I find myself thinking about babies nonstop, imagining what our kids will look like at age five, seven, ten, twenty, thirty, etc. I get that awful squicky floating feeling in my stomach when I see a newborn baby in public. I toss out baby names to him. I even caught myself looking at the nursery stuff on Target tonight under the pretense of finding new patterns for the Sims, but I kept finding stuff I loved.
I think I’d make a hell of a mom. I know my husband would make a hell of a dad. And I’m impatient as hell to get started. He’s said another year to pay off a few bills and get settled in our new house, but a year seems so far away. It doesn’t help that all of my friends keep getting pregnant, and my cousin, who got married three months before us, is now expecting a baby with his wife. In a year, I’ll be 31, not too old to conceive, I hope (I only worry because I have endometriosis).
Am I normal? Will this pass? I’m losing my mind, and I feel like a broken record, but I can’t help myself. I love my life with my husband, and I know we’d have a wonderful life with just the two of us, but I also want so badly to share the responsibilities of parenthood with him. I went to the doctor last week for what turned out to be acid reflux disease, but they also did a pregnancy test, and I was oddly disappointed when it came back negative.
I felt like I needed to get this out because I know he’s tired of hearing about it. Honestly, I wish these feelings would go away for another year, because they’re driving ME nuts.
Is this something that just hits most women? I’ve never quite felt it THIS badly. Will it go away? How did you deal with it if you were ready to be a parent, and your spouse wasn’t?
It is not just something that hits women. I am a father of one daughter with another daughter on the way and I consider that to be the single most important thing in my life and I have always viewed it that way. I could die today fulfilled that I have achieved my goal although I would prefer to stick around to raise them correctly.
This is just my personal opinion, but I do not agree with the idea of a woman putting off childbirth into her mid-thirties and beyond. For one thing, some risks increase for the baby. For another, it can make conception much more difficult and puts a ton of pressure on the couple to conceive. I don’t think that thousands of dollars spent on fertility treatments and possibly donated eggs are the most ideal way to conceive a child. I have seen too many friends and members of my family go through that because they believed that they had plenty of time when they really didn’t. Fertility is like a ball rolling down a mountain even after your twenties.
You cannot force your husband to be a father now but as long as he wants to eventually, I would show him some research that shows the huge benefits of doing it sooner rather than later. If you want to have multiple kids then that needs to be taken into consideration too.
Frankly, if all he’s saying is “wait a year”, you’re very lucky and IMO should go along with that. But it sounds like you need someone to talk things out with meantime; perhaps your mother? His? A close girlfriend of yours who’s not a mother yet either?
To answer your question: I suspect it won’t ever go away, but you can learn to live with it more easily and not drive him away from the idea by bringing it up too often.
I totally understand - I don’t want a child yet, intellectually, but damn, every time I see a young father with little kids in the mall… And I know it’s mostly chemical, but that dosen’t make it less strong.
Honestly, while “every year counts” certainly is true fertility-wise, if your husband is interested in having children but really just wants to wait a year to get more settled and financially prepared, I think that’s not inappropriate. I’d say “talk to your husband”, but it sounds like you’ve had a lot of discussions about it and have come to a stalemate. If you think that a year from now he’s going to be all “well, maybe we should wait another year…” then you’ve maybe got a problem, but otherwise I wouldn’t worry about it (easy for me to say, I know!).
Maybe if you could set it down firmly, that a year from now you’ll begin trying for a baby, that would help you deal with it?
It sounds as if he’s just wanting to make sure the “nest” is all fluffed before the baby comes.
Is it possible that you two could start trying in, say, 6 months? You’ll be pregnant for 9 months, so even if you got pregnant on the first try the kid wouldn’t be born for another 15 months. I mean, if you’ve got health insurance and all, I don’t see how simply being pregnant would create more bills (besides suddenly buying more ice cream).
Or is he thinking that it will take 21 months to pay off everything he wants to pay off before the kid gets here?
I felt the same way you did in January, 1995. My husband wasn’t excited about having kids and didn’t really want them in the foreseeable future. How committed he was, I don’t know, because I did manage to talk him into it. We tried for the first time in late January, and I got pregnant six weeks later.
It was very difficult. For the record, he is a great dad and always has been. He allowed himself to be persuaded into trying, I think, because I was pretty relentless about it – not witchy or fighting, just arguing my case and talking about it to him until he gave in. I can see what a mistake that is now, but then I hungered for a baby and was afraid if I waited too long, I wouldn’t be able to have one.
