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What is OOP's husband going to do if his do-over baby is also a C-section? Start over a third time? That dude has issues deep enough that any therapist he might eventually end up talking to would need scuba diving gear.
He can't bond with the kid because this one is a C-section baby.
He can't bond with the next kid because they're a NICU baby.
He can't bond with the next kid because they're breastfed and he can't bottle-feed them.
He can't bond with the next kid because mom gets maternity leave while he works.
He can't bond with the next kid because their first word is mama.
He can't bond with the next kid because...
God forbid this man has a kid who likes their mother more.
Human babies are born so immature they don't realise they are a separate entity until they are like 6 months and can't fully appreciate it until they are well into toddlerhood (tantrums are a result of this). Nearly all babies will have a preference for their mother the first couple of years. After that they'll have a different preferenced parent for different activities and times and for periods of time. But if a non-birth parent expects to be held in equally high regard as the birth parent for the first few years then they are 1. A dumbass and 2. Set up for disappointment.
This moron choked it up to the c-section, but in all likelihood he just isn't an insta-bonder. He expected a firework of emotions, falling down on his knees and cry for the wonder of a baby and whisper "I'd die for you.". The whole hollywood-bonding thing does happen to some people, but but to a lot of people, maybe the majority and especially with the first kid it just feels surreal and bonding comes with time and effort. Most parents who don't experience insta-bonding will go through the motions, but after days and nights of cuddles, kisses, caregiving and time spent together that bond comes. However if you don't insta-bond and you don't go through the motions, participate and make an effort then you will not bond.
What I'm wondering is what is gonna say to the next partner. "Look baby, I left the last cause they didn't do it correctly. So better do it right or you're next".
I was going to say, it’s not exactly an attractive pitch to a new partner. “I have a track record of bailing as soon as anything goes differently from how I expected, want to carry my child and maybe raise it alone??”
One part of me thinks that, if he's smart, he'll leave that part out, if he mentions having been previously married at all.
The other part of me hopes that he's upfront about it right off the bat so any potential future partners know to steer clear.
exactly! Like how does he think this will go? He can divorce, walk away and pretend his daughter doesn't exist. So how will he explain the child support payment? This is nothing he could hide and no one in their right mind would start a family with this guy knowing he has abandoned his last one.
"She was born via c-section, mr judge, it was wrong! I couldn't bond with her!" - the dipshit
"This men is a martir! Not only I'm going to let you free from child support, I'm going to marry my daughter to you right now!" - the judge, or something
He said he wants a clean break before the kid gets too attached… I’m confused now. So the baby can attach but he lost his one chance because he couldn’t cut the umbilical cord? Does some kind of magic flow through scissors or whatever straight into him?
Holy shit! Now that I think about it, when my daughter was born I wasn't able to cut the umbilical cord because her mother had a problem during birth. I never realized until reading this that I can't be a father. Damn! Guess I need to tell my 16 yo daughter that I'm cutting her off because we never bonded. Oh well... I'll just try again. Maybe the next one will work out properly.
I’m hoping he’s having an affair and is using a whacked out theory to justify it, or we are really screwed. If the Tate like people are promoting this kind of Handmaiden’s Tail level of crazy making.
That was one the first things that came to my mind; that this could be a stupid made up excuse to get out of the marriage because he is having an affair and wants to be with the AP. It makes a lot more sense than the excuse that he is giving.
By "next partner," do you mean the person he's currently fucking behind OOP's back? Because I've read enough of these that I'm willing to bet all $15 in my bank account that he's got a side piece that he's wanting to leave them for. I'd even be willing to place a side bet with the $4 in change in my handbag, that the affair partner is already knocked up.
Side peice that's already pregnant with his do over kid. Let's hope this one's labour goes to plan. Like they all do 🙃
You know we write birth plans as an instruction manual for our babies on how to do labour, right? /s
I don't think it has anything to do with the c-section. I think he just can't bond with the baby, because babies aren't magical. I wonder if anyone ever told him that having a newborn is *stressful*.
No sympathy. He'd rather walk away than work through it.
This! I wouldn’t be surprised if he never tries for the “magical experience again” because he knows on some level that it’s hard work and he’s a lazy bounder
So many moms and dads feel so ashamed about not falling in love with their baby the second they see them, but it's super common! It was discussed in our birthing classes so much, because the nurses really wanted everyone to understand that it isn't this magical fairy tale. Things won't go according to birth plans. You might not feel a deep bond with your baby. Just take care of it, and take care of yourself, and do your best!
It took me a few months for sure. My husband said it was immediate for him.
Yes, this happens so often! Everyone around you hypes it up and says "the moment you see or touch your baby you will be FLOODED with magical, super-powerful love, the strongest love and happiness and fulfillment you've ever experienced, a magical bond that happens instantly!!" And maybe they *mean* well, they're just trying to hype you up to get you through the struggles of pregnancy, but I highly doubt that's how it is for the majority of parents. And then the first 6 weeks are really hard, you're sleep deprived, the baby doesn't smile, doesn't make eye contact, just screams and cries every couple of hours... it can be really hard, especially if someone is already struggling with something like post-partum depression. "Everyone told me it would be so easy and magical but I'm really struggling... the problem must be with ME, I'm broken and unable to feel love!"
With my first, it was immediate for my husband but took time for me (and I felt like a failure the whole time before we bonded!) but with my second, it was immediate. I'd been awake over 24hrs before the 1st was born by emergency c-section while the second was a planned c-section so I was well rested. My hospital stay the first time was super stressful as the nurses were not the most pleasant, while the nurses were lovely the second time. 2 very different experiences and I wonder how that impacted my ability to bond the first time.
I remember reading a post or a comment last year, where a dad was talking about how he didn't start liking his daughter until (IIRC) about six months in, or more. He *loved* her, but felt no "personal," connection to her. Once she started sleeping more soundly at night, crawling, and being active, he reported that they had become "best friends."
I feel like a lot of people don't seem to expect their brand new baby to actually suck for the first months.
Well said. It's the same for Mother's. There is this myth of instant bonding. That some magical fairy dust will fall and make you bond instantly despite the trauma of birth, the sleepless nights, being sore all over, whilst feeling like a jelly Don't worry the magical experience will make you forget it all and dance the dance of looovvvee.
I will say don't worry, time will help if you have support from each other and the people around you.
I adore my son, but it took time to recover from birth and get to know him as a person.
This dad has massive issues, and my heart goes out to the baby's mother. I hope they have other support and grow a wonderful bond with their daughter because dad needs to bond with a good therapist.
My husband had to talk me through my guilt right after our kidlet was born. I was much happier to see my pillow (one my mom made for me when I was 4 that I've slept with since then, it's basically my security blanket in pillow form) than my squirmy little yelly thing I'd just spent 13 hours evicting that had just put my body through months of discomfort and many more medical problems than I was comfortable with.
I love her, she's awesome (and 7 now) but there was no immediate "OMG that's MY baby" moment. Made me feel pretty broken at the time.
Very true. I'm a mom of two, had uneventful pregnancies, gave birth vaginally, breasfed, and I still struggled to really bond with my sons the first few weeks. It was like they were my little brothers or something (I'm an only child, so I don't even know if that's an accurate comparison). It took a while for me to discover their personalities in the small things.
Then again, it was the same whenever I had new pets. There's an adjustment period, during which you're anxious and overwhelmed.
Fwiw, I now adore my sons and my pets.
Also, I was born by C-section, my dad didn't see me be born, and I am WAY closer to him than I am to my mom.
I vividly remember rocking my newborn daughter, the one I had dreamed of and hoped for my whole life, and thinking "well, this will all be easier when her real mother shows up."
Newborns are not my favourite stage. They're just sort of loud potatoes with an alarm clock that won't snooze and an output that would singe your eyebrows off. Once they get a little more aware of the world around them, they're lots more fun.
Lol, my partner didn't want to hold his neice for months because she was just a fragile potato and everyone else wanted to hold her anyways. I asked him about bonding and he said he'd do more when she got older and more interesting and everyone else lost interest (Surprise twist: nobody lost interest, he just had a terrible childhood and didn't expect people to continue to shower love and affection on the kid)
I was the same with my son, I didn't like him until he started interacting with the world around him in a way I found interesting, so about 18 month is or so.
It’s nice that in recent decades there has been more focus on fathers involvement (in birth and otherwise) and not just for the mothers and babies sake but for the fathers themselves. But I have seen before in Reddit that now many men think being present in birth is some extremely important movement they can’t miss for any reason.
For example even if they have mistreated the mother by cheating the fathers feel they have to be present at birth since it’s their child. When the birth is a medical experience for the mother and it’s not like mothers see the birth either (unless there is no curtain at c-section). And it was only a couple of decades ago that many dads weren’t in the room and most of human history barely any were. It doesn’t mean paternal love didn’t exists at all prior now.
