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Wife Said She Is Pregnant Again and We Didnt Want to Be

Dear Prudence

Assist! My Wife and I Quit Our Jobs to Travel the World. And then She Made a Conclusion That Ruined Everything.

This is non what I want. Not even a trivial bit.

A couple stand back to back with an illustrated globe on one side and an illustration of a baby on the other.

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Getty Images Plus.

Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years. Each Sun, we dive into the Love Prudie athenaeum and share a selection of classic letters with our readers. Join Slate Plus  for fifty-fifty more advice columns—your commencement calendar month is only $i.

Dear Prudence,

A yr and a one-half ago, my married woman and I quit our jobs after saving to travel the world. Information technology had been our dream since we met, but in the lead-upwards to travel, her biological clock went off. Six months into our travels, her brother got his girlfriend pregnant, and my married woman suddenly realized she wanted children badly. Nosotros bought a business firm with enough of room to grow and resettled down. We got pregnant on our beginning try but lost the pregnancy at eight weeks. It was heartbreaking for the states and especially hard on her. It took until that moment for me to realize that this isn't what I desire. Non even a little. It wasn't part of the deal.

I hadn't misled her on this indicate either. We had both agreed that children weren't a priority for us. I still want to see the world, and she wants to have a family at present. I don't want a life without her, but I know I'g not plenty for her anymore. I feel, at blank minimum, a duty to give her what she wants. I don't know if I have information technology in me to stick effectually in this middle-class suburban life long enough to raise children, but at our age I don't know that she volition ever get a family without me. The style I run across it I take ii choices: her beingness a shattered person without children, or me living for the 24-hour interval our kids exit when we are in our 50s. I think there is a very real possibility that this will finish our marriage either way. Information technology isn't what either of us want, merely nosotros can't discover a compromise in this scenario. Is it incorrect for me to give her what she wants, knowing that our union will probably deliquesce before the children are out of diapers?

Delight talk to your wife andexist absolutely honest with what you now know about yourself, let her make her own decisions with all the facts she needs in order to do so, and be prepared to finish this marriage. It is not your duty to help your married woman get pregnant once more, knowing that y'all don't want children. If your wife is as resourceful and clear about what she wants as she sounds, she will be able to discover a way to become a parent without you, even if the end of your wedlock is heartbreaking. Or, at the very to the lowest degree, she'll be able to make peace with a childless life on her own, which would be better than trying to raise children with a human being who knew he didn't want them from the start or who fled halfway through raising them. You're lucky enough to have realized what you wantbefore having a child. Would you lot want to be parented past someone who was "living for the day" when yous left the house? Practise y'all retrieve, if you're being really honest with yourself, that you could parent a kid well with such a mindset? This martyr's mindset isn't good for y'all, your wife, or the children you don't yet accept together.

You say yous have ii options, and I call back that'due south true: You tin can be honest with your wife and take that this may result in a divorce, or you can prevarication to her and bring new life into the earth with the noesis that y'all never really wanted to practise so. Both of these options involve pain, simply the sometime at to the lowest degree gives everyone a chance at the life they want. You won't shatter your married woman if y'all tell her the truth. She'll be hurt, possibly devastated, and perchance angry, just she'll have the data she needs to figure out what she needs to do next, rather than making decisions under false pretenses. —Danny Thou. Lavery

From: " Aid! My Wife Wants to Settle Down and Take Kids, but I Don't. " (Nov. 29, 2018)

Honey Prudence,

I am the female parent of fourteen-year-old twin girls. It took 3 torturous years of infertility treatment for me to get meaning. Then my husband and I were told that I was carrying quintuplets! We explored all the ramifications of this pregnancy and got wise counsel from our doctor and our spiritual adviser. Because we feared total miscarriage or severe inability for 1 or more of the babies we decided on selective abortion and reduced the number of fetuses from five to ii. This also was a torturous procedure emotionally and physically. Our families were very supportive and after our daughters were born we asked them not to share the fact of the selective abortion with them. Everyone agreed except my father who says family secrets are unhealthy. I told him that whether to tell the girls and when was up to my husband and me. He responded that he couldn't hope that he would not tell, which is typical of his insensitivity and arrogance. He lives quite a distance away and I've had limited contact with him ever since. At present he plans on moving closer and the upshot has come up up once more. I don't think the girls are gear up to hear this, and part of me doesn't e'er desire to tell them. They do know I had infertility treatments. What should I practice?