Because of his reluctance about kids initially, though, he had a hard time being supportive after our daughter was born. He was physically there to babysit when I was away and loved her very much but seemed to feel that I should take the brunt of any work and misery if I were there – getting up with her every hour in the night, for example, despite my exhaustion from a 14-hour workday (I worked for the post office in 1995, and it was Christmas rush after she was born).
I can kind of see his point, in a way; I wanted the kid the most, I had to deal with the kid the most, problems and all. But it hurt our relationship, because we weren’t both on the same page. It divided us even more than having a baby normally does, and we both went through a lot of (unnecessary) misery.
I counsel caution. It’s a whole different experience when your spouse is excited and happy than when they’re grumpy and reluctant. Another poster mentioned making a “time bargain” with your husband; that might work, as long as he’s really open to the idea. After all, if you wait 6 months to try, then it takes you six months to conceive, you might hit things exactly. I read before I got pregnant (and beat these odds considerably) that it takes the average American couple 12 months to conceive. If you’re on the Pill, it may take your body a while before you’re truly fertile. If you’re doing the condom thing, you will be as fertile as you’re going to be right away. Just things to keep in mind.
IN NO WAY should you coerce this man to have a child.
TRUST ME on this one!!!
If he feels like he got pushed into it he’ll be resentful. End the relationship if you must, but DO NOT force someone who doesn’t want to be a parent into it.
Don’t trap him into fatherhood with a “birth control failure”. He’ll always feel resentful. If you love him and you’re truly committed to him, give him the year he’s asked for, and then poll him again. If he still says “wait”, then consider…ending the relationship.
My SIL waited for years for my BIL to decide to have babies, and when he finally made it clear to her that he wasn’t the “daddy” type, she bailed. And we don’t blame her one bit, since a subsequent baby-producing marriage for him, in which he bailed when the baby was a toddler, was a disaster, and one which was entirely his fault. (He’s a bit of a mess as a human being, frankly.)
Unfortunately sometimes a gal does have to decide between babies and a man.
In the short term, as a solution for the “awful squicky feeling” in the pit of your stomach when you look at other women’s babies, consider one or all of the following solutions, depending on your other lifestyle choices.
A pet. Don’t knock it, and no, I’m not being facetious. Something to “look after”, something that’s completely dependent on you for its survival, can go a long way towards being a surrogate baby, even if it’s just a small rodent like a hamster. The point is the “caretaking”, not the “lap cuddliness”, so it doesn’t necessarily have to be a dog or a cat; even a parakeet will do. By this token then, a goldfish or a turtle won’t work, as they are both extremely low-maintenance pets.
Somebody else’s baby. Do babysitting–help out some of those new mom friends of yours, goodness knows they can use a three-hour Mother’s Day Out once a week. Why don’t you be the one to stand in the gap for them?
Somebody else’s older child. Sometimes you can fill that “caretaking” need by doing reading or math tutoring twice a week down at the local elementary school, especially reading tutoring with kindergartners. Fives are still pretty much “babies”, or at least close enough to qualify.
BTW, 31 is not too old to conceive. My first kid wasn’t born until I was 29.
And Hubby has a point about getting squared away financially–it makes a BIG difference, not having to worry about “who’s going to pay for all this?” at the same time your marriage is coping with the Large Earthquake that’s known as the First Baby. Babies are incredily expensive, it’s not the upfront hospital and doctor bills that cost, so much as the “Oops, looks like we’ll need one of these after all…” details that fritter away the money like you wouldn’t believe.
I think so. I’m 27, happily single, and don’t particularly like or want kids. But sometimes–especially when I’m ovulating–I get a baby lust so strong and inexplicable that I want to grab every baby I see at the mall and, I don’t know, devour them or something so I can keep them and not give them back.
The urge to have a baby can be really powerful. The important thing is to listen to your better judgment.
I’d recommend sitting down with your husband for a straightforward heart-to-heart. Explain to him your desire to have a baby and the reasons you think it’s a good idea to do this sooner rather than later. Then ask him how he honestly feels about having kids. Are his concerns solely monetary? Or does he not feel emotionally ready?
If the concerns are purely monetary, I’d recommend hammering out a financial plan that will make him feel comfortable with the idea of having a baby in the next couple of years. Be willing to make sacrifices re: your own discretionary spending to show him that you are sensitive to his concerns. Spell this plan out on paper so that it is clear you are making a decision to move forward.
