Listen, I have a hunch that you don’t appreciate my posts due to the position I’m currently in; however, I have to say - hubby and I have a combined income of over $100K per year, $200 K in savings and current stable jobs - not jobs that we have to go and look for, and we’re still being very careful with money.
Do people with limited incomes have kids? Yes - all the time. Given your current status and your husband’s does it make sense to wait a year to finish your degree, get a job lined up and THEN start a family? Well, yes - it does to me.
I’m very sorry for all the flak you’re taking in this thread - I do get where you’re coming from - I understand over thinking things to death - hey - I didn’t get married until I was 36 and didn’t start a family till I was 37 - that’s somewhat long in the tooth as far as these things go. And I don’t think you’re unstable, or an unsuitable parent, or a bad wife or anything else - I think maybe you need to calm down for just a moment, take a deep breath and realize that while this is a delay, it’s not the end of your dreams of being a parent - just a small delay.
This will happen for you, you will be awesome, and Junior will be lucky to have a mom who can handle the tough stuff, as well as the good stuff. Is it going to happen tomorrow? No. But it will happen. Honestly, I think you should move your focus now to making yourself a fulfilled, happy, engaged person with an excellent marriage, a good career, lots of friends and past stuff dealt with as much as it can me. Then when Junior arrives he or she will be coming into a well balanced family home and the first year WON’T be desolate, and overwhelming, and something you need to cope with. It will be a time to enjoy being with your baby.
I guess that’s the part that makes me a bit sad about your posts - you discuss the first year of motherhood like it’s going to be an ordeal. I dunno - I kind of think there will be challenges, and hurdles, but overall it’s going to be sort of awesome. I would love it if every future mom could feel that way about it.
Anyhow - good luck with everything - I’m sure you will move through this and come out the other side stronger, happier and more ready to be an awesome mom.
I think you are blowing my immediate feelings following two intense emotional experiences entirely out of proportion and drawing the incorrect conclusion that I feel and think like this all the time. This is unfair. If you search my recent posting history, you will find I have discussed everything from my prospective career to Buddhism and everything in between. Most of the ‘‘obsession’’ people keep trying to call me out for was just me trying to get as much planning done as I could before my final year of grad school kicked in, because I knew working 70+ hours a week and being pregnant would be enough to deal with without having to take care of all those other details.
Making mistakes in judgment is not the same thing as emotional instability, especially not if you cop to those mistakes quickly and establish a healthier pattern as soon as you recognize them, which I have done, about forty thousand times in this thread, and I feel like people are just ignoring every rational thing I say and pointing to the most intensely emotional parts as evidence that I’m just so difficult and irrational. No, I’m a human being.
There is no baby going to happen any time soon, because trying to do it so quickly and so one-sidedly was a dumbshit thing to do. Serious reflection on things expressed in this thread has led me to agree that it’s probably not the best time for a child. Not that our child would be fucked up for life if we had it now, but that there are good arguments for waiting until maybe I’ve worked for a few years and he’s done with his Ph.D. and we’ve put more money aside.
If I were emotionally unstable, I would be still pushing for this shit or clinging to any hope whatsoever that it was a good idea. It was fucking idiocy. How much more explicit do you want me to get? I have fully acknowledged my role in this and have already taken active steps to get back on a healthy track. That’s not emotional instability, it’s the exact opposite. Maybe because of my past I stumble more often than the average person, and maybe I tend to overreact when initially faced with challenges, but I always get back up and move along.
alice_in_wonderland, I think you get it, so thanks. I do very much appreciate your posts.
You know, my husband and I were discussing why at the prenatal classes don’t they give out one of those ‘Baby Susie’ dolls like they give to high school students to show them what it’s like to actually have a baby.
We decided it was because hospitals and counsellors and nurses don’t want to deal with that many catatonic pregnant woman all at the same time…
I came back in to say I hope you’re getting some rest, olives. You must be exhausted after the past few days. Hell, I get really drained after an hour-long fight with my husband. I know it’s not easy, but try to relax. If you can’t relax, work out and try again. It sounds like you’re almost over the hump - I hope things get better from here.
Thanks overly. Unfortunately when I am stressed the first thing to go is usually sleep. I slept 2 hours last night and 5 the night before. Stupid insomnia.
I’ve just been trying to get my thoughts straightened out so when hubby gets home I can give him the ‘‘I fucked up’’ speech.
But at some point that does become counterproductive. Time for a bubble bath.
