Pregnancy can lead to a lot of emotions. And not just for the person who is pregnant.
But for one woman her husband’s reaction to her pregnancy news has her baffled and concerned. So she turned to Reddit’s Relationship Advice subReddit for some honest, objective advice.
Redditor throwralizzie posted:
“I am pregnant. My husband ‘can’t be sure’ it is his… please help.”
She explained:
“My husband ‘John’ and I have two kids, a 2 [year-old] boy and a 5yo girl. Three months ago I found out I was pregnant with our third.”
“This completely blindsided me, since we weren’t trying and I had been using birth control.”
“I’d been planning on waiting until the 2yo was a little bit older before getting pregnant again, as the birth was highly traumatic. However, my husband has always wanted a large family and had been pushing for me to get pregnant again as soon as possible, so at first I believed this would be a happy surprise.”
“I sat my husband down soon after and informed him that I’m pregnant again. For the first two months, everything was fine and we both discussed excitedly how this might change our lives and how we’d make this thing work.”
“However, in the last month I’ve noticed something is up.”
“For my first two pregnancies, my husband was a very keen partner and took an active role as a parent. This time around he’s a lot less interested.”
“He doesn’t like touching my stomach (something he did a lot with the previous pregnancies) and frustratingly he shuts me down when I try to begin discussing names saying it’s ‘not something he wants to think about’. He’s also a lot more emotionally distant from me and is disappearing in the evening for hours of the time without warning, which is causing me a lot of stress.”
“Obviously there’s something wrong, but most of my attempts to get to the bottom of this are shut down. Last week I was almost in tears asking why he’d suddenly closed himself off about this.”
“John confessed that he is having doubts that this baby is really his.”
“This hurts a lot as I’ve always been entirely faithful, and this has never ever been a question before. I pushed for more information as to why he’d think that and he told me that he just doesn’t feel a ‘connection’ to this baby like he did to our other kids.”
“I asked him how he could even consider the idea of me cheating, and he says while he never thought I’d do that, he can’t help the way he feels this baby is a stranger. He admits his feelings about this are irrational, but things haven’t been the same between us and we’re sleeping in separate beds.”
“I’m at the end of my rope. How can I convince him that this baby is his and make things normal?”
As often happens in the Relationship Advice subReddit, many people immediately suggested the husband was cheating on the OP.
However not all of them offered this unhelpful advice.
“Could it have something to do with actively trying to get pregnant for your two older children while this one was a surprise? Maybe he feels a lack of participation (even though, obviously he participated) and that leads to lack of connection.”
“A lot of people are jumping right to assuming he cheated but it is fairly common for men to take longer to bond with a baby. After all, they don’t carry it for 9 months.”
“Shutting you out, withdrawing from the family, being unsupportive are serious behaviors that need to be addressed and are not fair to you but I would not assume it is anything more than delayed bonding.” ~ doxyisfoxy
“OP, please pay attention to this comment and don’t believe that all of the comments saying that he MUST be cheating are accurate. Only you know your relationship with your husband and there could definitely be another explanation.” ~ snitch_snob
Of the people who didn’t immediately suggest the husband was cheating, most suggested some form of counseling while reassuring the OP she wasn’t required to prove anything to her husband.
“I agree that no one can be sure he is cheating based off of what you’ve said. Whatever reason he is acting this way, you do not owe it to him to prove that the baby is his when you have not done anything to indicate that you are being faithless to him or break his trust.”
“Mental health issues that pop up unexpectedly after major life events/traumas are very common and if he is having a bit of a breakdown, it is his responsibility to go to therapy or try to resolve his insecurities in a way that is healthy. But it is absolutely inappropriate for him to lash out or be cold to you and his unborn child because of a hunch or a bad feeling.”
“It is very manipulative of him to create a problem in his head and be an ass to you until you solve it for him, and I think he is taking things way too far, even if it is delayed bonding. He needs to be responsible for his own feelings here.” ~ friendsisnotfunny
“Maybe he’s depressed? The world is a dumpster fire right now. He should get a mental health eval.” ~ Element_Girl
“Yup. Exactly. I pulled over on my way home from work Tuesday and just cried for 5 minutes…sobbing and tears and Kleenex and all that.”
“To this day; I have no clue why.” ~ RusticSurgery
The OP has not returned to provide an update. Hopefully they were able to get the help they need to resolve this unexpected reaction to their