My friends who have 2 kids did this each time before they decided to have another baby, and then again when she wanted to quit her job to become a stay-at-home mother. It has really worked to make both of them comfortable over money concerns, even though things are very tight (annual income is $35K).
If he is unwilling to move forward no matter what financial plan you work out, or if he is emotionally unready to be a dad, you’ve got a much bigger problem–one that has no obvious good solution. Fortunately, it does not sound like you are in this situation.
It lets you get an idea of the Weird & Wonderful World of Parenthood without the problem of “keepers.” It’s also good when you’re done having kids, too. I’ve got two daughters, love ‘em both, don’t want any more. But I do love baby-sitting my friends’ kids because it is fun to cuddle a baby now and again.
You can also play-test your parenting reactions, and his, that way. We’ve got a friend who basically thought he never wanted kids. Ours, however, have grown on him – much like a fungus, really – and he’s come round to the idea and is actually enthusiastic about it.
I also second the idea that it’s worth it to have your financial house in order. Ours was not when our first was conceived, but it would scarcely have mattered anyway, since the pregnancy, birth, and first month of insurance totalled $40,000. I am not kidding. Suffice it to say that despite good prenatal care, I ended up with pregnancy complications and a 32-week preemie. We were responsible for $10,000 of the bills, out of pocket. Be aware that kids can cost a heck of a lot more than you thought, even if you don’t have a super-expensive pregnancy.
So rent 'em from somebody else for a while. The amazing thing is, the parents are actually grateful that you’re willing to baby-sit for free. And here you’re getting all this baby-hugging out of the deal.
Oh, and I want to add: a year or two is probably not going to make a significant difference in your fertility, but if hubby wants to wait longer, fertility concerns need to come into the discussion. Obviously, a happy medium will need to be found.
Q.N, my understanding is that they already have a sound financial plan in place, one that’s going to allow them to significantly pay down their existing debt and buy a house within the next year. Then, once they have all that squared away, they intend to start trying. It seems to be less a matter of getting him off the stick about forming a plan than of her waiting for time to take time, as they say.
Out of curiosity, Elza, have you changed your birth control fairly recently? The only time I’ve ever had the sort of feelings you describe was the year I was on bcp. I couldn’t go anywhere without making a detour through the baby stuff, which was massively out of character for me. (Well, and now that I’m the designated spoiling auntie I have to go through the baby department in case there’s something that would make my cute little baby niece even more adorable. Being the spoiling auntie is more expensive than being the diaper-changing variety of aunt but way more fun.) At any rate, I wonder if these much-stronger-than-usual feelings might be due in part to hormonal fluctuation.
It sounds like you’ve got a bad case of what I sometimes refer to as “baby rabies.” (Keep your shirts on, folks, it’s just a joke phrase I picked up on another board. I am NOT saying that parents or wanna-be parents are rabid, insane, or sick in any way.) It’s something that happens to some people sometimes, when their internal television gets stuck on the Baby Channel–All Baby, All The Time. It’s almost like a baby-specific form of OCD, in a way, that wanting to stop thinking and talking about babies all the time but not being able to.
I don’t know that I would say it’s normal, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be abnormal to feel like that. And I’d guess that you being afraid that your endo will make you unable to get pregnant is making this a lot more intense than it would normally be. You feel this need to hurry up already because you might be missing your last chance. I’d further guess that all your friends having babies is making you feel left out and intensifying the urge to hurry up even more. If you haven’t discussed these feelings with your husband, I’d urge you to do so, because sometimes just knowing that your concerns are acknowleged and understood can take a lot of their weight off your shoulders. And if he wasn’t previously aware of these concerns, he might be amenable to reworking your financial plan so you can start trying sooner.
And if it helps any, compare your one year of waiting to one of Dr.J’s med school friends. She’s had the baby rabies for almost five years now with no relief in sight. She got married a year ago, and they own a house and all, but she’s only halfway through her residency and that’s a really bad time to be trying to have a baby. At this point, the poor woman is just one big walking, pulsating ovary. I think they intend to start trying partway through her last year of residency, but that’s still two years away. So your situation could always be worse.