Hi Olives. I’m sorry you’re going through a rough patch, and it’s possible that this is just piling on to all the criticism you’ve received so far, but I really wanted to put this out there …
Some of the worst parents I know are the ones who made Being A Parent the complete focus of their life, the end-all be-all of their existence. The best parents I know are people with full, rounded, balanced lives who also just happened to have reproduced as well. Does that make any sense at all? It just seems like Being A Parent is such a driving, consuming force with you - or at least, it comes across that way in your posts, which are obviously no substitute for knowing you IRL - that it’s almost like you’re setting yourself up for disappointment no matter how things shake out.
That said, I do hope you and Sr. Olives find peace and harmony in your relationship.
Have you thought about maybe volunteering with kids in some way? Aren’t there programs where they have volunteers just come hold sick babies? I am vaguely remembering something like that. Or as someone else said, fostering. I know my friend’s parents do it and they are one of the only families in town who will accept newborns-- so their house is constantly full of adorable babies who need some love.
I know it’s not the same and I know it wont fill that need you’ve got completely, but you will be able to quench your child thirst a little AND help a little life in need. And who knows, maybe you guys will fall in love with a little one and end up adopting.
Because you’re a human being? I’ve done that; I’m guessing most of the wives in this thread have done that; you want something, you know your husband doesn’t want it as much, so you push maybe a little more than you really should. When it’s just where to have supper, your husband gives you your way happily because he loves you. When it’s having a baby, well, things go a little off the rails.
One thing that’s coming to my mind from this thread is what I call Recovery Perfectionism. You’re working on your issues a lot, and that’s good, but recovery comes from being healthy and balanced, not doing everything perfectly all the time and never making a wrong step or dropping a ball. You’re probably far enough along to realize that so much of your learning comes from the days when things aren’t going as planned; I call them Practice Days, because you get to practice what you’ve been learning. Relax! Go easy on yourself. You’re not perfect, and neither is your husband.
Hi, horseyshoes, thanks for your concern. I get the feeling from what you and others have said that this is a really important point to keep in mind moving forward. And for the record, Sr. Olives and I are doing pretty good. We made dinner together the other night and he got really excited and said he should start coming home earlier and we could bond over cooking and cleaning the kitchen, thus making a stupid chore into an opportunity for quality time. Not a lot appears to have changed other than we are a lot more clear where we stand on this issue and that we need to start making our bliss now, in this moment rather than feeling like we’re stuck in purgatory.
I also went out to eat with a friend last night and vented a little and talked about starting school back up again and how excited we are for new internship opportunities. She just got back from India and brought me Darjeeling tea.
So I realize my life hasn’t been very balanced lately, and I am working to restore that balance now. I’m glad this is a lesson I learned sooner rather than later, for the sake of me, my spouse and our eventual children.
I normally don’t weigh in on these threads, but I know a bit about grad student life and the financial constraints. This is one of the worst times to be looking for a job in most fields; given this problem, think its pretty responsible to choose to wait. I know it hurts, but the insurance issues, the paycheck issues and the uncertainty in the job market make it perfectly reasonable to wait for a little bit. It’s entirely possible to be enthusiastic about the idea, and then get blindsided by these thoughts a few days later. Don’t take it out on him.
It was the intensity of your emotional reaction that made me think that, not your judgment or actions afterward. I think of emotional stability in part as being able to establish a baseline emotional equilibrium (I’ve been stuck on this post for a long time and can’t think of a way to clearly explain this, sorry) so that you don’t get so knocked over by emotional blows like this one. I imagine that’s exhausting. You’ve given more context about the tie between your issues/recent efforts to work on intimacy and your quest to have a baby, though, which makes the intensity of your reaction more understandable, so thank you for sharing that.
I’m sorry I’m focusing on being critical - I don’t mean to be (I know you weren’t directing that entirely at me and of course I can’t speak for anyone else). You’re handling this all quite well. I guess I kind of thought that went without saying, which of course it doesn’t. It’s easy to be drowned out in threads like this so I wanted to make my concerns clear, that’s all.
Actually, I don’t recall him ever saying he was ready. IIRC, the agreement they reached some months back was that he wasn’t ready then, but he would be ready in September. Which was a really dumb and unrealistic thing to promise, yes, because nobody can guarantee massive emotional change on a friggin’ schedule. He should have known he couldn’t promise that, and so should she. If any couple in the world should have known this wasn’t something to treat as being etched in stone, it’s them. But they were both blinded with love and excitement-- her for the baby, and him for doing something to make her happy–and they both made the exact same mistake. As I said before, there’s no villain in this piece, just two people who both made the same misjudgment and are both in pain because of it.