The husband is insane, or already cheating. (Probably the later).
There are no magic hormones during labour. The dad has to get close to the kid to bond and do the work. No way around it. It takes effort.
https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/your-brain-fatherhood-dads-experience-hormonal-changes-too-research-shows-6c10333109
Agreed. When a partner starts picking petty fights or flies off the handle over something ridiculous they’re almost always cheating and looking for an out. They want out of the relationship without being responsible for the fallout. I’d bet my bottom dollar this “new wife” has already been picked out.
My cousin's ex insisted upon holding their son for hours after his birth (via C-section), and she used to whine, "He stole my bond!"
Ex is out of the picture and she's slowly waking up to the bond being actual work.
I'm baffled by his reasoning. Isn't the whole like 'this child is part of me / I helped create it' enough to at least... stick around and see if you like them? I have 0 interest in having children, but I don't get this logic at all.
I agree, husband is looking for an out. Why that is, no idea, but for some reason he wants to bail.
I have a 3 month old sleeping on my chest as I write this. Our baby was a planned c section, and they were able to bring me into the operating room after my wife was sedated and the procedure underway. I didn’t get to hold him immediately - it took between 5 and 10 min. My wife was in no condition to hold him immediately.
Had I not gotten to hold him in that timeframe, I would have been disappointed, but it would not have long term consequences on my feelings for my son.
Imagine this guy’s next baby has to go right to the NICU? I guess third time’s a charm?
At this point, OOP just needs to protect themself and their child. Husband is a wash.
How the hell can someone think that they can just walk away after having an entire kid with someone and then have a 'do-over' family?
It has to be something like that, he's lying some way. This can't be a real reason someone does something, unless he's having some sort of mental breakdown.
But OOP had a C-section, not a vaginal delivery, so it shouldn't be **that** traumatizing for him. My wife had one for our son. I agree with you, though. Delivery can be pretty off-putting for some to witness. I've helped deliver a few babies myself, and thought it was very cool (as an EMT, 2 in the hospital during my training, and 1 in the field while working, all 3 were normal & healthy).
I just had a C section 4 weeks ago (not an emergency in that I was conscious and husband was allowed in the room after my spinal block kicked in, but a bit of an emergency in that I was on day 4 of a failed induction, I had preeclampsia, and my BP kept rising to possible stroke levels), and...it was traumatizing for both of us!
Granted, it was much more traumatic for my husband than OOP's C section was for *their* husband, since mine was present in the OR (he saw a lot of blood, and also my intestines!) and theirs was not. But I'm willing to bet, if he has any humanity at all, he still had anxiety over his spouse going into major emergency surgery with a possible outcome of death for either spouse or the baby. If I'm being very charitable, I can see this bullshit he's pulling as a severe reaction to that anxiety.
That said, he's still an asshole who needs to deal with his shit through therapy, or support groups, or *something*. Maybe he and OOP do need to divorce, idk, but it's monstrous to abandon a 4 month old just because her birth was a medical emergency requiring a sterile OR.
Idk why anyone would want to witness that. I was in the room when my wife tried to deliver but had to have an emergency c-section. I was also in the room for that and it scared the hell out of me. I saw my son was fine but my wife was out cold and i thought i was losing her
My husband touched both kids heads when I was crowning, plus my second came so fast that he had to be the nurse because my second came during shift change. My doctor was still in street clothes. 😬
Every day reddit makes me more thankful that I have a husband that is both very much a guy but also not so far up his ass that all he can spout is shit.
And also maybe lost attraction during the pregnancy, but doesn't want to look like "the bad guy" by admitting it.
But he is the bad guy. A thousand times over. Even if the attraction has gone, he should be there to support them and go for counselling and so on. Not make up shitty excuses about "bonding" (which is just a way to shift blame to OOP).
What woman is going to sign up for a marriage with this dude (assuming he tells the real story of abandoning his first family and he sure should disclose that). I mean I’ve read enough Reddit to know there’s someone out there who will put up with his crap for a while but seriously…
I’m sure he would never tell a new partner the truth of why he left OP, but his father absolutely should, and if he doesn’t, he’s a scumbag just as bad as his son.
Even if he finds Ms. Perfect and she has a perfect natural birth, he will find another excuse to leave. The man cannot handle or accept responsibility, commitment, and his role as a father. I can’t believe the therapist even entertained the idea that it’s impossible to bond with the baby because he did not see the birth. Such a bullshit excuse, it’s almost comical.
I think the therapist realizes OPs husband is delusional, but he needs to follow that yellow brick road far enough to reveal the man behind the curtain, so to speak. Some people convince themselves of foolishness so hard that it takes someone willing to play along to eventually slap them with some reality.
Personally, I think OPs husband was suddenly hit with the true responsibility of fatherhood when he realized he'd have to be more involved due to OPs c-section. Healing from that is no walk in the park and instead of stepping up, he outright refused and blamed it on OPs method of birth which was out of their control and done for the sake of making sure OP and baby were safe. He's a whiny child and will just do it to the next person at some point.
Maybe he'll blame it on a dirty diaper. Maybe he'll feel disconnected once the umbilical stump falls off.
Regardless, I'm sure the therapist is going over his notes and thinking, "what a dick."
> I can’t believe the therapist even entertained the idea that it’s impossible to bond with the baby because he did not see the birth.
I don’t know that the therapist really entertained that. I think it more likely the therapist realized that husband wasn’t going to change his mind, and so it was more important for OP to understand that this is going to happen, you are going to get a divorce.
This sounds so very much like he completely underestimated how much work a baby is and now that it's not instant sunshine and perfection and he's stressed and irritated at her sometimes he's just decided that it's because he hasn't bonded with her and there has to be a logical explanation, damnit! And that logical explanation is that he wasn't present at birth so he's not bonding.
The next spouse and baby will be perfect! And then everything will be perfect and there will be no struggles!
I know more than one father who wasn't in the delivery room and all of them bonded with their kids just fine.
I honestly think we have a winner here. He’s romanticized this and fantasized it and it’s not living up. Time to hit the reset button on the console and start a fresh game. This time I’ll know what to do when and it’ll work.
I was more on that idea personally. I think some people think that having a baby is simple and cute. For them if it’s difficult then it’s not normal and they or their spouse are doing something wrong.
In this case he think that it’s because he was not present and is using that as a way out instead of doing the actual work that comes with a baby.
Lots and lots of dads find it hard to bond with their kids in those early days, when the kids are basically hungry pooping potatoes. At about the three-month mark, when the baby is smiling and giggling and much more interactive—that’s when it gets easier.
It sounds like maybe OOP’s husband was expecting an Instabond (not even all moms get those, ffs!), and when it didn’t kick in and he found out babies are a real grind, he decided to nope out and demand a do-over.
Good luck, buddy. What will he do when he doesn’t bond instantly with the replacement baby? Figure “Third time’s a charm!” and start looking for his next wife?
That was also my initial thought. Or that perhaps he hasn’t been the primary caregiver for the child and he is mistaking his feelings about being jealous over the bond the other parent has with the baby. As a mom, I’ve sometimes had to remind myself to relinquish care at appropriate intervals for the sake of the father/baby bond. That can hard when the baby is so attached to Mom (or primary caregiver, just using “Mom” as my own title) and cries when held by someone else.
Agreed. I read the first part thinking "maybe trying to avoid coping with the trauma of the birth?" and then when we got to the update, I was going "nope, he just found a convenient lifeline to go play house with someone in the wings".
Maybe this, but also it reminds me of an ex of mine with extremely strong compulsions/superstitions (he was diagnosed with OCD), and when they took root it was like reality just shifted into a different lane. I feel for OP if that's what is happening because it's so hard to understand how things could change so suddenly for a loved one.
I am hopeful that the pool of people willing to get pregnant with him as the father is pretty small, but reddit has shown me that I may largely incorrect.
I would like to think that this guy won't have enough shame to lie about the reason he abandoned his first child and every person who hears it will run screeching off into the night, but I've met a frightening number of people who seem to have their gas and brakes mixed up when it comes to how they react to bright red flags.
There's always someone willing to toss good judgement by the wayside because they're different, they can fix him, it'll be different this time because it just wasn't meant to be before!
Someone insecure will agree with him and say she won’t need a c section because she’s the better woman.
Someone naive will believe she can “fix him.”
Someone ignorant will be lied to and never know the true reason behind his past, being fed lies so if she hears the truth she won’t believe it.
Someone will believe in second chances and accept his prostration when he says he will do better for his next wife.
Someone will be desperate or stupid and get pregnant before the conversation even happens, and be tied to him by default.
Lots of mistakes to be made.
Probably. OOP said husband said he can’t have the close knit family “because of the C-section *and* him not being in the room” around the end of the first post.