I will love my gal forever for letting us wait, even though it is a couple of years into her prime ticking time. I know it has been hard for her to watch her friends squeezing them out like pop-tarts and it stabs my heart knowing how it must make her feel. But we have both gotten to go some places and do some things that we couldn’t do before now, and wouldn’t have been able to do with a child.
Don’t coerce the guy if he has good reasons for waiting. Just make him name the reasons and make it clear that there’ll be no waiting after sufficient time has been given to address those reasons.
’The earth must be peopled’ - Benedick, All’s Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare
If everyone waited for the** right** time to have children, the human race would die out. You’ll never have enough money, and you’ll never have enough time, and your bills will never all be paid off. Life goes on.
When my husband and I got married, he was 29, and I was 27. I was a hot-shot manager in the consulting practice at Price Waterhouse. I had this idea that we would wait a few years before having children, for vague reasons having to do with my career.
One day soon after we were married my husband sat me down, took my hands in his, and told me that being a father was enormously important to him. He wanted to have a child. He did not want to wait. My career concerns were tiny compared to his deep desire to be a father. We had our first son about a year after we were married, followed by another son, and finally our third child, our daughter (Yay!)
My husband was right. We did the right thing. We were financially strapped, though. We had to buy a house. We were broke. Interest rates on mortgages were 15%. We traded in our MGB convertible for a Ford Escort station wagon. We couldn’t go on vacations or go to the movies or go out for dinner.
It was ALL WORTH it. We love our children. Even now that they are teenagers.
A final thought - childbirth is a job for a young person.
Okay, an intentional birth control failure isn’t even an option and if I ever did that to him, I’d expect him to divorce me. I would never, ever do that to him. As much as I’m ready to be a parent, I know that he’s not and I wouldn’t want to ‘help’ it along or push him into it - I’ve seen too many women do that on parenting boards, and it pisses me off to no end. I have way too much respect for our marriage.
I like the other suggestions, though. We do have two cats, who are pretty much our kids now:). He adores them and the feeling’s mutual from them - which I love, because they were mine for four years before we moved in together. It’s funny, but I see how he is with the cats - with our girl cat, who is brain damaged and always terrified of everything, and he’s gentle with her - and I just see him as an amazing dad.
Actually, we’ve already decided that if we can’t get pregnant naturally, we will not take extreme measures with fertility treatments - neither of us is comfortable with them and I don’t want to put my body through that. If we can’t conceive on our own, or with very limited fertility treatments (drugs - no procedures), then we’ll adopt. I already have a mutual fund earmarked for that purpose if necessary - we plan to go to China and adopt. So while the age thing is worriesome to me, I know we’ll find a way to be parents somehow - it makes no difference to us if they’re biological or adopted - we just want to be parents.
Actually, that’s a good point. We both do have health insurance, and our plan is to have a certain amount in savings, which will take us about the year we have planned. And part of it is that I have debt from pre-marriage that I’m still trying to pay off - however, that should be paid off in a year or so.
And I think that’s another thing - he seems to think that pregnancy is going to occur the second I stop my birth control and we throw away the condoms. I have a strange feeling it’s going to take us awhile - at least six months to a year. My doctor’s said that if we try for a certain time period and aren’t successful, we’ll get in and do a laparoscopy. So that does worry me.
Heh - there’s no talking him into anything he doesn’t want. Believe me:). It took us two months to decide to buy the house because he was so nervous about it. I always joke with him that I can’t believe he proposed after ten months because that’s a lot faster than his typical plodding. I can talk about it until I’m blue in the face with him, and he won’t change his mind until he’s ready.
Nah - I think he’ll be ready in the next couple of years at the most. I think I’m just trying to figure out what to do with my own emotions until then. He is scared to death because he’s an only child, and has never had much contact with younger kids, whereas I’ve helped raise nieces and nephews and have baby-sat for years and years. I know I’m much more comfortable with children than he is, and that’s part of it. One of our friends is having a baby soon, so she’s promised to let us babysit. I think when he spends time with a baby and realizes that ‘hey, I haven’t dropped it yet!’, he’ll be fine emotionally .
Actually, yes - I started new pills a month ago. And they’re different pills than I’m used to - non-estrogen pills. That’s actually a really good possibility. I just figured it was mostly due to finding out that so many friends and family are pregnant, but I didn’t even think about my pills. Thanks.