I dunno, the whole goal and deadline thing seems to be a large part of what got you guys to this particular shitty place. That’s not to say that it’s a bad system overall, but it might not be best suited to this particular problem. Doing a periodic re-evaluation of the conflict resolution system in place is necessary–as life changes and you both change, certain things just don’t work as well for you any more, or you run across particular issues that just don’t work with that system. Sometime in the relatively near future, after you’ve both had some time to regroup, it might be good to sit down and have that discussion.
Also, please do understand that treating issues like an HR improvement plan is going to feel threatening and punitive to a lot of people, regardless of your emotional state. After all, what on earth is an HR performance plan but your boss saying, “You’re not giving me what I want, so here are these extra hoops to jump through. You have x amount of time to give me what I want, or your ass is out the door”? It’s not the sort of sentiment a lot of people are comfortable with in a romantic relationship.
I don’t quite get how this fits in with you so desperately wanting to settle in one place for years and have a routine and all the other stuff you say you want more than anything in the world. As a guess, I’m going to say not terribly well, and that’s part of what’s fueling your anger and hurt over this incident. But it honestly looks to me like you’ve been shooting yourself in the foot over this at least part of the time.
It sounds like you guys were living fairly close to his school, then moved to be closer to your school (which was a shorter program), and are now moving again to be near his school again. All of this feeds your feeling of impermanence and limbo and makes you feel like the only real thing you can build during this process is a family. It seems like it would have saved a lot of physical and emotional upheaval to have stayed in one place and let you do the commuting. I don’t know how the decision to move multiple times was reached, but based on your description of the relationship, I rather doubt he handed down an edict from on high over your protestations. Which makes you an active participant in the decision, and makes it pretty damn unfair to blame your unhappiness with moving around so much on him or his program.
As I said before, I’ve been there and done that, and I understand full well how easy it is to view all the things you hate about a given situation as All His Fault and wonder how the bastard sleeps at night after putting you in such an awful situation. Lord knows I’ve caught myself more than once during a squabble thinking “Well, it’s not my fault we live somewhere where it’s a huge ordeal to see my family and the only job I can get is a shitty one with bad hours.” But if I’m honest with myself, it kind of is. The fact that we live here isn’t my doing, but the fact that I do absolutely is. Nobody made me marry him or follow him around for various jobs–I’m a grown-ass woman and I packed up my shit and got in the moving van under my own steam. That doesn’t mean I don’t get to be sad that I don’t get to see my family more often, or that I don’t get to bitch about my job or wish that things were different. But it does mean that I get to hold those things against him.
So, if your husband is really in a space right now where he wants to do something constructive to make up for all of this, would it be a good time to suggest to him that it would be really good for both of you if he could try to make a space in his life to commit to therapy? It still has to be something he wants to do in order to succeed, as I’m sure you know, but this could be a kick in the pants toward getting the logistical hurdles out of the way.
I’m sorry this is so tough for you on so many levels.
It’s okay, I’ve definitely just been feeling defensive. I feel guilty for my role in all this and all this constant repeating of what I already know is just making me feel worse.
I asked him what he would need to be ready and he said he needed for us both to have our Master’s degrees, which would mean early Summer of next year. So we agreed to start trying to conceive in September, baby not arriving until we were both Mastered up. It’s not that dumb. The dumb part was believing and behaving as if this was some kind of oath written in blood and deluding myself into believing I could take on all the responsibility for him and leave him with only the good stuff. And I’m sure there was a lot of other dumb shit. But the basic plan wasn’t terribly stupid in the beginning. It just went south, in part I suppose because we had no idea what the hell we were doing.
That’s not the sentiment behind it at all–what you’re describing sounds terrible. I guess I don’t understand what an HR performance improvement plan is. I just mean we formalize a lot of our goals with spreadsheets and lists and deadlines. It’s meant to be collaborative, not punitive. We usually make those commitments after some point of conflict comes up and we’ve figured out a good way to resolve it.
I agree it’s not an appropriate approach for this issue. The little schedule we made was ill-conceived, and it was an unreasonable demand for me to place on him, which I have admitted and apologized to him. The issue of whether or not to have a baby is totally off the table until he brings it up on his own, whether that’s a year from now or five years from now. He knows what I want, I don’t have to keep reminding him. I would never leave or threaten to leave my husband over having a child.
