I've arrived here because our son died last December following a two-year struggle with cancer. I'm suprised that there is no "Other Topic" heading for the issue that's been dogging my marriage for twelve years: Children. How many, specifically. One of the reasons our son's death was so devestating to our marriage is because it brings up all the pain and betrayal of my husband having a vasectomy I didn't want him to have. My greatest fear - that we might lose a child - has happenened. My daughter is alone, with no siblings to share her growing up. I had always wanted at least three children and I thought my husband felt the same, until my son was born and he felt two was enough. So he arranged to have a vasectomy, and lied to me to get my reluctant agreement to it (he promised to bank sperm "just in case" but he never did). That happened when I was just thirty. Now I'm forty-two, with one (wonderful) daughter and a husband I deeply resent. It's too late to ever have more babies of my own, but I sometimes think, I may still be young and attractive enough to find a new mate, someone who likes big families and has his own kids, perhaps. What else can I do?

Hi,

I really don't have an answer for you - I'm so sorry for your loss.... There is another fellow on the boards that experienced such a loss..

Lemme find him for you..

E

edited - not another fellow like you are a fellow - just another one of us here... understood you are female... tired... need a nap... going to find WAT now...

<small>[ August 17, 2002, 11:39 AM: Message edited by: justthewife ]</small>

Dear Scifi mom,

I hesitate to say I know how you feel, no one really knows how anyone else feels, but my oldest son (23)is very mentally ill, and in my head it is "my husband's fault" or so I felt for quite a while.

When you are just grieving TO DEATH you have to do SOMETHING with that grief. And the job of the "husband" is to TROUBLE SHOOT for the wife, and when he fails, well both are devastated.

I don't think it is reasonable for you to hate your husband for the death of your son. I know you think if not for his bad decision you would have another child, but I'm here to tell you your grief would not be any less. I have two normal children also.

I have written, seriously, about 40,000 pages on the internet over the last 2 years, and struggled to pull myself together, without help from my husband, this issue has divided us so. Our son is TERRIBLY "ocd" over the "fear of hell" his meds are $800/month and still all he can do is lay in the bed and read the Bible. And my husband is VERY ACTIVE in "saving the lost" type organizations and hasn't missed a beat over the last six years while our son decompensated. So I have blamed him. But I wasn't thinking about his own unique personality, his dad was a minister, and he is struggling with his own sense of worth and "what's it all about". So I went off on my own, probing every great mind I could get my hands on. And it has helped.

We are still together, we don't enjoy much together, but we aren't arguing, and we aren't too mad about the "outlets" each has chosen.

I think the statistics for divorce after the death of a child are REALLY through the roof, but I don't think it helps, overall. Just compounding the "death" to have the marriage die too.

I just found out about this site (A ROCK BAND SITE GAVE ME THE LINK!!!! "EVIL ROCK MUSIC" SIKE IT HAS BEEN A GODSEND TO ME, WHEN YOU NEED TO SCREAM IN PAIN THERE IS NOTHING LIKE IT!!!) And I am too disgusted with "professional help" generally to jump in with much enthusiasm, they offer to "fix" the most TRIVIAL THINGS but they have no help for the most TERRIBLE THINGS. I guess lots of what kills marriages is trivial, I think mainly it is the mentality that "everyone else is doing it". Sigh.

But I look for help everywhere, I will look here too. I am 51 and have been married 26 years. I hope I wasn't offensive.

I guess the most helpful thing to me has been the dawning realization that my husband is also hurting terribly. And I don't want to be part of making him hurt more. I don't like pain, not experiencing it, not giving it. One thought from this site, very simply, give pleasure, not pain.

And "blame" IS pain! I agree that was a bad idea to tie the tubes after 2 kids--my husband had me do it after 3--they fear all that responsiblity and besides "everyone does it". Sometimes I think if we had an even number of children, our oldest would have been better, an odd number is "unstable." But ultimately all "blame" is against God, He's really the one pulling the strings, it hurts like hell but it transports us to heaven, so I desperately am trying to hope.

Dear SFM,

I was so sorry to hear about your son.

There is a procedure called sperm aspiration that can be done after vasectomy by directly obtaining semen from the testes. It is done in infertility clinics.

Your situation is so heartbreaking. I hope so much that you can manage to share your grief with your husband. Maybe there could be an agreement if both of you honestly discuss your needs. After a miscarriage or a child's death it is only natural and healthy to wish for another child to heal the pain.

I wish you all the best and lots of strength in this time.

hi sci - I'm the guy justthewife spoke of. I too lost a child to cancer. See my sig line for the aftermath.

I can see your wheels turning and it looks like you're projecting your grief on to your H. Very, very common, and if I'm right, you're very, very normal. Right off the bat, let me remind you that he lost a child also.
Life is not fair and you and I have been dealt a blow that will never be compensated. Pleae don't add to it like my XW did.

I recommend you and your family get into grief counseling pronto. Do not underestimate the need for it or the value of it. Your daughter deserves no less.

Please, please, please put the vasectomy thing behind you. If your H knew what was to come at the time, he may not have done this. His betrayal of your trust was wrong. But you are wrong to use this as your outlet for your grief. Even if he had not done this, your child cannot be replaced. Having another child as a "replacement" is not the solution for your grief. You have to face it, accept it, and do everything you can for your family.

If you'd like to comunicate further, e-mail me at DCScandals@yahoo.com. Please inform your H that you're doing this and invite him to communicate with me as well.