And you’re right, we do have a solid financial plan right now. It’s just frustrating to me because I look at friends having babies, and we’re in much better shape than they are right now, yet they’re the ones having the babies. The practical side of me knows better, but the emotional ‘no fair!’ side of me is being unreasonable about it. And that’s my own issue, not my husband’s or anyone else’s.
Yeah - we do have a pretty happy life right now. We’ve got trips planned, we buy DVDs whenever we want, etc. I think that’s part of it - he’s very content with how things are right now. And I think he worries about how having a kid will change things.
Ehh…my sister gave birth at 32 and 33, and luckily, my family has very easy labors. It’s not so much childbirth that makes me nervous, it’s just getting pregnant. If I’m anything like my mom and sisters, and I suspect I am, giving birth will be the easy part - it’s getting there that’ll be the hard part.
Thanks for all of the advice. Again, I would never coerce him or force his hand - I’m just trying to figure out how to deal with my own feelings and wait. He knows it’s frustrating to watch my friends and family having baby after baby, but he does have good points about waiting. I just have to learn to be more patient.
I can empathize. The last year or so, I’ve found myself thinking about babies waay too much. Logically, I know that I should be excited about planning my upcoming wedding and starting out our married life together without thinking about babies yet. Logically, I know that we really should wait until I get transferred and we sell the house and move closer to his work and into a home we plan to stay in quasi-permanently. Logically I know that we should pay down a bit more of his student loan. But wombily (yes it is too a word), I just want a baby! I want the excitement of trying to conceive, the anticipation of peeing on a stick, the joy of telling our families, the miseries of morning sickness and hemorrhoids, feeling kicks in my belly and even the agony of childbirth. I fantasize about the highs and lows of infancy, toddlerhood, even teenagerness. I know I’m crazy, I know I’m irrational, but gosh darn it, I want a baby!
When I get to this point, its going to be murder. Currently, I’m back on wanting a puppy so bad it hurts. Between how obsessed I can be about wanting a puppy, and how obsessed I can be about parenting as a base level, when I decide I need to have kids its simply going to suck.
Slap me if I get unbearable, please.
(upon re-read) I’m not saying Elza is unbearable, I’m just imaging how insufferable I can/will be.
What helped swing WhyDad around to the idea of a baby was babysitting an infant together. The two of us. I’m a newborn nanny, as well as having a 12 year old son, so I pretty much know what to expect, and the range of possiblities in terms of work and sleep lost. He, on the other hand, had been scared to death by stories of all-night screaming monsters who wouldn’t let him sleep for the next 20 years, not to mention crying and disruption of our day time lives so we’d not recognize ourselves or each other. No amount of talking would convince him that, while that’s a possibility, it’s not even a statistical likelihood.
So I “borrowed” one of my mom’s babies. (OK, I picked a nice one, I’m not a masochist!) We took him at our place for the weekend while she went on a retreat. That 36 hours, while not without it’s challenges, showed my husband that we could do it. We even had fun with the little tyke! WhyDad was so enamored with the little fella, he comes to visit me when I watch him now!
It turned from me wheedling and begging to him asking me when we were going to “get one of those!” I let him keep asking for about three months, so it couldn’t be used against me later in the Court of Matrimony, and then “gave in” and we got pregnant. WhyBaby’s due in June, and WhyDad’s just as excited about it as I am.
Did I manipulate him? A teeny bit. I didn’t pick the colickly baby or the baby with health problems. But really what I wanted to do was to give him all the information he needed to make a truly informed decision.
I don’t really have anything to add here (not having or wanting or, really having the option for, kids) but I wanted to say, CBCD that you and your spouse sound like fantastic parents with a good sense of priorities. If but more parents were as conscious of their responsibilities and devoted to their offspring…
Heh - can I borrow WhyKid for a weekend when you guys need a break?
Actually, we’re supposed to go to Florida with a large group of friends for a week in May, and two friends have a 2 year old and a 1 year old - I have a feeling we’ll be volunteering baby-sitting services one night so mom and dad can have a break. Plus, another close friend from college is due to give birth any day now, so if I can talk mr. e into a trip to Northern Virginia, we’ll get to meet her new baby. I think a lot of it is a matter of exposure. And NOT to his evil, misbehaving little cousins, but to actual normal kids.
It’s also good when you’re done having kids, too. I’ve got two daughters, love ‘em both, don’t want any more. But I do love baby-sitting my friends’ kids because it is fun to cuddle a baby now and again.
– and he’s come round to the idea and is actually enthusiastic about it.