We’re college students, moving is just the way it is. Every move we made was necessary for us to pursue our educational goals. The biggest move was one state to another, for his Ph.D. program.
And you’re right, I chose to be with him. Its not like he hasn’t had to make sacrifices too. I can’t blame him.
I don’t see what’s wrong with blaming his program for anything though. He’s pretty upset with it too. I mean, academia sucks for couples. Externalizing the source of conflict seems like a better course of action than blaming each other. We’ve generally been pretty successful at pointing to some external object as the ‘‘enemy’’ and considering ourselves allies in battling it together.
I’ve just read through this thread. Olives, your initial post made me think of the times I wanted to write a long letter to someone who had been hurtful, but never mail it. And it’s like you just posted it here, instead. I’ve seen the changes in you in each post and that you’ve calmed down, that you and Sr. Olives have talked, and you’re working through this.
Parenting is not easy; I know, I’ve been there. Yes, it is a lot of work that first year, because babies rely on us for so much. It’s also happy and wondrous, watching the baby’s “firsts.” You never really know what it’s like completely, until it’s your own, but it’s definitely worth it. Watching them develop their own little personality is amazing. It’s also just a gigantic responsibility and it doesn’t magically end when they turn 18. It’s a lifelong commitment and not to be taken lightly. If I had it to do over again, would I? As hard as it was at times, you bet.
I’m sure you’ll hang in there and settle all this with hubby.
You are doing both of you a disservice with this attitude.
You need to decide for yourself if you are 100% okay with never being a mother. Never tucking your child in at night. Never getting to push your kid on a swing or catch them at the bottom of the slide. Never getting to hear, “Mommy, watch this!” Never getting to feel your kid climbing in bed with you, snuggling up and going back to sleep at too-damn-early-in-the-morning.
I don’t believe you think he might actually say, “No kids, ever.” I don’t think you’ve even, really, begun to face that possibility. If he does say that? I know your short answer will be - “I love my husband and am committed to him, no matter what.” But you need to look at that, and sit down and turn over what that might really mean. Open your eyes and get a good look.
And then you decide what you want and talk to your husband as an equal.
A lot has been said since this post that I’m quoting, and I’m rather impressed at where you are now, emotionally, on the issue compared to where you started, but I still wanted to reply and give a few thoughts on some of the things you said. I hope it can at least provide more food for thought, or give possibly insight into your husband’s mindset, but do feel free to disregard it entirely!
Think back to six months ago or a year, when adoption was the plan and it was several years away still. At that point, if someone had asked you “what will it take for you to be ready to have a child? When will that be?” do you really think you’d be able to answer? Do you think those would have been fair questions to ask? You moved along this path much faster than he did, which is fine, but it isn’t fair (and I think you realise it) to now stand at the next crossroads and say "Why aren’t you here yet? "
Except for the past little while, where it came up a lot because of your friend and her child that she wanted to give up for adoption, and your husband would likely have seen you make spreadsheets and lists and ask around for baby supply advice and price them out and whatever else (I’m assuming) you were doing, and so the plan of “start in September” kind of started “now” in a lot of ways. Making the baby is easy (in theory, for most people, baring health/infertility/intimacy issues etc. etc.) but it really is the reality of diapers and baby food and car seats and onesies and medical costs and late-night-feedings and omg I’m gonna have a (figurative)panic attack that, well, causes the panic attacks!
So while you agreed that he was too stressed now for all this, in many little ways he was still experiencing it, and that became more overwhelming than he thought it would be when he agreed to “September”. He probably really did think that he wouldn’t even have to think about the word baby until then, and then he could help you plan and the little steps would guide him towards being fully ready.
He’s scared, he’s stressed, he’s overwhelmed and he desperately wants to please you. He feels like he should want this child now as much as you do, but he doesn’t because he thought it would be later, because he thought he had more time.
I believe him. I think he does want children, but he also wants to finish his Master’s, and he wants you to finish yours, and he wants to find a place to do his PhD where you can be close to friends and family who can help you, and he wants to be living in a place that isn’t making you sad (and I know how you feel about that…I spent about 2 more years in Hamilton, Ontario than I wanted, for my husband and his school!), and a place that isn’t making him feel tired, and maybe even a place you can call “home” for a few years. And he doesn’t see how he can do all this at once, which is clearly not your expectation, but all of this is still tumbling around in his head all together and suddenly there’s a baby in there too. (I’m picturing a Family-guy-esque Peter’s brain as a clothes dryer with Stewie suddenly bang–bang-banging around with textbooks and houses and Lois’ dad!)