Hi Scifimom,
I am very sorry for your pain. I will not pretent I understand, for the pain of losing a child if you have not experienced it first hand can only be imagined. I have a coworker who recenly lost a 2 year old to cancer also. She kept a daily online journal of what the family and their child was expeiriencing. From that, I felt the pain and anquish second hand. I could tell it was devastating to her, and I imagine that you must be feeling the same sense of loss.

I know the pain of a miscarriage, I know if I was to lose one of my children, the pain I experienced would be about 10000x greater.

I am sorry and I pray for you and your family to heal from this grief.

Well...I appreciate all of your words of comfort, encouragement and advice, but I'm not sure that I agree that my desire for a larger family is a matter of projecting grief on my H. I've always wanted more kids; I've always felt that only children are missing something essential in their lives. I worry about my daughter, now siblingless, being my sole heir and sole focus of maternal anxiety and, perhaps, someday her becoming the single (resentful) prop of my old age. If I dump H, maybe I can find a nice man with kids so my daughter will have siblings? Maybe it's selfish of me to stay married to my H if it means there's no chance we will ever have more kids. Some of you say, "Think of your family." What family? To me, a family is a happy, noisy, chaotic place (can you tell I had a lot of brothers and sisters?) with more than one kid. Our tragic little tricycle feels like it's missing a wheel. H and I are fighting constantly now. That's got my daughter so worried and frightened. Yes, your right, she's been through enough. But guess what? The H doesn't believe in counseling. He's not going to bare his heart to some therapist. Maybe it will take something like picking up my daughter and departing the scene to make him realize how seriously I'm thinking of going on without him?

Dear Scifimom:

I am very sorry for your loss.

I want to respond to your remark about remarrying in order to provide your daughter with a better family arrangement. Here I speak to you from a point of view similar to your daughter’s. My mother remarried when I was about 8 or so. I did not (repeat DID NOT) like being a step-child. In addition, everything I have read as an adult on this topic has indicated that the chances for this set-up to go wrong are high. Yes, there are happy, harmonious blended families. But not all are so happy. Many many are not happy arrangements at all. In fact, I have read that the presence of step-children is a major contributing factor to the high failure rate of second marriages. I believe it. Kids – especially teens – really do not adjust easily to newcomers in their family unit.

Let me paint a very possible scenario to you, which assumes generally good people, with no horrible vices personality defects – just normal people: You divorce your daughter’s father. Your daughter is furious with you. You marry another man who has children. Your daughter hates him because he represents the further disintegration of her family. She thwarts his every effort to be a father figure. His children, meanwhile, can’t stand you. Everyone is at war. You and your new husband disagree about how to handle the children. Those disagreements crowd out all opportunity for romance. The two of you fall out of love, and eventually divorce. I’m not saying that is a guaranteed scenario. I’m trying to say that the possibility of it playing out like that are significant. [I’ll add that I’m actually not “anti-divorce.” You might consider me “anti-remarriage with children.” Another poster at this site once said that her remarriage was hands-down harder on her children than her divorce.]

I feel you are overestimating the burden of being an only child. I realize that you loved being part of a large family, which might make it hard for you to imagine anything else being happy – in a different way. But just because you can’t imagine it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I urge you to talk about this with adults who are only children. I think most would tell you they had very happy childhoods. Also, are there cousins, aunts, uncles, family friends you can bring closer to you to serve as a close, loving, extended family?

I realize that none of this addresses the resentment you feel toward your husband and the strain your marriage is under. I realize those are also important problems that will take great effort on your part and on the part of your husband to work through. This site is a good resource for that. But I wanted to give you a perspective on the blended family/only child issue that you may not have considered thoroughly.

I wish you the best in getting through this very difficult time.

Curious53...everything you say is absolutely valid and i appreciate your thoughtful reply. But I'd feel like an absolute fraud if I didn't confess that I was exactly the same age as my daughter when MY mom remarried! It was not the Brady Bunch. My stepfather and I have never been particularly close. Some of my siblings were in trouble with the law. One of my biological sibs went into treatment for emotional problems. A picnic it was not. Yet, here's what happened: Some of the kids moved in with the "other" parent (my brother moved away with my Dad; two of my steps moved in with their mom). We grew up. I'm now closer to some of my step sibs then I am with certain biological ones. Mom and the 2ndH? Still very married - perhaps kept glued together by a common "enemy" ...their combined SEVEN teenagers. Did I have an ideal childhood? No. Do I have a huge pool of contemporaries who share my memories and to whom I can always turn for understanding and support? Yes. Perhaps losing my son made me appreciate them more than ever - they were here for me in the very worst of times - so maybe, now, it is easy for me to overlook the more traumatic aspects of growing up in a big stepfamily. I concede that's possible.

Well, I didn't mean that your desire for a larger family was projecting grief on your H, it was your animosity about his vasectomy. Regardless, I apologize for making a diagnosis with so little info. But I do have some experience here........

OK, if your H won't get counseling, will you?

Trust me here, Mom, I've been down this road already.

Leaving your H ill not make things better, I bet. Please, please, please give it all you've got before making this decision, for the sake of your remaining child.

Dave

I'm sorry to hear about your son. I have been blessed with seven children and can't imagine your pain.You sound like a woman who has alot of love to give.
Have you ever thought about being a foster parent or adoption? You might understand what its like for a child to be without parents as you lost a child. I really feel for these kids who are in war torn countries from abroad. In some countries it is not at all acceptable to have achild out of wedlock as it is here. The women are outcasted even by their families so they give up their children.
It may not be the same as having your own, but you feel a need to have a child-there is a definate need for foster or adoptive families.