Carolyn Hax 7/31

July 23, 2024 Updated Tue., July 23, 2024 at 5:34 p.m.

HAX-07-31-24 672 words

Carolyn Hax: After a scare with their first baby, husband says no to a second

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CAROLYN HAX COLUMN

Advance for release Wednesday, July 31, 2024, and thereafter

(For HAX clients and FOR PRINT USE ONLY)

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Dear Carolyn: My husband and I both have always wanted kids, and we had our first baby about a year and a half ago.

I am Team Second Baby, but he is now staunchly arguing for one-and-done. Our first pregnancy ended in early miscarriage. Our previous pregnancy was punctuated by preeclampsia at 34 weeks, an emergency C-section and a 2½- week NICU stay.

I obviously understand his fears, but also feel that moving forward with the knowledge of how our previous pregnancy went can help us be more prepared the second time.

We also don’t have much family nearby and have not had a lot of outside support or help with our first child. We have gone over and over on this, and I am really struggling on how to compromise.

- Oh Baby

Oh Baby: You’re struggling because you can’t. There’s no halfway on kids. You try to expand your family, or you agree not to.

Plus, if it were enough to “understand his fears,” then you wouldn’t have reached this impasse. You need concrete ways to address his fears to his satisfaction.

You don’t say whether “over and over” has included concrete proposals. If it has, then you’re done here. His answer to more kids is “no,” and your only path is acceptance.

But if your back-and-forth has stalled at his saying, “I’m not doing that again,” and your saying, “But we’ll know better next time,” then here are some options. Not so you can get what you want, mind you, but for him, because he’s the one who just faced a worst case of losing both spouse and child with zero local support and who apparently hasn’t recovered from that:

1. Move closer to meaningful family - however you and he define that. His, yours, of origin, of choice.

2. Line up reliable, layered outside support. Do this now anyway for the family you’ve got. Things may seem fine without it, but you’re just between urgencies. Now’s the time to staff up, emotionally or otherwise.

3. Postpone deciding on more kids for another year or three. That would give him extra emotional recovery time, along with a child who is that much older if you wind up on bed rest or worse. You could have an uneventful pregnancy and birth, sure. Or not - and as traumatic as the last experience was, handing him even an exact repeat of that in nine to 18 months would include his having to wrangle a toddler through it alone, which would be profoundly more stressful for him.

4. Add children to your family by means other than your bearing them.

I probably sound like Team One-and-Done, but I’m not. I’m Team This Doesn’t Affect Me One Iota. So I can throw stuff out there that maybe you and he won’t risk in what feels like a meaning-of-life negotiation.

Really, it comes down to this: Your husband wanted “kids,” plural, before he got a front-row look at the possible costs. Now he’s at “kid,” singular. You either both find a way to reduce those possible costs, or you join him in reframing what you have as right for your family. (Or, of course, you blow up the family you have in service of building the family you want with someone else, which I hope is grayed out on your drop-down menu.)

That means any “compromise” here is within yourself, if it comes to that. Sometimes even plans that seem routine - location, spouse, kids - become contradictory and have to be reconciled into a new vision of who we will be.

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Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/carolyn.hax or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com.