then we decided, FINALLY, praise God, we were ready! I also have PCOS, so we started out by seeing a doctor, charting, temping, trying and trying and trying... and nothing. So we saw a fertility specialist, who gave me pills and shots and IUI and IVF.. and nothing. Years went by. Thousands upon thousands of dollars later, we're not as "stable" as we once were, and we are still childless. We're starting the adoption process.
Share this with your husband.
I think, for most people, if you're waiting to be "ready" (financially etc) to have children, you're never going to have them.
Life happens, babies come... and you move up from there - better to have them when you're young than waiting until it's difficult (and maybe even expensive) to try and try and try....
Did you climb into my head and transcribe my exact thoughts and feelings?
Creepy.
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