Dear Prudence,
From our first interaction, my husband and I always knew and understood that each of us wanted a family. As a same sex male couple, this is not necessarily the norm, so we were lucky to find in each other a partner whose values and life goals aligned. Our dream was to have twins—one from “his embryos” and one from “my embryos”—but our journey was not easy. First, we had suboptimal results from our first IVF round with our egg donor: only three viable embryos, and we lost twins in our first implantation. At the time, despite test results reading on paper beautifully, our doctor questioned if there was something off with our egg donor. But we had one embryo left—”my” embryo—so we decided to give it another go and that final embryo was a fighter. We now have a lovely, charismatic 3-year-old who brightens every moment of our days. But my husband is fixated on having a child that is genetically “his” own. We did another cycle with our original egg donor, which yielded no viable embryos, and then moved on to a new donor that we had better success with. But our surrogate has since had three miscarriages from implantations of “his” embryos, and it’s been taxing on all levels, including financially, as we’ve spent our entire life savings at this point.
His birthday was this past week, and he mentioned he thought he’d be further along in the baby process by his age. This really stung, as the implication was that he views our son to be less special just because they have no genetic link. Beyond that, I seriously doubt our marriage could survive a second child. My husband is very selfish and barely contributes to our life. I organize EVERYTHING: I am the primary earner; ensure every bill is paid; our son’s doctors’ appointments are made and attended; sort childcare, clothes, food; keep the house tidy and maintain the cars; get up with the baby every morning and relieve the nanny every night—I mean, I could go on forever with this list, but the point is I’m exhausted and I can feel the resentment building. Years into all this and he still doesn’t know how to install a car seat, can’t remember our WI-FI password, and only ever grocery shops for the things he needs! How can I manage another child when I’m already so burned out and have no support from him?
We have discussed this repeatedly, and things get better in the short term, but it’s never long-lived—the dog always behaves best when in the doghouse, after all. I don’t have the tools to address this though. Broaching the topic would end in an argument, and the mere suggestion we stop our baby journey now would end my marriage. I don’t want to blow my family up, but I also need to be true to myself. I’m at a breaking point but I don’t know what to do. Please help!
—Panicked and Pensive Parent