Your advice to “Shell-Shocked,” the guy with the “baby crazy” wife, ignored how he obviously hasn’t read much about pregnancy at 40-plus. At 42, this woman’s lucky if she gets pregnant at all, and she’s stuck with a guy who wants to “wait.” If they want kids, they can’t wait a single day. A female friend, faced with similar situation with her husband, independently went out and had IVF with a sperm donor — while staying married. The husband dealt with it. — Well Read
When people talk about marriage as a partnership, they mean two people making decisions together, not one person announcing to the other, “I’m going out for a cup of some other guy’s sperm. Deal with it.”
You signed yourself “Well Read,” apparently because you caught the bit about this woman wanting a baby and, well, read no further. If you had, you’d know the problem isn’t that Mr. Shell-Shocked hasn’t done his homework on the joys of spawning with older eggs, but that he’s married to a shrieking psycho who’s always been about two loose screws from holding him down and strangling him with her fallopian tubes.
Raising kids – “the toughest job you’ll ever SAY you love” — tests the emotionally healthy, let alone the obviously unhinged. Like me, Mr. and Mrs. Shell- Shocked’s therapist believes you don’t have kids first and resolve Mommy’s mental health issues later. I told Mr. S to have no part of enabling his whack-job wife to become a mom, which means getting out before she gets her paws on his sperm. Sadly, once you’ve got that, all you need to give birth are working ovaries and such (only when you try to adopt do they do background checks and a psych evaluation).
As for your friend who trotted off to commit turkey-baster adultery, it’s dicey enough for a relationship when a guy comes home to some cutesy couch the wife blew his bonus money on. But, a blanket or throw-thingie will cover up a country-kitsch sofa. And yeah, it’s sure to be a continuing money drain — but 11 cents here, 36 cents there, between the crevices, not $208,000 for four years at Brown.
So, what if your girlfriend’s kid has some birth defect (more likely in pregnancies of women over 40), or is autistic? Lifetime care for somebody with autism can cost $3.2 million, according to Harvard School of Public Health’s Michael Ganz. If a husband is included in the decision to have a kid, and the kid turns out to be autistic, well, that’s rough, but...if you wouldn’t mind having supper ready, Daddy’ll be home from the office when he’s 190. A husband like your friend’s, on the other hand, might find himself somewhat less motivated in the face of “Awwww, the baby looks just like his...well, some kid who put himself through college by going into a room with a dirty magazine and a Dixie cup.”
Got a problem? Write Amy Alkon, 171 Pier Ave, No. 280, Santa Monica, CA 90405 or e-mail her at [email protected] (www.advicegoddess.com).
© Copyright 2009 Amy Alkon
