Ok, so here's my take. You've seen this, right?
I don't have twins. I have two kids, almost 5 years apart. I am extremely lucky in that I was able to conceive without any help from fertility treatments, as I have PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome). Anyone else who has that knows how difficult it is to deal with.
I have many, many friends with twins. One of my friends has two sets of twins that are three years apart. So yeah, for a while she had TWO sets of twins under the age of five. Think about that for a second. Her husband went to work every day (and that man is a SAINT, let me tell you), and she was home with two toddlers and two infants. There were days when she would say she wanted to pull her hair out and days when she would post the cutest picture or note one of them had written, and I know that beyond all of her frustration and exhaustion, she was truly grateful for her children. On those days when I would be ridiculously frustrated with my own two, I would think of R, take a deep breath, and realize it could be worse.
I have another friend who makes having twins look incredibly easy. She’s so easy-going and has such a great “roll with it” attitude. Yet another friend with twins makes it look really, really difficult. It’s just her personality, but again, I have no doubts that she loves her children. All of them are amazing moms. (And dads.)
I don't know how I would have handled twins had I found out I was pregnant with them. I probably would have gone through the same terror, the same sleepless nights, the same anxiety, and the same questioning as these people. My husband travels a LOT for work, and so I would be contemplating all of those nights alone with TWO babies and only TWO hands. Honestly I would be downright terrified.
What I would NOT do? I wouldn’t go on the internet telling people how much I hated my children before I had them. Children I wanted. Children I wished, dreamed, and hoped for. Children I fought for, as these people apparently did, with infertility treatments, humiliating procedures in a doctor’s office where everyone knows what you’re doing and why you’re there, scheduled sex dates where the only goal is making a baby, and the general overwhelming stress of trying to conceive.
I would NOT complain that my spouse and I were “wishing the pregnancy away” and worried more about ourselves than the babies we worked so hard to conceive. I would absolutely NOT refer to my older child as the “free one”. That statement right there made my heart sink. What a horrible, heartless thing to say. I would never, in a million years, tell anyone that having twins was a “nightmare”, that I was “pissed”, that I wished my babies were the opposite sex......and I most definitely would not say that “we’re counting down - not like expected parents but like cancer patients with only months to live.” That one I can’t even wrap my head around.
Here’s the deal, Daddy-of-One-With-Two-on-the-Way:
You CHOSE to become pregnant again. You CHOSE to try to have another baby. When you couldn’t get pregnant on your own, you CHOSE to use fertility treatments. You CHOSE to spend thousands of dollars on procedures, all the while complaining that you live in a one-bedroom apartment and have no room for the family you already have. When the time came for IVF, knowing the risks, you CHOSE to go ahead with it. When your wife was asked about the embryos, she CHOSE to implant two, again.....knowing the risks. Do you see a pattern here? The only CHOICE you didn’t make was abortion, which might have been the right call, in your case. Yes, I just said that.
For reasons I cannot comprehend, because your post pretty clearly states that you and your wife didn’t want another child, you wanted a sibling for your existing child. Why? Your son would have been just fine. Did HE ask for another baby? Do you always give him everything he wants? I’ve never heard such a ridiculous, narcissistic reason in all of my life. Most people say that they had another baby because they had always wanted a house full of kids, or they just loved children so much, or that babies were such a blessing, stuff like that. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say, “Oh, we didn’t really want him, we only had him so our son could have a brother.” Holy crap.
Your “OH WOE IS ME” post is literally sickening. Here’s an idea.....go to an elementary school and ask to sit in on a special education class. Go to a hospital and sit for while in the children’s cancer ward. Take a trip to St. Jude’s Hospital and just walk around. When you’re out in public, notice the moms and dads whose children are forever confined to wheelchairs, who cannot talk, eat, move, or poop without help and probably never will. And look at the love in their faces. They don’t hate their children because they weren’t perfect......THEY LOVE THEM BECAUSE THEY”RE THEIRS. Because they were wanted, no matter what.
Get up off of your pathetic, whining ass, figure out how to provide for your family (because yes, that is your JOB), and be grateful for what you have. Pregnancy is not a buffet.....you can't pick and choose what you want, and you certainly can't look at the desserts and pick the best looking pie.
*****************************************************************
OH HOLY HELL, I just found your wife’s post in response to yours.
This line tells me everything I need to know about the both of you:
“Yet despite these challenges, we still wanted another child — a sibling for our son, mind you, not so much for us.”
I really, sincerely hope that therapist can get through to you, for the sake of your children. In the meantime, I will say again that I have never seen such narcissism, such ridiculous ungratefulness, such immaturity, and such selfishness in one post. You both need to get over yourselves and realize that once you made the decision to have ONE child, much less another, it stopped being all about you.
GOOD GRIEF. And you have to have a license to catch a fish........
One Blunt Mom