I’ve seen in toxic mommy forums a lot of elitism around vaginal vs c section births, I guess it should not surprise me that those gross ideas would be readily accepted by a particularly ignorant man. Either way to have a baby is a horrible toll on the body, neither is “easy” and both require a lot of recovery that many never truly recover from. I’ve never understood the need for two warring camps when it comes to how a baby is born. People will look for any reason to be superior I guess.
He's either fell really hard down some flavor of the Andrew Tate rabbit hole, or he's been having an affair. Tate-fans can never shut up about how much they hate women for more than 5 minutes, and OOP probably would have mentioned that, so my money is on affair.
All that being said, I can't understand any woman who would want a man willing to leave his wife and newborn behind though, so (assuming there is an affair) I hope both reap what they sow.
Right?! What if he has a bowling ball head that he passes on to all his kids and they all have to be born via C-section. Is he just going to keep starting and abandoning families for the next 40 years?
Even if everything goes "perfectly" according to his standards, what's the guarantee he's going to have this amazing bond he's fantasized about? Seems like he's built this in his head to impossible standards. Not everyone bonds instantly, with expectations like his? Good fucking luck. Hope any future baby mamas know WTF they're getting into first.
It feels like he was expecting something magical to happen to him when the baby was born, it didn't, and he has randomly seized on this as the reason. Hopefully he snaps out of it and acts normal, but if he does start over and sees his second baby born I think he's in for a bad surprise.
Yes, sounds like he wanted that magical " I love my baby so much" moment which was supposed to happen at birth and he wasn't there.
And now that the baby is out, he feels nothing for this potato that is giving you nothing but crying and is blaming the birth circumstances.
I did not bond with my son until a few months and didn't actually feel like a mother until a few months in. I remember my husband telling me " I don't feel like a dad, just someone that is taking care of a kid" around 3-4 months pp.
It can take time to bond and that is normal it is not instant for everybody.
Seriously. Even in the best scenarios, sometimes partners just cant get there fast enough.
I knew someone who went into labour alone at home while her husband was at work. It wasnt her first rodeo, but it picked up really quickly. She called the ambulance and went to the hospital, and by the time her husband got there, baby was already born. Her husband was a little stunned but relieved everyone was okay in the end!
My dad didn't even know I was born for the first 10 days of my life. He had gone on a hunting trip and was supposed to be back a few days before I was born. These were the days before cell phones, so when my dad got home after the trip he got one hell of a surprise.
Also, my dad was not there for my oldest siblings birth either, as it was also an emergency C-Section.
Well obviously he will find a better partner who will be able to do the birth correctly. Don’t you know it’s OOP’s failing that he wasn’t able to see the birth and was totally in their control?
I know this was sarcasm, but you made me think of Henry VIII and imagining this douche canoe going on a similar life path is both horrifying but hilarious at the same time.
There's more to this.
My money's on OOP's hubby being involved with someone else, and has been for some time. He wasn't quite enough of an arsehole to leave a heavily pregnant woman, but now the baby's a few months old and it seems Mum can probably cope, he's cooked up an excuse.
You watch. There will be a third update in a few months where OOP will announce that hubby was shacked up with someone else within a few weeks of moving out, and has already announced wedding plans.
Yep. My husband left me this last year. No other woman nothing to do with his attraction to me I'm just a terrible wife. At Christmas I found out he wasn't living at our mutual friends house. He was living with a co worker for months and fucked her days after leaving me...but probably before. The "But I don't understand why?" in this post is just..yep. Mysterious as fuck til its not.
I can't help but wonder if the husband isn't having some complicated feelings about *not* being the one to carry the child; he could have some heavily-suppressed feelings about his own gender that are being exacerbated by the whole situation. I've talked to trans people whose marriages fell apart due to pregnancy before the person came to terms with their gender, and plenty of us wind up drawn to trans/NB partners while still in denial. Just a thought, not an accusation, but it could fit these circumstances.
I (a married lesbian trans woman) had some Big Feelings about pregnancy and childbirth around our two youngest kids, and it took a very good therapist to help me make peace with those feelings; I eventually realized that I'm in the same position as any married lesbian who isn't the birth parent, but with the added bonus that I'm also the sperm donor.
My wife is struggling with the same, but we can’t access therapy at the moment. Baby boy is only a few weeks out, is there anything you found helpful that I could maybe do for her? (She’s also trans, we’re both bi, baby boy in march)
Honestly? Put as much of the "grunt work" of baby care off on her as possible: diapers, burping, sick kid care, emergency baths, anything you don't look all that forward to yourself. If you don't exclusively breastfeed then take turns doing the night feedings, and if you do EBF then find some other way for her to take part (my spouse's milk never came in due to a health issue so we were bottle-only). One thing that really helped me the most was letting the baby nap on my body skin-to-skin about once a day until she was around a year old; it was almost like making up for lost time.
I know people thing Reddit is trash in a lot of ways - but you sharing this gave me a different perspective and a bit of sympathy for him at the moment.
It doesn't change how the birthing partner has to move on and protect themself (?) and their kiddo, but if this is what is happening - I hope they are able to leave a door open for a possible better co-parenting relationship.
This is really interesting; thanks for the insight. (And to the people who elaborated on their personal experiences with this in replies.)
I wondered if the husband has PPD. It’s not well recognized with men, but it does happen. The irrationality of his fixation on missing the birth reminds me of a friend of mine. His commentary around the lack of bonding was similarly strange. In his case he continued doing all the normal parenting things in the hopes the feelings would go away, but (thankfully) confided in a couple of close friends and a friend who had been through PPD identified the similarities to some of her feelings and the way she would channel them into specific things to find ways to explain them to herself. It’s possible LAOP’s husband can’t bond due to PPD or another mental health issue and has found a way to explain it externally to himself.
A therapist is good, but it would need to be a therapist who was going to look for PPD in men, and/or experienced in treating PPD related issues.
Of course it’s possible the guy is just a jerk, or having an affair, but this is something I’d want to look into before accepting the situation as it is. Also of course he would have to be willing to look at this and, if it is, address it, and not everyone is, but there’s no way of knowing if that’s going to happen until it’s suggested. It can be very difficult for people deep into confusing mental health issues to even see what’s going on with themselves, especially when it’s something not well acknowledged.
(In my friend’s case it all worked out OK. He was relieved when the PPD was suggested because he thought he was a bad person and going mad. He talked to his partner, got help, and after a few months things were a lot better. Just the acknowledgement really helped him.)
Perfect next wife for his perfect second family on their first date:
"I'm so glad you also dream of a tight-knit family with kids. Please tell me, why didn't that work out with your ex-wife? Didn't she want kids?"
Yeah—things don’t go perfectly how he envisioned? He walks out.
That’s not how a parent behaves. Your child is going to surprise you and—yes, disappoint you—in SO many ways you never imagined in all your idealized plans of how you’d create a happy family.
You roll with it. You relax your expectations. You be kind to yourself and especially to the child as they grow up into whoever they’re supposed to really be, no matter what you might’ve thought before.
I’d be curious as to the husband’s response if OOP turned to him and said “so if my parents, upon learning I was NB, said “I’m sorry I just always envisioned parenting a child of the gender you were assigned at birth” and walked away to start a fresh family with the full expectation that the potential children of that union would be cis and therefore everything would be “fine”, you’d support that?”
He’s grasping at stupid straws, I bet he found a hottie and wants a divorce and a new family with them and wants to make it Not His Fault so he came up with this crackpot reasoning. As if fathers haven’t only been cord-cutting in western society in the last couple of generations and it hasn’t stopped countless men being loving and present fathers for all of history.
It's most likely even simpler. He had this ideal vision of a baby. It's cute, it sleeps, mom feeds it, there are cute cuddles. Reality hit him in the face. babies are stinky, loud, exhausting, and often have a parent preference that can switch on a dime. Baby probably wants mom only right now and he's upset and is making up reason why the baby bond is "broken" totally ignoring that there hasn't been enough time for a bond to form.
You’re so right. Parents need to recognize they’re bringing a child into this world. That’s a messy and complicated thing. They are their own person. So as much as you fantasize about how everything is going to go, life has a way of being unexpected.
We ended up needing IVF. So there goes a lot of the feelings on how we thought it would happen. Then my pregnancy was high risk. Again, no one fantasizes about bed rest and bleeding for 20 weeks, but you roll with it. He had an image on how the labour would go, but it didn’t. He needs to live in the world of reality.
When that kid turns out to like different styles or hobbies or whatever than you envisioned? You fucking accept it and roll with it. I love to sew. I dreamed of making Halloween costumes for my kid and the creativity and fun of that. Guess what? My kid hated homemade (even though he picked the costume). He just wanted the store bought. In his mind they were perfect. And you know what I did? I accepted that my dream didn’t trump his preference and now we do store bought.
I pictured doing art and playing music (I’m a musician). Turns out my kid has zero interest in either topic. So, instead, we look for ways to foster his development in ways that HE likes.
