| Hello, first time poster. Before I go into my issue I must say this site is amazing. I've learned more in a week reading stuff from this site than I have in 8 years of my marriage on my own. Truly revealed some crushing truths about myself. I find myself drawn to the Man UP sticky as I feel it directly applies to me. Now to the issue (as if there was only one :)). I have a family of seven (3 boys, 2 girls). Two teens that I married into (Drew, Hannah) and 3 little ones (7(Luke), 4(Grace), and 16(Owen) months). Our first original 'family plan' was to have one (for three total). About a couple years after that one the wife changes her mind and wants another. She sites she just has 'a feeling' or desire to hold a little one in her arms again. I tell her it wasn't in our plan, and she says she can't help it…. I would have to admit that most of the reasons I had against having another baby made me feel selfish (delay in retirement, not being able to get to next phase of our life together, simply not wanting to go through that part of child rearing again, my family suffering through the wife's post-partum issues). So, as you can tell the end result was me ditching things that come from above the neck and just going with my heart and agreeing to have a fourth. The wife was comfortable with a vasectomy at that point but I drug my feet and we ended up having our 'bonus baby' Owen. He was totally unplanned. The wife now says something 'hit her' having our last baby and wants a sixth. The same kind of things are swimming through my head again as with our fourth, only this time I see absolutely no way to financially support a family of 8. Heck, we tread on thin ice as it is with 7 as we are a one income family that is earning a salary that is recommened for a family of about 5 and a half. I honestly don't even know what a family of 7 should be bringing home financially to comfortably support them. Google hasn't been helpful on numbers greater than 5..lol. The wife working is out of the question as she has EDS and is on a pain management program. So we have had discussions about it over the last two months and I tell her I am happy with the size of our family and site some of the difficulties I list above. She says those aren't legitimate reasons and that I choose to not listen to my heart like she does. She says things will just "work themselves out financially". We have substantial credit card debt (that I'm paying off with a 401k loan) and we qualify for and sometimes utilize government assistance because of our current income and family size. Our oldest boy is headed off to college, we have 20 more years of our mortgage, and braces to put on a majority of our kids because they have teeth like mine….. Then of course we are just not that responsible with our money. How does that compute to "work themselves out financially" after we add on an 8th? Last night after another one of her "ready to have a baby" questions me calmly and gently say I understand her perspective and her confidence in her perspective but I am her equal and I feel just as confident in my stance. She remarked, 'I don't like that the end result is not having a baby though', followed by acting withdrawn and maintaining that there is nothing I can really do for her. Could someone give me some perspective on this? Is this something I should endure? Just let her be with it? We've hit a good part of our marriage at this time and I almost feel like I'm threatening that. | |||
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