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Hi all,

I'm new to HB, and could use a community of others also sick with baby fever to vent to! There isn't really anyone else I can talk to about this, but it seems like I may be in the right place here.

I am thinking about babies 24/7 nowadays! Every time my mind gets focused on something else, another ultrasound pops up on Facebook or something, it just seems to be everywhere. My husband and I have been married 2 years and have now completed the "first steps" as one of my coworkers calls it: we have a dog and we just bought our first house. (and we are now debt-free except the house!) Naturally baby is the next thing on my mind and I happen to be a person who latches on to an idea and doesn't let it go until it happens (hence said dog and house) : )

The other day, hubby and I were shopping in target and wander into the baby section oohing and ahing at all the cuteness. We even stopped at the Charlie banana cloth diaper area and I showed him how those work. They were on sale, and I told him how rare it is to see them on sale, and maybe we should just get one, you know, to start a collection. To my surprise, he totally thought about it! We didn't end up getting any, but he was definitely thinking about it, which got me really excited.

However, in the last few days since then, I've brought up babies a few times and each time he seems to get more and more angry about it, and insists he won't be ready for a few more years. A FEW!?!? I mean, ONE, ok I get it... But a few?? What does that even mean?? I keep probing him for reasons why, but all I get is "there are just things I'd like to do first" without any other specifics... I know I'm probably making it worse by continually bringing it up, but I really don't want to wait that long! We did just find out 2 different couple friends of ours who are our age are pregnant, so I wonder if he is just freaked out or something.

Have any of you gone through this with your partners? Did they come around quicker than you expected? Take longer? Any tips for quietly and gently encouraging him to be a little more comfortable with the idea? I'm not in a super rush, but I'd kinda like to turn the "wait a few years" into a "wait one year" to start trying...

yoursilverlining
eggplant / 11824 posts

Sep 3, 2013

Welcome!

I know a lot of women on here had to really talk to their husbands to get on board with a timeline, so hopefully they will chime in!

How old are you guys? Did you talk about babies or a timeline before getting married?

I think maybe the best place to start would be by asking your husband why he wants to wait - are there things in his career he wants to accomplish first, does he feel he is too young, etc. If you guys can address those things head on, maybe he will be more inclined to speed up his version of the baby-timeline!

Good luck!
Rubies
hostess / eggplant / 11068 posts

Sep 3, 2013

Welcome to HB! I'm sorry your DH is putting a damper on your feelings about wanting to start a family. Perhaps, you can let it go for a few weeks and when things are feeling good, you can attempt a healthy conversation about a realistic goal towards starting a family and hopefully he can open up about why he wants to wait a few years.
Mae
papaya / 10343 posts

Sep 3, 2013

Welcome! I agree with the others that cooling it for a bit then talking to him calmly is probably the best bet. I know for my husband, we had a strange situation because when we met he wanted kids and I didn't. Then I was a little too good at talking about why kids suck and somehow I convinced him. But then I changed my mind... so I wanted them and he didn't! haha.

I still wasn't in any hurry so I didn't put pressure on him, but it did sort of worry me that he wasn't sure he wanted them at all and I was sure I did (at some point). Finally I sort of just had an honest talk with him about how this is something I really wanted and I knew he wasn't ready now, but that he needed to start thinking about getting ready and this being a part of our lives.

That being known, I told him I thought that we should seriously consider TTC in fall 2014 because that timing worked out well for his school and it was still around 18 months away (lots of time to think of it)... but that we really didn't have to decide for sure until that time came. Then I just dropped it. I feel like having that much time to think/get ready for it was good for him and made him get more on board with the idea.
Circusbee
apricot / 390 posts

Sep 3, 2013

Thanks for the quick responses!

I am 24 and DH is 27. We talked about wanting kids well before we were even engaged, so i know he wants them. He says just not yet. Our closest friends are not even close to that mindet, which I think could be what's putting him off. Many of them are very career-oriented city people, so I wonder if he just thinks he will be missing out on those things. To be honest, though, we don't do much of that anyway! We are really very boring, haha!

I think I will put it to bed for a week or two and then just let him know how i feel and that I want him to really think about it, and then hopefully a little after that we can have a more serious conversation.

In the meantime, though, my over-planning self has already started my own "just in case" timeline. I am planning to talk to my GYN at my October annual appt. about steps I should be taking during the next year should we decide to TTC next fall. I don't think it would be a mistake to just have the information...

@Mae what a Funny story! I have a feeling he will come around quicker than he thinks also, I just have to keep myself from ruining it!
Mae
papaya / 10343 posts

Sep 3, 2013

@Circusbee: I think one thing that really helped was some of his friends having babies. Seeing it 1) not ruin their lives and 2) be "normal" I think helped for him.
HellOnHeels
clementine / 899 posts

Sep 3, 2013

I can *sort of* relate over here!!

I won't go into details, you can check out my posts if you want. I will say this;
When DH and I had our discussion about setting a timeline, he said this, "Putting it off for 'another year' won't really matter. There will always be a reason why we can delay. If we want to have a baby, we gotta just do it. Do I WANT a baby right now? No, not really. But I will and so why wait any longer? We'll figure it out!"

I wasn't expecting DH to agree with my timeline, because a few close friends of ours have LO's and, like you, I thought he was freaked out about kids after talking with the other guys. Of course, I freak out too at times, but we don't see us being anymore "ready" to take this on than now (or more specifically, early next year). I also didn't want to make him feel that I was rushing him into something he wasn't ready for at all, and I told him that. He said that I wasn't, that he knew the conversation would be coming soon considering that we'll have been married for almost 2 years and "that's just what people do around this time."

I think taking time to really discuss how you're feeling is the way to go right now, and see exactly where he's at. Tell him, you want to make a specific timeline (my DH is very "fly by the seat of his pants" and not really a "timeline" type of guy, and even he was able to agree to one.) and find some middle ground if you're not in agreement. Maybe even say that you'll give him some time to think about it, and then come back to it in a certain amount of time.
LaughLines
clementine / 880 posts

Sep 4, 2013

My DH is wanting to wait, but he's coming around to the idea of another 6mo-1year. I think he was worried that we would be the "only ones" with a kid out of our friends, but now almost all of our friends are married and some are starting to have kids (also, there's a built in 12ish weeks before they usually "announce"). I think seeing others with kids has really helped, not hurt, so maybe you having some friends with kids will help. The thing that really helped him is seeing said friends with kids actually doing things - like still going to dinner or having people over to watch a game, etc. So maybe make sure you attend events that the new parents will be going to as well so he can see that they still have lives outside of changing diapers all day
pui
bananas / 9899 posts

Sep 4, 2013

I was ready to have kids before my DH was. If it had been up to me, we would have started trying as soon as we were married. I always told my DH that I wanted to have 2 kids before I was 30, and he thought that meant we would start when we were 28 (!!!) I explained to him that conceiving, pregnancy and the time between kids may be longer than he's calculating, so he finally agreed to start trying when we turned 26.

Perhaps talk to your DH about the future? Like, how old does he want to be when your kids are teenagers?
Circusbee
apricot / 390 posts

Sep 7, 2013

Thanks for all the good advice everyone! I had an opportunity to talk with DH more seriously about it and I think we kind of hashed it out. He wants to be 30 when the baby's born, so we would actively start TTC in April 2015. I'm thinking I will stop BC in January that year. It's not my ideal but I think if he's ok with that plan now, he may change his mind and want to try earlier instead. I would love to go off BC next Summer and ttc September-ish, but that's only a 6 month difference so maybe we will end up somewhere in between.

At least he seems to be more open to the idea though!

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