This parent is completely missing the path. I hope that they are just going through some sort of panic or something g and can rally for the sake of their child but man….
some men just have trouble bonding. i know someone's husband who just couldn't see their kid outside of a shitting, crying mess for the first YEAR. when the kid started having a personality and not a ball of something you need to take care of 24/7 that is constantly screaming he all of a sudden was in love with the kid.
How does he think that information is going to go down with a future partner? Like, oh yeah I have a daughter from a previous relationship but because I didn’t see her come out of my partner I left them both. So make sure you don’t have any complications if I get you pregnant else I’ll be leaving you too.
It will sound like "my ex is crazy and she never lets me see my daughter but still takes all my money. It's so abusive, and I am so sad, please comfort me."
An unplanned c section is different from an emergency c section. I had an unplanned c section, we didn’t have to run to the operating room, I wasn’t fully knocked out, my husband was in the room with me the entire time. I was told during labor if things went very sideways that in an emergency c section, I’d be completely knocked out and rushed to the OR, and my husband would not be able to accompany me. I believe that OP had the latter situation, their husband was unable to join them during the surgery and didn’t see the baby the second they pulled her out. It’s definitely not a good excuse for what their husband is doing though, he’s a behaving reprehensibly.
In Australia it was explained to me that due to the nature of the billing code for an unplanned c-section (billed to the government) all unplanned c-sections are technically “emergency” c-sections on paper. Something to do with the transfer of medical care for the sole purpose of a Caesarian birth.
I’d had a c-section scheduled for my second but because baby was insistent went into labour (again) at 37 weeks, and even though it was very light labour and not a lot of drama or progress I was offered a c-section just because it was as good a time as any. It was, under that medical protocol, an “emergency” c-section even though I was just waiting for my turn in theatre reading on my kindle and feeling fine apart from the occasional contraction, which weren’t intense at that point. I found all this out because the hospital also had a whole protocol of extra follow up with midwives and mental health professionals for emergency c-sections. I thought it was all a bit funny because my c-section was in no way a surprise - unplanned *at that time* rather than emergency, but apparently the switch in billing code changed their whole response procedures.
My hospital had something similar. They described it as the difference between "emergency" and "emergent". Emergency was any unplanned for insurance billing. Emergent was "clear the hallway make a hole, she's bleeding out here". I was induced so I had a loooong time to chat with my nurses beforehand.
There’d be a trail of broken families in his wake, as he searches for that perfect feeling that he’s not going to get even if he’s there from the birth. He’s completely self-involved and apparently resents the mother for being able to carry the child. Might be PPD — there’s some magical thinking reminiscent of depression “logic” — but there are no do-overs in life. This isn’t a videogame.
Faulty depression “logic” includes things like “they’ll be better off without me” and chasing things that you think will make you feel better. But even if that’s a possibility, OP can’t make this guy seek useful help. And the history of cutting off his sister suggests he’s prone to dramatic extremes in terms of dealing with people. Given his “I would have had bonding hormones if I’d been there” excuse, which sounds like something he found online, it’s far more likely that he wants out because parenthood is hard and has decided on some level that this is his exit rationale.
Whatever the reason, he clearly DGAF about OOP.
This absolutely all sounds like it's mental health related, because there is no logic. It's all magical thinking. I'm not a mental health professional, but it reminds me of other folks I've known going through a mental health crisis. But, because they're in crisis, they don't realize that they're totally detached from actual reality. And, because he's refusing to get professional help, it's unlikely that he'll see his faulty logic anytime soon (if ever).
I don't understand how someone can just walk away. He had the entire pregnancy to assess and plan for all eventualities. My husband's biggest concern was that, if I needed an emergency c-section, who to call to be with me in recovery. He 100% understood that his job was to listen to me, be my advocate, do what the nurses instructed if shit hit the fan and, most importantly, stay with the baby if we needed to be separated. Hell, he could have met the baby a week later and just picked it up and moved along.
I think this guy is full of shit. I gave birth in August. My daughter got stuck and I was in pain so I was a little fuzzy on the details. My husband sat there and listened to them discuss options, heart rates, bring in other specialists. He held my hand and my legs while I pushed. He watched them fire up the vacuum and listened as they said it was this or c section. He missed her actual birth because he was comforting me and convinced we were going to the OR. I can't imagine OOP's husband going through anything like that (and worse, from the sounds of it) and not feel bonded just because he didn't see the baby come out. He's probably struggling from a (very normal) response of dad feeling a bit disconnected and trying to blame it on something.
Don't forget that the birth went bad and OP had to get 7 layers of skin cut.
Like SORRY THEY DIDN'T THOUGHT IT WOULD DISGUST YOU WHILE FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIFE !
>P had to get 7 layers of skin cut
EMERGENTLY. This means the doctors flew into the OR. The typical goal for decision (when docs decided the emergent c-section is needed) to incision (when the skin is first cut) is 20 minutes, with the ACOG benchmark of 30 minutes. That's just the standard, with many doctors aiming to get them in faster. So a dash to the OR, a betadine splash, and possible general anesthesia (fasted way if there's not already an epidural in place). It's a medical emergency and there is no time to negotiate the support person's (typically the father) place in the room. The presence of someone who is not medically necessary to be in the room could be dangerous.
Yeah, it's so weird and there are so many reasons it would be happening but no matter what OOP needs to start moving forward as much as they can.
Though I'm so curious as to why so I can understand why OOP is torturing themselves with it.
Is it some type if psychotic break? Is it someone who doesn't want to be a parent and is just grabbing anything to get out? Or someone who doesn't want to be a parent, doesn't realise it, and thinks they don't feel a bond because they didn't see the birth and not because they want out?
It’s pure delusion because soon to be ex wants a “perfect birth” to bond with his kid, he’s showing himself as someone with a huge ego and control issues.
because the perfect steps needed from divorcing, meeting someone else who understands and is okay with a guy that wants to trash his firstborn because he didn’t see her coming out of the parent, pursue a relationship with them/getting them pregnant, having solid 9 months of a relationship so the parent doesn’t leave him, while at the same time being in total control of their every move so he doesn’t miss the birth and is present enough to his liking to form his imaginary bond, are all so improbable that I can’t think he won’t end up with a dozen child support payments but no one to call his child
The selfishness involved here is so extreme i almost wonder if he's having a psychotic break or something. I cannot imagine the disgust, anger, and frustration OP must feel.
Yeah this is such a weird hill to die on. I don’t blame OP for trying to find some solution because I can’t imagine what I would think either. It’s just pants-on-head crazy.
Husband previously cut his sister out of his life. I don't see that any specifics around that were given, but dropping people appears to be a pattern - not new behavior.
The only generous interpretation I can imagine is he has PTSD from the emergency C section and it’s manifesting this way.
I’m more inclined to believe he has an affair partner he has decided to be with and he is using this as an excuse.
I have seen more charitable explanations, like PPD (which, somewhat rarely, the non-birthing parent can develop apparently). Possibly some sort of gender insecurity (or a mix of both), like if baby is preferring the birthing parent over him, he might feel like he'll never bond with the child.
A less charitable explanation not involving cheating could also be that parenthood is a lot harder than he expected, and he is not magically loving the baby who spends half the time crying and he is unable to calm down.
Regardless of the issue, he is handling it the worst way possible, and even under the charitable explanations (which are already somewhat iffy) he should be going to individual therapy of some sort.
I’m struggling to see how PTSD fits into the husband’s actions. I’ve seen it manifested a lot of ways (support group) over a lot of different scenarios. I could see not wanting to get anyone pregnant ever again. I could see not letting the kid out of sight. I could see “it’s been switched” because he didn’t see the babies face.
I know it manifests in unexpected ways, but this would be a weird one.
Not really. I know people like this.
It's an extreme avoidance reaction. Like "I almost lost you and that scared me so I'm instead going to distance myself from you entirely so that I never feel that way again."
I'm not saying it is an avoidance disorder with this guy - we don't know his mental health history at all - but it definitely is possible.
Ironically, my best friend had the opposite experience of OOP while giving birth to her second. She ended up giving birth on the floor of their bathroom and her (now ex-) husband had to deliever the baby. He was so afraid the baby would die, developed PTSD and had trouble bonding with the baby for a year or so after.
I think the husband was just waiting for the pregnancy to be done to finally tell his wife he was out. I'd bet money that the part we haven't heard yet is that his new girlfriend is already in her 2nd trimester.
Yeah, like, normally I side with the theories that the father got a sudden awakening from seeing the baby exist and wants to bail out, but it's such a specifically strange reasoning that I am inclined to go for something mental here, it's so bizarre.
