I just need to vent a little. This is gonna get pretty long winded....

We have an almost 5 year old son who is the very best. We decided last January when he was 3 that we would start trying for another baby. I wasn’t crazy about the idea because I was finally starting to get a little bit of freedom and independence back after potty training finally took. I was eating better, joined a gym, and our son was going to start preschool in the fall so I’d finally have my days working at home to myself again. I just wasn’t excited to be giving that up all over again but I also realized that I’m not getting any younger, and we didn’t want a huge age gap between the kids. Things were going fairly well so I figured it’s now or never.

Fast forward to the following June, I got my positive test and had it confirmed at the doctor with a blood test. My husband was happy but I never did get the excited reaction that I see everyone else’s husbands giving them.

3 weeks later I started lightly bleeding and more blood tests showed my hcg falling and I was miscarrying. I’m not an overly emotional person but it was upsetting and I was sad about it. My husband pretty much just said “oh well we’ll try again” and couldn’t really get why I wasn’t over it within a couple of hours. My grandpa had just died a couple of months prior as well so death of any kind was a little touchy with me. I bottled it up and grieved alone.

About another 3 weeks after the miscarriage I had gotten appendicitis out of nowhere and had to have surgery to remove my appendix. My husband was at work so I dropped our son off with my mom and went to the ER where I waited for 2 hours in the waiting room alone before I was finally seen. I got to the ER around 3:45, finally got roomed around 6 and was told around 8:30 that it was my appendix and that I’d be staying in the hospital overnight and having surgery right away in the morning. My husband didn’t come to the hospital to see me until after he got off work at 11 and stopped to get himself a sandwich. He stayed for about 45 minutes and went home, and I didn’t see him until I was discharged from the hospital after surgery at about 4:00 the next day. My mom is the one who came to see me before and after my surgery so I wasn’t alone. He was irritated that I was moving a little slow when he picked me up and that I had to get a prescription on our way home. So I toughed through the pain and tried to do things as quickly as I could so I inconvenienced him as little as possible.

A little over a month goes by and I get another positive test and I think “FINALLY. He’ll finally be excited that it’s happening.” He was working out in the garage so I took the test out there and showed him and he looked at it and said “oh good. I don’t want to get too excited though in case it doesn’t stick like the last one”. My face got hot and I could feel the disappointment from the last few months bubbling up so I said “yeah I hope this one sticks too” and I walked back in the house before he could see me start to cry.

The weeks go by and everything is going good with the pregnancy but when I bring up the times I’m not feeling good or that I’m sore from my body changing, my husband ignores it and doesn’t really offer to help me out or get anything to help me feel better. It’s just “when is dinner ready?” Or” Can you run to the store?”

It’s been almost 5 years since our son was born so we don’t have any baby stuff really left over and I need to buy things over again. And where I live, people don’t give you a second baby shower and rarely even give you a small gift for the second baby. The only ones to give us anything were my parents and it was just a couple of baby outfits (which I am very much grateful for) but the point I’m trying to make is that there’s no big stockpile to look forward to the second time around. We didn’t need a ton, but we needed clothes, new blankets, a new diaper bag, etc. I was stressing about not having everything I knew I needed and he never said “well let’s make a list and go pick everything up”. Instead he said I needed to wait to spend money on that because he needed things for his garage.

I’m now 35 weeks and 2 days and the due date is coming up fast. He rarely brings up the baby unless he’s commenting on how big my belly is. He doesn’t really ever touch my belly to feel the baby move. I think he’s felt the baby move 3-4 times and they were only caught by accident really. He doesn’t want to be intimate with me because it’s too weird right now. With covid-19 changes, our hospital only allows one support person with you during delivery and they have to stay with you for the entire duration of the stay. They can’t leave and come back. So I mentioned this to him and said I’d have to make sure I pack extra things for him too since he wouldn’t be able to leave. He said he absolutely was not staying the entire time if he wouldn’t be able to come and go as he needs/wants. He’d be there for the delivery and a little bit after but he would not “be stuck in a hospital room for two days eating shitty hospital food”. My feelings were immediately hurt because I’m going to be the one in pain, delivering our baby and also stuck in a hospital room for however long is necessary eating shitty hospital food... He stayed with me last time and I guess I just thought he would be there again for me after the delivery. I didn’t want to fight about it so I just didn’t say anything more and dropped the subject. I bottled it up again and just moved on.

Last night we were watching tv together and I noticed he was texting a friend he hadn’t talked to in a while. He got up to go the bathroom and left his texts open and his phone on the bed. Just out of curiosity I glanced at the message and his friend had asked if he was excited for the new baby and my husband’s reply was “I guess. I don’t really get excited about that sort of thing.” My heart sunk. But I didn’t say anything about it. I just let it go because I already know that I’m in this mostly alone.

Today is the first hot day of the year since winter ended and I texted him at work saying we should put the air conditioners in the house because it’s supposed to be hot all week. He pretty plainly told me to shut up about it.

I am feeling so sad and disappointed with him. This last year has shown me just how little he actually cares. If I tried to tell him any of this though, he’d see it as me saying he’s not good enough, I expect too much, and nothing will make me happy. I’m always the first to say I’m proud of things he does, I compliment his looks, I support everything he wants to do and I generally just go with his flow. I rarely ask him for anything and I don’t spend much of our money. I do all the cooking and cleaning and 90% of everything to do with our son. I could spend hours listing all the things I do for everybody else every day, but there’s never any reciprocation from anyone. I really feel like I’m just on auto pilot trying to make it to bedtime each night so I can rest.

I’m just feeling really low and tired and I needed to let my disappointments and frustrations out but I don’t have anyone to talk to so I thought I’d put them here.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading/listening ❤️