I had an HB baby---almost 18 years ago!--- but lacked the insight to realize it at the time; much about the early infidelities came out over the years, but mostly after my last dday in 2010. But DS was conceived during a period when ...well, it was HB, even though I didn't quite recognize it, or the extent of the cheating.
I am FIRMLY in the, "If your marriage is not solid, don't have a baby" camp. I adore my son. Love him with my whole heart.
But I wish I'd had him with someone who loved and respected me.
Our marriage did not survive. I spent the first decade and a half of my son's life fighting for it. Alone. While being cheated on and lied to---by a man who was "nice" to my face, but vilified me everywhere else. A man who liked the kids primarily because they were an awesome distraction that kept me from really seeing what he was doing when he said he was doing other things.
The damage done to my children--the son I've mentioned and his older sister---is unspeakable. Just dreadful.
Honestly, if I'd known the pain they would experience, I never would have had children with him, at all. I cannot begin to describe the hopeless and helpless feeling that comes from having a child who is so depressed s/he can find no reason to keep living because his/her father has abandoned him/her.
And my kids were "lucky." They were shielded from the marital stuff until the bitter end, when there was no way to conceal it any longer. (I was, too, to a large extent; I felt a disconnect, but did not know that what I'd known as fringey semi-infidelity years ago had not only continued but escalated.)
My kids grew up believing that they had a father who loved them and their mother.
They did not. Learning this was as harmful and disillusioning for them as it was for me. And no, there was NO way to shield them from it. Even if they'd never overheard an argument, they had a father one day, and a gaping hole where there father once was the next. And over months and years, they've come to realize that the father they had was not genuine, but rather was a man who was---very resentfully---playing a role just to get what HE wanted in life. I have worked hard to reframe this in terms of his personality disorder, and they are generally very compassionate about this--but still, it's soul-crushing to love someone who simply cannot love in a way that can be measured by using the same Love Yardstick most of us recognize and use.
Does he love the kids? He loved the ego kibbles very small accessories...er, children...offered. He appeared to be a very loving and engaged father. Perhaps he was---but only when it suited him. The rest of the time, he continued to lead his double life.
Are all WSs like this? Of course not. But fragile marriages are fragile marriages, regardless of the details.
And children do best when introduced to couples who are NOT focusing on gluing their marriages back together. They deserve---when possible (because we all know that God or Fate or whatever determines what really happens in this world sometimes has plans different from ours)---to be brought into a world that is prepared to welcome them, and focus on them, and not make them responsible (whether consciously or not) for their parents' happiness.
I am NOT saying that having babies post-infidelity is wrong. I am saying that I think it's VERY important to really do all the work for reconciliation and be in a VERY solid place before intentionally becoming pregnant.
We all know that "intention" isn't always the way it works, when it comes to pregnancy. And I do think that happy families can come about by way of an accidental pregnancy before R is solid.
But I think that, when making choices, making solid choices is a good idea. And when it comes to family planning and intentional decisions, the most sound choice is to get the marriage on terra firma before adding another human to the equation.
[This message edited by solus sto at 2:47 PM, April 6th (Sunday)]