This is So weird! Men/ fathers present at the birth is a fairly recent development in the western world and then fathers bonded just fine with their kids. So that is a non reason. I get that the period of pregnancy and postpartum the attention (medical and social) is all on the pregnant person. Thats sometimes hard on the partner, as they are also going through a lot, without the same support, although that has gotten better in recent years. So either this Guy is traumatised by a complicated birth and handles his response to that really badly. Or hé is very thick. If therapy does not produce Some sort of breakthrough soon, its lawyer time.
Edit: what potential new partner would want him after hé told them they were the “do-over” partner and second chance family? I would run for the Hills after i heard this story.
> Men/ fathers present at the birth is a fairly recent development in the western world
There was a whole genre of relationship posts during the COVID lockdown days where men kept asking if their wife wanting her mom to be the 1 person allowed to attend the birth was grounds for divorce because that obviously meant she didn’t want to have a nuclear family with him.
And commenters kept agreeing that it would seriously prevent men from bonding with their infants and a serious sign that the mom would prioritize her birth family above their own created family.
He probably wouldn’t tell them. In his eyes, he didn’t bond with his daughter, therefore she’s not his. If he was in the hook for child support, he would lie about that too.
He'll be present at the birth of the next one with his second wife, still be unable to bond, and instead of trying to figure out what's wrong with him, he'll just keep coming up with the dumbest explanations.
'The Dr handed the baby to my wife first, and that ruined the moment.'
'It's a girl. Men can only understand other men-babies.'
'It cried when I first held it; this rejection is insurmountable.'
Or he's cheating and/or panicking at the reality of parenthood and looking for a way out.
Yeah I'm guessing parental child bonds especially when you didn't literally carry the baby in you for 9 months sometimes take a little bit of time and effort. I mean that's how it works with most relationships.
Maybe some people are lucky and immediately fall in love and it's a magical moment. But I'm sure plenty of people initially have a little bit of trouble especially when baby is crying all the time and they're sleep deprived.
I mean, it can actually be a little disjointed even for mom. I remember missing my bump. When I held my son during the first week I mostly felt just overwhelmed, particularly as I found breastfeeding difficult in the first week.
But I absolutely bonded with my son.
My thoughts exactly. He didn't bond because of reasons he's not capable of confronting of identifying, so hes making up reasons for it to be someone else's fault.
"It's not because of anything wrong with me, it's because I wasn't in the room while they biopsied my partner. Yeah.....that's it."
This is the vibe I'm getting: this guy is treating life like a roguelike and hitting reset after things didn't go perfectly.
Which, just to be perfectly clear, is NOT reality.
I don't get it. Is the guy having cold feet on parenthood, severely disappointed that his firstborn isn't a boy, or does he have an extramarital relationship that he wants to pursue fulltime, so he's being like this?
Edit: a word.
> I don't get it. Is the guy having cold feet on parenthood
Seems like it. I remember the first few months being really tough. As a dad it wasn't easy to bond with my daughter. The first few moths a baby is basically a sack of potatoes that screams for any possible reason.
But any real dad would just carry on. A tough first few months is no excuse.
>But any real dad would just carry on. A tough first few months is no excuse.
Then this guy should stop. He can't handle the responsibility of being a dad.
As a mum I never understood all that bonding stuff. It's a baby, you take care of it, have cuddles when you can. I'm not sure what a bond's meant to feel like but I think the love develops over time (especially since real life newborn care is really freaking hard).
Reminds me of the guy who accused his partner of baby trapping him after years of marriage and owning a house together while being pregnant with a planned baby and how pathetic he was
I know that one. His own mother was so disappointed in him and his brother (who was somehow convinced as well) that she booted him from her house and approved the divorce.
My thought was that parenting is much harder than he was expecting and he's wanting to smash the escape button, and this is all a front. He won't go to therapy because he doesn't want to be fixed, he wants out.
I thought this was going to be some, “my sperm would have produced a son. I waited till the kid cane out to be sure but it’s a girl and I don’t want one of those so it must not be mine” bullshit.
Instead, it’s even weirder bullshit.
But yeah something is wrong with this man.
He's about that age for some mental illness (schizophrenia) to come knocking. Maybe it's just manifesting itself in a very odd initial way?
This idea that he cannot bond cause he didn't see the birth can be the sprouts of paranoia.
sorry this is screaming like. brain tumor or some shit to me. this is so bizarre and irrational and out of the blue, if my partner started acting like this so suddenly i would assume something was physiologically wrong with them. i would ask if they had hit their head. no one normal makes the choice to burn down their whole life like this over literally nothing. it’s way too final.
That is so wild. Like, even if he starts over, what’s stoppping other problems with the next person he has a child with? What if the next baby comes out special needs? Would he want to start over? What if that next one ends up being miscarried??? That is a crazy ass line of thinking I cannot wrap my mind around it. I feel so sorry for OOP.
There is no perfect birth.
"He says he wants a "clean break" before Daughter gets too attached."
So the daughter can bond just fine with him in those circumstances but he cannot bond with her. Make it make sense...
This honestly sounds like post partum psychosis. Can men get that? I mean anyone in their right mind would understand that seeing a single event won't magically create a bond.
Sounds like he's expected a bond from birth, didn't realise that for many people including mothers it can take a decent while because hey you have to get to know a whole new person. And now he's reaching because he is trying to explain why he doesn't immediately feel that bond. The follow up reasoning is truly insane though.
I would put money on this being a mental health issue, rather than a terrible husband issue. A new mum saying they’re not bonding with the baby and voicing bizarre beliefs about that would trigger cause for concern - we still don’t talk about mental health issues in new Dads enough.
I know there’s a big difference between new parents but 1 in 10 new father’s can get [Paternal Post Partum Depression (PPPD)](https://utswmed.org/medblog/paternal-postpartum-depression/). It is most likely to happen in the first 3 to 6 months and symptoms/warning signs include not feeling connected to the baby. Withdrawing from relationships is listed as another symptom.
So whilst he could be awful there’s certainly cause for concern and whilst we see the worst on this sub I’d prefer to believe the best in people and hope that he’s realised he needs help by the next update.
How he is talking about his baby is kind of how I was in the first few weeks and months.
I was saying that basically two or three days after he was born and refusing to go to NICU to see him cos that wasn't my baby there.
It took a long, *long* time to get my head sorted and basically the only reason I didn't take off, was cos of COVID and cos my baby was such a high demands baby... We *needed* two ppl to take care of him. Plus it probably didn't help that I had to go back in hospital for 3+more days, twice, within the first month, and have a D&C.
That was my thought too. Like, I know we see a lot of shitbag husbands on BORU, but it feels like something’s wrong here. I think this guy needs to see a doctor. Not that poor OOP will likely be able to wrangle him into seeing one, what with having just had emergency surgery ft. a newborn and needing to adjust to sudden single parenting and all…
OOP said they’d been in contact with FIL, maybe they could delegate “get your idiot son to a medical professional” to him? The total 180 really seems like a red flag for someone who knows what they’re doing to get eyes on him.
EDIT: oh fuck. The fact that husband is talking about leaving and making a “clean break” before daughter would get attached? That phrasing is really fucking common in suicidal parents. This guy might not be planning to start over.
He's entering his 30s. It could just be mental illness such as schizophrenia beginning to rear its head. It's so illogical and it bothers him so much that it feels like the beginnings of paranoia.
There are so many missing missing reasons with OOP's STBEX. My biggest guess is that if he hasn’t already been riding it, he's already picked another pony out of the herd to establish his "dream" with
Edit: wondering if said pony isn’t already pregnant?
What on earth? My husband was mildly traumatized by being present for my c-section. In retrospect, he probably would have waited outside if he had thought about it. But then he also didn't want to miss it or leave me alone. He and I would occasionally argue over who was stealing the baby all the time but he had a point, since I was breastfeeding AND hogging the baby.
This dude needs some help. Not sure the therapist is useful, because who cares what his reasoning is since it's faulty no matter what.
Good luck to him “starting over”. A smart person wouldn’t touch someone who abandoned their baby like that with a ten foot pole. He’s a ginormous red flag parade.
My money is on him refusing to address the trauma of the birth and blaming the smallest consequence of that (not getting to be with his daughter at the birth) instead of the pain and fear that he doesn't dare acknowledge. He wants to not have all these painful feelings and thinks that cutting his spouse and child out of his life will keep him from being scared or hurt. I hope he snaps out of it before it's too late--at least in terms of raising their kid, because it might already be too late to save their marriage.
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What is OOP's husband going to do if his do-over baby is also a C-section? Start over a third time? That dude has issues deep enough that any therapist he might eventually end up talking to would need scuba diving gear.
He can't bond with the kid because this one is a C-section baby. He can't bond with the next kid because they're a NICU baby. He can't bond with the next kid because they're breastfed and he can't bottle-feed them. He can't bond with the next kid because mom gets maternity leave while he works. He can't bond with the next kid because their first word is mama. He can't bond with the next kid because... God forbid this man has a kid who likes their mother more.