For every (Jon &) Kate Plus Viii with their thriving sextuplets, in that location are terrible stories nigh the consequences of "loftier gild" multiple births. You lot fabricated a painful but medically sound choice. As far every bit family secrets are concerned, ofttimes the corrosive nature of keeping them can be as damaging equally the hugger-mugger itself. However, your male parent sounds like a selfish blowhard whose motivation is not that he fears an important truth is being withheld from the girls, but that he enjoys the power to make you squirm. Decline to squirm, just reiterate to him that the medical issues around your pregnancy are a matter for you and your husband to discuss with your children. Say that since he doesn't trust your judgment, you can't trust his. So despite his moving closer, you lot're going to keep your distance unless he accepts he's not entitled to overrule your parental prerogatives. I empathise your feeling that this news would deeply distress your girls to no proficient purpose and that you want to wait, possibly until they are immature adults. (I know you're because not e'er telling, but since a number of people know, it's probably better for you lot and your husband to be the ones to inform them some twenty-four hours.) Yous must be prepared, however, for your father to conduct out his threat. If your daughters come to yous having heard this revelation, put aside your rage and be calm and factual. Tell them what their granddaddy said is true, and that you're very sorry they found out this way. Say that and you and their dad have discussed telling them many times, merely concluded that this hard and deplorable fact is a burden you didn't desire them to comport right now. Since they do know, say y'all are set up to discuss the reasons you made the most disturbing decision of your lives, and that you want to hear how they are feeling. Tell them that if yous could have safely carried more children you would have, but that every solar day you are grateful that you were able to become mother to the most precious people in the globe to you. —Emily Yoffe

From: " Help! My Begetter Is Threatening To Tell My Twins They Were Born After Selective Reduction. " (Sept. 27, 2012)

Dear Prudence,

My brother, a widower, is dating a new girlfriend after a long search. She is kind and loving, and I desire them to exist happy, just in that location's one major problem: She has breast cancer, and she's gone down the naturopathy rabbit pigsty. She absolutely rejects any form of modern medical treatment because she thinks the then-called "medical establishment" is corrupt and has placed her survival in the hands of "medical intuitives" who tell her to eat vegan foods, open her chakras, and visualize tying ribbons effectually her liver—I am not making this upwards.

If she keeps this upwards, she'due south going to dice, and my blood brother will face up terrible mourning again. His daughter (a medical technician) and I are appalled, but unfortunately, the girlfriend has the right to make her own (terrible) decisions. Is there anything I can say or practise to alter this inevitably fatal effect?

How painful, and how bewildering. You lot're right, of form, to recognize that your brother'south girlfriend has the correct to manage her own medical care, even if her choice is a dangerous one. Only that doesn't hateful yous can't speak to your blood brother virtually it—not necessarily with the expectation that he will be able to change her mind, but inasmuch as this is a very serious decision that will surely affect him besides. Surely he's distressed that she is ignoring her ain diagnosis and could apply some support equally he figures out how to take intendance of his own feelings, as well every bit encourage her to at to the lowest degree consider seeing a medical doctor once with an open up mind. Ask him how he's doing, and if in that location'south anything you tin do to help him. —D.L.

From: " Aid! My Blood brother'due south Girlfriend Is Treating Her Cancer with Vegetables and Bogus Medicine. " (Nov. vi, 2017)

Dearest Prudence,

Subsequently 8 years of heartbreaking infertility, my hubby and I are expecting a baby daughter through my sis-in-police force, who wonderfully offered to be our gestational carrier. She is now seven months meaning. While discussing the pregnancy and labor terminal week, she made some reference to united states of america coming to the hospital after the birth to see the infant for the first time. I was completely floored because my husband and I assumed nosotros would be there for the labor. When I clarified, she said she felt uncomfortable almost united states witnessing the nativity, or even being present while she's having contractions. For all her own iii children she simply had her husband and medical staff present. I know I must respect her decision, but I feel tremendously hurt at the idea of not seeing my kid being born. It seems wrong that we won't be there for one of the well-nigh significant events in her life. Am I unreasonable to feel and then upset?

Let's say you were pregnant in the 1950s. During the nativity, your married man would probable be in the waiting room smoking cigarettes, yet his absenteeism would accept no effect on his life-long relationship with his child. Let's say you lot had decided to adopt from China. So you certainly wouldn't have been present for your child'southward nascence, but that would not modify how you felt about her once you finally held her in your arms. Let's say y'all were giving birth merely serious complications came upwardly and yous were so heavily sedated that in essence you were "absent." Over again, it would have no event on your feelings about your child.

You understandably are focusing on the moment when, after years of disappointment and waiting, you will go a parent. But after that large effect, you lot will exist a mother for the rest of your life. Whether or not you were in the room when your child crowned will exist of absolutely no consequence. Your sister-in-law is making an boggling cede for yous. She has been through labor three times and she knows doing it without an audience is how she wants it. Respect her wishes. Soon she will manus over your child to you lot. Accept with grace that her desire for privacy will have no effect on the lifetime of significant events you will experience with your kid. Tell her that you understand her feelings, and reiterate that your gratitude for what she is doing for you is boundless. —East.Y.

From: " The Surrogate Smother. " (Feb. 22, 2011)

More Advice From Dear Prudence

My married woman and I have been together since high school, 17 years agone, and married for ix years. We are each other'south simply sexual partner. Nosotros both went through our own "seven-twelvemonth itch," but nothing came of it, we were never unfaithful, and we stayed committed to each other. At present I notice myself often wondering what it'southward like to be with another woman.

edwardscafrocks1950.blogspot.com

Source: https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/02/dear-prudie-globe-trotting-trip-wife-wanted-kids.html

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