There’s overwhelmed, and then there’s overwhelmed. It is part of life, and learning to deal with being overwhelmed is an important part of being happy and well-adjusted and being able to cope with the shit life throws at you. But sometimes dealing with an overwhelming event/issue simply means 'let’s ignore it for a while and look at it again when we feel we have more time to sort it out". Sounds like that’s where you and him have gotten to this week, but perhaps it bears repeating.
What if he comes to you in 9 months and says “I need more time.” A lot can happen in 9 months, or maybe nothing else in your lives has really changed, and maybe he still won’t be ready for the same reasons as now. Will that be acceptable to you?
It isn’t your responsibility to solve it for him, but it is your responsibility to help him solve it. That’s what being a wife is, and that does indeed sound like what you’re doing. At the same time he’s helping you solve the issues you didn’t know you had about all this. Really, I’ve been fascinated by this thread and it’s been amazing to watch the irrational emotions become controlled by rational, reasonable thought. Is it too cheesy if I say I’m proud of you?
That is upsetting, but it probably is due to all-of-the-above-and-then-some. When he’s in a good mood and happy, he sees the good side of all this. When life becomes hard, he sees the bad. That crossroads you reached before him? Well he’s just reaching the point you were at 2 months ago. It might take him 3 weeks, or 2 months, or a year to get where you are, but in the meantime, you’ll have to accept that he’s dealing with the twists and turns and that snake pit and the angry rhino and that annoying dude with the banjo that you thought you left behind you!
One question though: it seems to me that the method of having your first baby is an all-or-nothing thing. It was “adopt, 2-4 years from now”, then “conceive” and now you both seem back to “adopt, 2-4 years from now” but you haven’t mentioned “conceive, 2-4 years from now”. Is that off the table, or did it just not come up in your posts in this thread? I don’t see why life couldn’t work out such that “conceive, summer 2011 (as an example)” doesn’t become the most viable and happiest option for you two. Despite all your planning, you don’t know what life will bring you!
Whew, I didn’t think I had that much to say, and so much of it is kind of irrelevant now! I’m going to post it anyways; as I said, maybe just additional things to think about, or things to point and laugh at and totally ignore!
Olives, I don’t have much to say about the baby/husband issue, but I can speak to the PhD issue, which hasn’t been discussed much in this thread. You said you gave it up in order to have a baby, and to be a SAHM. Is that really what you want? Because it is possible to have a baby and do a PhD, but it requires (at least) two things. First, you have to really want a PhD, it has to be a passion. It helps if it’s something that’s necessary for your career, because it’s a lot harder to do a PhD without a goal in mind. Second, you have to be willing to be slow about it. Research is time-consuming, and if you want to work a 40 or 50-hour week so that you can spend time with your family, your research won’t go as quickly and you have to make sure that you and your advisor are ok with that.
With all of this said, I am not a huge fan of academia (and probably agree with your omitted “bitter, deeply cynical rant about academia”). If you don’t need the PhD, and don’t passionately want it, don’t do it. I did it, and now I’m moving to the middle of nowhere for two years for a post-doc. The whole last year, I’ve been questioning why I’m here at this place in my life, and it’s really made me reconsider this career.
I also feel a need to respond to this:
I agree that it is possible to have a child during your PhD, and it even makes sense in that life is a lot more flexible when you’re doing research as a graduate student. (Though it may not make sense in terms of the financial state.) But to quote a study about men having kids, when you know that you’re responding to a female, is misleading. Of course men do better if they have kids - having a family gives them focus at work, they procrastinate less and get the work done so they can get home. Same goes for women, but societal expectations for women are (obviously) very different than for men, and that makes the whole PhD thing a whole lot harder. I can’t speak from experience, but I know moms and dads in my PhD program, and while the dads have had difficulties due to their low income (grad stipend), moms have had difficulties with just about everything else - where to get child care, where to pump, when to return to work after giving birth, how to balance household chores and research, the list goes on and on. The responsibilities for men and women are societally chosen and the demands on the two are far from equal. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but it’s harder.
I’ve done that; I’m guessing most of the wives in this thread have done that; you want something, you know your husband doesn’t want it as much, so you push maybe a little more than you really should. When it’s just where to have supper, your husband gives you your way happily because he loves you. When it’s having a baby, well, things go a little off the rails.