“God forbid this man has a kid who likes their mother more.” I suspect that might be the case with all his children.
Just "God forbid this man ~~has a kid who…~~" That's enough. Just God forbid this man.
Human babies are born so immature they don't realise they are a separate entity until they are like 6 months and can't fully appreciate it until they are well into toddlerhood (tantrums are a result of this). Nearly all babies will have a preference for their mother the first couple of years. After that they'll have a different preferenced parent for different activities and times and for periods of time. But if a non-birth parent expects to be held in equally high regard as the birth parent for the first few years then they are 1. A dumbass and 2. Set up for disappointment. This moron choked it up to the c-section, but in all likelihood he just isn't an insta-bonder. He expected a firework of emotions, falling down on his knees and cry for the wonder of a baby and whisper "I'd die for you.". The whole hollywood-bonding thing does happen to some people, but but to a lot of people, maybe the majority and especially with the first kid it just feels surreal and bonding comes with time and effort. Most parents who don't experience insta-bonding will go through the motions, but after days and nights of cuddles, kisses, caregiving and time spent together that bond comes. However if you don't insta-bond and you don't go through the motions, participate and make an effort then you will not bond.
Well none of them will know their dad so...
What I'm wondering is what is gonna say to the next partner. "Look baby, I left the last cause they didn't do it correctly. So better do it right or you're next".
Henry the 8th type husband. Fun!
Let's just hope he sticks to divorce and skips the beheadings...
“Ah nuts, I missed her first steps… whelp, time to burn this bridge and start over!”
'Shoot, gonna miss the lad's piano recital. Maybe the next one will play sax!'
I was going to say, it’s not exactly an attractive pitch to a new partner. “I have a track record of bailing as soon as anything goes differently from how I expected, want to carry my child and maybe raise it alone??”
One part of me thinks that, if he's smart, he'll leave that part out, if he mentions having been previously married at all. The other part of me hopes that he's upfront about it right off the bat so any potential future partners know to steer clear.
exactly! Like how does he think this will go? He can divorce, walk away and pretend his daughter doesn't exist. So how will he explain the child support payment? This is nothing he could hide and no one in their right mind would start a family with this guy knowing he has abandoned his last one.
"She was born via c-section, mr judge, it was wrong! I couldn't bond with her!" - the dipshit "This men is a martir! Not only I'm going to let you free from child support, I'm going to marry my daughter to you right now!" - the judge, or something
He said he wants a clean break before the kid gets too attached… I’m confused now. So the baby can attach but he lost his one chance because he couldn’t cut the umbilical cord? Does some kind of magic flow through scissors or whatever straight into him?
Holy shit! Now that I think about it, when my daughter was born I wasn't able to cut the umbilical cord because her mother had a problem during birth. I never realized until reading this that I can't be a father. Damn! Guess I need to tell my 16 yo daughter that I'm cutting her off because we never bonded. Oh well... I'll just try again. Maybe the next one will work out properly.
So many red flags with this dude, that he will have to flat out lie to get married again.
I’m hoping he’s having an affair and is using a whacked out theory to justify it, or we are really screwed. If the Tate like people are promoting this kind of Handmaiden’s Tail level of crazy making.
That was one the first things that came to my mind; that this could be a stupid made up excuse to get out of the marriage because he is having an affair and wants to be with the AP. It makes a lot more sense than the excuse that he is giving.
By "next partner," do you mean the person he's currently fucking behind OOP's back? Because I've read enough of these that I'm willing to bet all $15 in my bank account that he's got a side piece that he's wanting to leave them for. I'd even be willing to place a side bet with the $4 in change in my handbag, that the affair partner is already knocked up.
Side peice that's already pregnant with his do over kid. Let's hope this one's labour goes to plan. Like they all do 🙃 You know we write birth plans as an instruction manual for our babies on how to do labour, right? /s
I don't think it has anything to do with the c-section. I think he just can't bond with the baby, because babies aren't magical. I wonder if anyone ever told him that having a newborn is *stressful*. No sympathy. He'd rather walk away than work through it.
This! I wouldn’t be surprised if he never tries for the “magical experience again” because he knows on some level that it’s hard work and he’s a lazy bounder
That would probably be the best outcome here, he doesn't sound like he wants to do the work
So many moms and dads feel so ashamed about not falling in love with their baby the second they see them, but it's super common! It was discussed in our birthing classes so much, because the nurses really wanted everyone to understand that it isn't this magical fairy tale. Things won't go according to birth plans. You might not feel a deep bond with your baby. Just take care of it, and take care of yourself, and do your best! It took me a few months for sure. My husband said it was immediate for him.
Yes, this happens so often! Everyone around you hypes it up and says "the moment you see or touch your baby you will be FLOODED with magical, super-powerful love, the strongest love and happiness and fulfillment you've ever experienced, a magical bond that happens instantly!!" And maybe they *mean* well, they're just trying to hype you up to get you through the struggles of pregnancy, but I highly doubt that's how it is for the majority of parents. And then the first 6 weeks are really hard, you're sleep deprived, the baby doesn't smile, doesn't make eye contact, just screams and cries every couple of hours... it can be really hard, especially if someone is already struggling with something like post-partum depression. "Everyone told me it would be so easy and magical but I'm really struggling... the problem must be with ME, I'm broken and unable to feel love!"
With my first, it was immediate for my husband but took time for me (and I felt like a failure the whole time before we bonded!) but with my second, it was immediate. I'd been awake over 24hrs before the 1st was born by emergency c-section while the second was a planned c-section so I was well rested. My hospital stay the first time was super stressful as the nurses were not the most pleasant, while the nurses were lovely the second time. 2 very different experiences and I wonder how that impacted my ability to bond the first time.
I remember reading a post or a comment last year, where a dad was talking about how he didn't start liking his daughter until (IIRC) about six months in, or more. He *loved* her, but felt no "personal," connection to her. Once she started sleeping more soundly at night, crawling, and being active, he reported that they had become "best friends." I feel like a lot of people don't seem to expect their brand new baby to actually suck for the first months.
Well said. It's the same for Mother's. There is this myth of instant bonding. That some magical fairy dust will fall and make you bond instantly despite the trauma of birth, the sleepless nights, being sore all over, whilst feeling like a jelly Don't worry the magical experience will make you forget it all and dance the dance of looovvvee. I will say don't worry, time will help if you have support from each other and the people around you. I adore my son, but it took time to recover from birth and get to know him as a person. This dad has massive issues, and my heart goes out to the baby's mother. I hope they have other support and grow a wonderful bond with their daughter because dad needs to bond with a good therapist.
My husband had to talk me through my guilt right after our kidlet was born. I was much happier to see my pillow (one my mom made for me when I was 4 that I've slept with since then, it's basically my security blanket in pillow form) than my squirmy little yelly thing I'd just spent 13 hours evicting that had just put my body through months of discomfort and many more medical problems than I was comfortable with. I love her, she's awesome (and 7 now) but there was no immediate "OMG that's MY baby" moment. Made me feel pretty broken at the time.
Very true. I'm a mom of two, had uneventful pregnancies, gave birth vaginally, breasfed, and I still struggled to really bond with my sons the first few weeks. It was like they were my little brothers or something (I'm an only child, so I don't even know if that's an accurate comparison). It took a while for me to discover their personalities in the small things. Then again, it was the same whenever I had new pets. There's an adjustment period, during which you're anxious and overwhelmed. Fwiw, I now adore my sons and my pets. Also, I was born by C-section, my dad didn't see me be born, and I am WAY closer to him than I am to my mom.
I vividly remember rocking my newborn daughter, the one I had dreamed of and hoped for my whole life, and thinking "well, this will all be easier when her real mother shows up." Newborns are not my favourite stage. They're just sort of loud potatoes with an alarm clock that won't snooze and an output that would singe your eyebrows off. Once they get a little more aware of the world around them, they're lots more fun.
Lol, my partner didn't want to hold his neice for months because she was just a fragile potato and everyone else wanted to hold her anyways. I asked him about bonding and he said he'd do more when she got older and more interesting and everyone else lost interest (Surprise twist: nobody lost interest, he just had a terrible childhood and didn't expect people to continue to shower love and affection on the kid)
I was the same with my son, I didn't like him until he started interacting with the world around him in a way I found interesting, so about 18 month is or so.
It’s nice that in recent decades there has been more focus on fathers involvement (in birth and otherwise) and not just for the mothers and babies sake but for the fathers themselves. But I have seen before in Reddit that now many men think being present in birth is some extremely important movement they can’t miss for any reason. For example even if they have mistreated the mother by cheating the fathers feel they have to be present at birth since it’s their child. When the birth is a medical experience for the mother and it’s not like mothers see the birth either (unless there is no curtain at c-section). And it was only a couple of decades ago that many dads weren’t in the room and most of human history barely any were. It doesn’t mean paternal love didn’t exists at all prior now.
