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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   2452 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 12, 2024

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So I've found myself at a bit of an impasse in life, and I'm hoping the wisdom of The Motte can provide some guidance because this touches several topics that are frequently brought up around here.

I've been pretty happily married a bit over a decade. My wife and I are both in our mid 30s. We have a child who was a bit of a surprise (hormonal birth control is not one hundred percent effective, even when taken as directed) who was born a couple years after we got married. We're both gainfully employed and make good money.

I really enjoy being a dad, and really would like to have another. But as they say, it takes two to tango, and my wife is very uninterested. In part, this may be because the birth of the one was somewhat traumatic (involving an unplanned cesarean and some other complications), and we've been told that any others would be higher risk. She also dealt with a lot more trauma, as the kids would say, growing up. But also it would mean a few years of pretty heavy restrictions on our usual activities, and our families aren't as spry as they were a decade ago in terms of helping out.

This year, she's decided to go off (a different form of) hormonal birth control, which I think is reasonable, and has effectively demanded that either I get a vasectomy or she gets a tubal ligation. Of the two, the vasectomy is a much more minor (and more reversible, although not hugely so) procedure, and I have one scheduled sooner than I would like.

But I'm having second thoughts. I really enjoy doing things with my son, and the siren call that maybe I could get a second chance at it all (even the diapers!) is hard to ignore. Maybe this is a bit of an early mid-life crisis. It doesn't help that my (older) siblings haven't had any of their own and that prospect doesn't seem imminently likely. But I also really love my wife and son, and think he deserves a two-parent household: divorce, especially in a otherwise-good case like this, isn't the mark of a good dad, nor does it even guarantee "success" given the state of the dating world in 2024.

So I've been feeling pretty melancholy recently, between unsuccessfully trying to change minds, or wondering how I'll feel about it afterwards. Will I be able to get over the sadness of what might have been? Open to advice or words of wisdom.

Going under the knife, is never good. There are reports of prolonged chronic pain after vasectomy, both in the literature and on reddit.

https://old.reddit.com/r/postvasectomypain/

Now of course, any surgery can have bad side-effets. Which is why going under the knife should be last resort. Use condoms.

Appreciate I’m a solitary datapoint but my vasectomy has been fine. Healed up nice and quickly and no discomfort or visible scar.

Condoms aren’t much fun, so very liberating not having to worry about them anymore.

Or maybe in this situation an IUD is indicated? It depends on why OP's wife wants to go off hormonal birth control. But it's probably less invasive than either surgical option, mostly reversible, long-term as a solution, and generally has high reported satisfaction. Or is that the different form of hormonal birth control OP was referring to? If that's the case does that also rule out non-hormonal IUDs?

Freeze your sperm.

I think it is very normal (and obviously understandable) for some women to be scared of pregnancy again after a tough time with the first child. Are you sure she can’t be convinced? My dad convinced my mom to have a third child and she still brings it up as one of the best things he’s done.

Could you ask them how he did it?

Surrogacy would solve problems related to giving birth, but would add additional complications, and it's also expensive. Still, maybe worth thinking about.

It's worth pointing out that "expensive" is quite an understatement. When my wife and I looked into it a few years back, the IVF treatments and surrogacy all would've been almost $100,000. And at least for us, it was largely not covered by insurance. Even for a couple who is reasonably well off (as we are), that's a shitload of money and out of our reach.

I agree that $100k is expensive compared to other things in daily life, but... even if you're earning $30k/year, three years worth of wages for a second kid seems in the range of reasonable? It seems like less than what you would spend on a kid over a lifetime, for some people it adds a huge amount of meaning to life, etc.

As an aside, it's not distributed over 20 years, which does make it much more difficult. I wonder if you're a stable couple, whether a bank would give you a loan for this, or whether IVF clinics have payment plans? Even if not, this seems like the kind of thing some people could ask friends and family to borrow to do.

Like, in general $100k is a lot, but it seems like it can correspond to the strength of desire and will to have a kid.

That said, I'm viewing this from an odd, detached angle as a pretty young guy, so I'm probably missing a lot of the complexity a couple faces when making that decision for real; sorry.

100k to avoid pregnancy is a steal. That is cheaper than a porsche.

If she feels that way and isn't open to being convinced otherwise, she should get sterilized, not you. You're obviously not happy about the situation or about going to get snipped, and the "if only" melancholy is only going to compound after you get snipped. If you haven't already, make sure you communicate your feelings clearly with her but don't go get a procedure done you don't really want for her sake.

Does your wife have any nearby siblings with children, or who seem likely to have children in the future? One of the factors that influenced us to have a second kid was that our first would have been the only grandchild on both sides, so having a second both provided a playmate (in time) and a reason for the first kid to NOT believe herself the center of the universe. If there are first cousins near at hand, that's less of a concern.

Yes on her side, not on my side. The cousins are a lot of fun, but I wish there were more of them.

I feel like you should be able to broach this subject with your life partner. If you can't then it wasn't good enough anyway.

Is there no possibility of convincing your wife to have a planned cesarean?

After you have had one c-section you basically have to go that route for future pregnancies (otherwise you risk rupture of the scar tissue during labor). She's also probably a geriatric pregnancy at this point, which has its own issues.

That's not true any longer, our first was caesarian and my wife was able to successfully have our second two without the need. VBAC was a very positive experience for her and she was in her mid 30s for #2 and #3.

Depends on how the c-section went previously. VBAC is definitely possible. I don’t know how it goes in the states, so he should consult a local doctor and read up on which hospitals will do it.

Despite what internet discourse would have you believe, 'mid-30s' is not a geriatric pregnancy.

The mother being over 35 at due date is literally the definition of geriatric pregnancy.

There's no magical cliff that fertility falls off, but even in the early 30s there is a measurable effect.

Technically correct, ok -- but in the sense of significant risk of complications it's really nbd at OP's wife's age.

It probably depends a lot on what her specific complications and risks are. There seem to have been some improvements in screening and premature birth care especially somewhat recently, maybe enough to offset the being slightly older side of things (depending on what the problem was).

For various reasons, that was the only option that was on the table to start with.

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