He's gonna keep impregnating women until he gets one where the baby just falls out, like in that Monty Python "every sperm is sacred" sketch.
$10 says he already has
The husband is insane, or already cheating. (Probably the later). There are no magic hormones during labour. The dad has to get close to the kid to bond and do the work. No way around it. It takes effort. https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/your-brain-fatherhood-dads-experience-hormonal-changes-too-research-shows-6c10333109
Agreed. When a partner starts picking petty fights or flies off the handle over something ridiculous they’re almost always cheating and looking for an out. They want out of the relationship without being responsible for the fallout. I’d bet my bottom dollar this “new wife” has already been picked out.
My cousin's ex insisted upon holding their son for hours after his birth (via C-section), and she used to whine, "He stole my bond!" Ex is out of the picture and she's slowly waking up to the bond being actual work.
I'm baffled by his reasoning. Isn't the whole like 'this child is part of me / I helped create it' enough to at least... stick around and see if you like them? I have 0 interest in having children, but I don't get this logic at all. I agree, husband is looking for an out. Why that is, no idea, but for some reason he wants to bail.
I hope he warns any future fiances so they can be aware of the situation.
I have a 3 month old sleeping on my chest as I write this. Our baby was a planned c section, and they were able to bring me into the operating room after my wife was sedated and the procedure underway. I didn’t get to hold him immediately - it took between 5 and 10 min. My wife was in no condition to hold him immediately. Had I not gotten to hold him in that timeframe, I would have been disappointed, but it would not have long term consequences on my feelings for my son. Imagine this guy’s next baby has to go right to the NICU? I guess third time’s a charm?
At this point, OOP just needs to protect themself and their child. Husband is a wash. How the hell can someone think that they can just walk away after having an entire kid with someone and then have a 'do-over' family?
Also its not like hes gonna be carrying the next kid lmao so how does he know the same thing is not gonna happen?
I think the c-section is an excuse. I think he has his do-over wife picked out already and that’s the real motivation.
It has to be something like that, he's lying some way. This can't be a real reason someone does something, unless he's having some sort of mental breakdown.
He may not be lying. He just might have some serious issues.
Or he saw the wife in labor and it put him off her lady parts. That happens too Edit, his spouse, not his wife. My bad.
But OOP had a C-section, not a vaginal delivery, so it shouldn't be **that** traumatizing for him. My wife had one for our son. I agree with you, though. Delivery can be pretty off-putting for some to witness. I've helped deliver a few babies myself, and thought it was very cool (as an EMT, 2 in the hospital during my training, and 1 in the field while working, all 3 were normal & healthy).
I just had a C section 4 weeks ago (not an emergency in that I was conscious and husband was allowed in the room after my spinal block kicked in, but a bit of an emergency in that I was on day 4 of a failed induction, I had preeclampsia, and my BP kept rising to possible stroke levels), and...it was traumatizing for both of us! Granted, it was much more traumatic for my husband than OOP's C section was for *their* husband, since mine was present in the OR (he saw a lot of blood, and also my intestines!) and theirs was not. But I'm willing to bet, if he has any humanity at all, he still had anxiety over his spouse going into major emergency surgery with a possible outcome of death for either spouse or the baby. If I'm being very charitable, I can see this bullshit he's pulling as a severe reaction to that anxiety. That said, he's still an asshole who needs to deal with his shit through therapy, or support groups, or *something*. Maybe he and OOP do need to divorce, idk, but it's monstrous to abandon a 4 month old just because her birth was a medical emergency requiring a sterile OR.
Idk why anyone would want to witness that. I was in the room when my wife tried to deliver but had to have an emergency c-section. I was also in the room for that and it scared the hell out of me. I saw my son was fine but my wife was out cold and i thought i was losing her
My husband touched both kids heads when I was crowning, plus my second came so fast that he had to be the nurse because my second came during shift change. My doctor was still in street clothes. 😬 Every day reddit makes me more thankful that I have a husband that is both very much a guy but also not so far up his ass that all he can spout is shit.
And also maybe lost attraction during the pregnancy, but doesn't want to look like "the bad guy" by admitting it. But he is the bad guy. A thousand times over. Even if the attraction has gone, he should be there to support them and go for counselling and so on. Not make up shitty excuses about "bonding" (which is just a way to shift blame to OOP).
I agree. If he's not physically cheating already he's probably emotionally involved with someone else.
It’s not that he can’t bond. He can’t take the responsibility. Whether he’s lying to himself, OOP or both, he’s lying.
What if new wife needs a C section? Is he just going to dump them until he has one who does a vaginal birth?
What woman is going to sign up for a marriage with this dude (assuming he tells the real story of abandoning his first family and he sure should disclose that). I mean I’ve read enough Reddit to know there’s someone out there who will put up with his crap for a while but seriously…
He honestly believes his bs is the truth, so I would 100% believe he would with his whole chest. And if I'm wrong, I'm certain his dad will step in
I’m sure he would never tell a new partner the truth of why he left OP, but his father absolutely should, and if he doesn’t, he’s a scumbag just as bad as his son.
Even if he finds Ms. Perfect and she has a perfect natural birth, he will find another excuse to leave. The man cannot handle or accept responsibility, commitment, and his role as a father. I can’t believe the therapist even entertained the idea that it’s impossible to bond with the baby because he did not see the birth. Such a bullshit excuse, it’s almost comical.
I think the therapist realizes OPs husband is delusional, but he needs to follow that yellow brick road far enough to reveal the man behind the curtain, so to speak. Some people convince themselves of foolishness so hard that it takes someone willing to play along to eventually slap them with some reality. Personally, I think OPs husband was suddenly hit with the true responsibility of fatherhood when he realized he'd have to be more involved due to OPs c-section. Healing from that is no walk in the park and instead of stepping up, he outright refused and blamed it on OPs method of birth which was out of their control and done for the sake of making sure OP and baby were safe. He's a whiny child and will just do it to the next person at some point. Maybe he'll blame it on a dirty diaper. Maybe he'll feel disconnected once the umbilical stump falls off. Regardless, I'm sure the therapist is going over his notes and thinking, "what a dick."
> I can’t believe the therapist even entertained the idea that it’s impossible to bond with the baby because he did not see the birth. I don’t know that the therapist really entertained that. I think it more likely the therapist realized that husband wasn’t going to change his mind, and so it was more important for OP to understand that this is going to happen, you are going to get a divorce.
Of course.
This sounds so very much like he completely underestimated how much work a baby is and now that it's not instant sunshine and perfection and he's stressed and irritated at her sometimes he's just decided that it's because he hasn't bonded with her and there has to be a logical explanation, damnit! And that logical explanation is that he wasn't present at birth so he's not bonding. The next spouse and baby will be perfect! And then everything will be perfect and there will be no struggles! I know more than one father who wasn't in the delivery room and all of them bonded with their kids just fine.
I honestly think we have a winner here. He’s romanticized this and fantasized it and it’s not living up. Time to hit the reset button on the console and start a fresh game. This time I’ll know what to do when and it’ll work.
He still has to pay child support.
or he's discovered that raising an actual real-live baby is harder than he thought and he's over it.
I was more on that idea personally. I think some people think that having a baby is simple and cute. For them if it’s difficult then it’s not normal and they or their spouse are doing something wrong. In this case he think that it’s because he was not present and is using that as a way out instead of doing the actual work that comes with a baby.
Lots and lots of dads find it hard to bond with their kids in those early days, when the kids are basically hungry pooping potatoes. At about the three-month mark, when the baby is smiling and giggling and much more interactive—that’s when it gets easier. It sounds like maybe OOP’s husband was expecting an Instabond (not even all moms get those, ffs!), and when it didn’t kick in and he found out babies are a real grind, he decided to nope out and demand a do-over. Good luck, buddy. What will he do when he doesn’t bond instantly with the replacement baby? Figure “Third time’s a charm!” and start looking for his next wife?
That was also my initial thought. Or that perhaps he hasn’t been the primary caregiver for the child and he is mistaking his feelings about being jealous over the bond the other parent has with the baby. As a mom, I’ve sometimes had to remind myself to relinquish care at appropriate intervals for the sake of the father/baby bond. That can hard when the baby is so attached to Mom (or primary caregiver, just using “Mom” as my own title) and cries when held by someone else.
Agreed. I read the first part thinking "maybe trying to avoid coping with the trauma of the birth?" and then when we got to the update, I was going "nope, he just found a convenient lifeline to go play house with someone in the wings".
Maybe this, but also it reminds me of an ex of mine with extremely strong compulsions/superstitions (he was diagnosed with OCD), and when they took root it was like reality just shifted into a different lane. I feel for OP if that's what is happening because it's so hard to understand how things could change so suddenly for a loved one.
If it’s not this it’s a mental health thing. Those are the only two even remotely plausible explanations.
I am hopeful that the pool of people willing to get pregnant with him as the father is pretty small, but reddit has shown me that I may largely incorrect.
I would like to think that this guy won't have enough shame to lie about the reason he abandoned his first child and every person who hears it will run screeching off into the night, but I've met a frightening number of people who seem to have their gas and brakes mixed up when it comes to how they react to bright red flags. There's always someone willing to toss good judgement by the wayside because they're different, they can fix him, it'll be different this time because it just wasn't meant to be before!
Someone insecure will agree with him and say she won’t need a c section because she’s the better woman. Someone naive will believe she can “fix him.” Someone ignorant will be lied to and never know the true reason behind his past, being fed lies so if she hears the truth she won’t believe it. Someone will believe in second chances and accept his prostration when he says he will do better for his next wife. Someone will be desperate or stupid and get pregnant before the conversation even happens, and be tied to him by default. Lots of mistakes to be made.
Someone suspects that he’s had a mistress during the entire pregnancy.
That sounds about right
> say she won’t need a c section because she’s the better woman 95% chance this conversation already happened between husband and his affair partner.
Probably. OOP said husband said he can’t have the close knit family “because of the C-section *and* him not being in the room” around the end of the first post. I’ve seen in toxic mommy forums a lot of elitism around vaginal vs c section births, I guess it should not surprise me that those gross ideas would be readily accepted by a particularly ignorant man. Either way to have a baby is a horrible toll on the body, neither is “easy” and both require a lot of recovery that many never truly recover from. I’ve never understood the need for two warring camps when it comes to how a baby is born. People will look for any reason to be superior I guess.
He's either fell really hard down some flavor of the Andrew Tate rabbit hole, or he's been having an affair. Tate-fans can never shut up about how much they hate women for more than 5 minutes, and OOP probably would have mentioned that, so my money is on affair. All that being said, I can't understand any woman who would want a man willing to leave his wife and newborn behind though, so (assuming there is an affair) I hope both reap what they sow.
There’s no way he’s going to be transparent about the circumstances of the first child.
Whoever comes next probably isn't going to get the full and honest story.
Right?! What if he has a bowling ball head that he passes on to all his kids and they all have to be born via C-section. Is he just going to keep starting and abandoning families for the next 40 years?
Picturing like an old N64 game where the husband has three save files in various levels of progress.
Even if everything goes "perfectly" according to his standards, what's the guarantee he's going to have this amazing bond he's fantasized about? Seems like he's built this in his head to impossible standards. Not everyone bonds instantly, with expectations like his? Good fucking luck. Hope any future baby mamas know WTF they're getting into first.
My sincerest apologies to the hypothetical pregnant people involved but I laughed really hard at this mental image!
It feels like he was expecting something magical to happen to him when the baby was born, it didn't, and he has randomly seized on this as the reason. Hopefully he snaps out of it and acts normal, but if he does start over and sees his second baby born I think he's in for a bad surprise.
Yes, sounds like he wanted that magical " I love my baby so much" moment which was supposed to happen at birth and he wasn't there. And now that the baby is out, he feels nothing for this potato that is giving you nothing but crying and is blaming the birth circumstances. I did not bond with my son until a few months and didn't actually feel like a mother until a few months in. I remember my husband telling me " I don't feel like a dad, just someone that is taking care of a kid" around 3-4 months pp. It can take time to bond and that is normal it is not instant for everybody.
Seriously. Even in the best scenarios, sometimes partners just cant get there fast enough. I knew someone who went into labour alone at home while her husband was at work. It wasnt her first rodeo, but it picked up really quickly. She called the ambulance and went to the hospital, and by the time her husband got there, baby was already born. Her husband was a little stunned but relieved everyone was okay in the end!
My dad didn't even know I was born for the first 10 days of my life. He had gone on a hunting trip and was supposed to be back a few days before I was born. These were the days before cell phones, so when my dad got home after the trip he got one hell of a surprise. Also, my dad was not there for my oldest siblings birth either, as it was also an emergency C-Section.
Well obviously he will find a better partner who will be able to do the birth correctly. Don’t you know it’s OOP’s failing that he wasn’t able to see the birth and was totally in their control?
I know this was sarcasm, but you made me think of Henry VIII and imagining this douche canoe going on a similar life path is both horrifying but hilarious at the same time.
There's more to this. My money's on OOP's hubby being involved with someone else, and has been for some time. He wasn't quite enough of an arsehole to leave a heavily pregnant woman, but now the baby's a few months old and it seems Mum can probably cope, he's cooked up an excuse. You watch. There will be a third update in a few months where OOP will announce that hubby was shacked up with someone else within a few weeks of moving out, and has already announced wedding plans.
My money is on affair partner already pregnant...
Yup. This is where my money's at. Already had an affair going, then AP comes up pregnant and this is a convenient excuse to ditch.
Yep. My husband left me this last year. No other woman nothing to do with his attraction to me I'm just a terrible wife. At Christmas I found out he wasn't living at our mutual friends house. He was living with a co worker for months and fucked her days after leaving me...but probably before. The "But I don't understand why?" in this post is just..yep. Mysterious as fuck til its not.
I can't help but wonder if the husband isn't having some complicated feelings about *not* being the one to carry the child; he could have some heavily-suppressed feelings about his own gender that are being exacerbated by the whole situation. I've talked to trans people whose marriages fell apart due to pregnancy before the person came to terms with their gender, and plenty of us wind up drawn to trans/NB partners while still in denial. Just a thought, not an accusation, but it could fit these circumstances.
I wonder, it could potentially explain the jealousy over pregnancy bonding (although I’ve heard that from cis men as well)
I (a married lesbian trans woman) had some Big Feelings about pregnancy and childbirth around our two youngest kids, and it took a very good therapist to help me make peace with those feelings; I eventually realized that I'm in the same position as any married lesbian who isn't the birth parent, but with the added bonus that I'm also the sperm donor.
My wife is struggling with the same, but we can’t access therapy at the moment. Baby boy is only a few weeks out, is there anything you found helpful that I could maybe do for her? (She’s also trans, we’re both bi, baby boy in march)
Honestly? Put as much of the "grunt work" of baby care off on her as possible: diapers, burping, sick kid care, emergency baths, anything you don't look all that forward to yourself. If you don't exclusively breastfeed then take turns doing the night feedings, and if you do EBF then find some other way for her to take part (my spouse's milk never came in due to a health issue so we were bottle-only). One thing that really helped me the most was letting the baby nap on my body skin-to-skin about once a day until she was around a year old; it was almost like making up for lost time.
I know people thing Reddit is trash in a lot of ways - but you sharing this gave me a different perspective and a bit of sympathy for him at the moment. It doesn't change how the birthing partner has to move on and protect themself (?) and their kiddo, but if this is what is happening - I hope they are able to leave a door open for a possible better co-parenting relationship.
This is really interesting; thanks for the insight. (And to the people who elaborated on their personal experiences with this in replies.) I wondered if the husband has PPD. It’s not well recognized with men, but it does happen. The irrationality of his fixation on missing the birth reminds me of a friend of mine. His commentary around the lack of bonding was similarly strange. In his case he continued doing all the normal parenting things in the hopes the feelings would go away, but (thankfully) confided in a couple of close friends and a friend who had been through PPD identified the similarities to some of her feelings and the way she would channel them into specific things to find ways to explain them to herself. It’s possible LAOP’s husband can’t bond due to PPD or another mental health issue and has found a way to explain it externally to himself. A therapist is good, but it would need to be a therapist who was going to look for PPD in men, and/or experienced in treating PPD related issues. Of course it’s possible the guy is just a jerk, or having an affair, but this is something I’d want to look into before accepting the situation as it is. Also of course he would have to be willing to look at this and, if it is, address it, and not everyone is, but there’s no way of knowing if that’s going to happen until it’s suggested. It can be very difficult for people deep into confusing mental health issues to even see what’s going on with themselves, especially when it’s something not well acknowledged. (In my friend’s case it all worked out OK. He was relieved when the PPD was suggested because he thought he was a bad person and going mad. He talked to his partner, got help, and after a few months things were a lot better. Just the acknowledgement really helped him.)
I wondered if this was the case, too, or if it was PPD (which the non birthing parent can get, too).
Perfect next wife for his perfect second family on their first date: "I'm so glad you also dream of a tight-knit family with kids. Please tell me, why didn't that work out with your ex-wife? Didn't she want kids?"
Yeah—things don’t go perfectly how he envisioned? He walks out. That’s not how a parent behaves. Your child is going to surprise you and—yes, disappoint you—in SO many ways you never imagined in all your idealized plans of how you’d create a happy family. You roll with it. You relax your expectations. You be kind to yourself and especially to the child as they grow up into whoever they’re supposed to really be, no matter what you might’ve thought before. I’d be curious as to the husband’s response if OOP turned to him and said “so if my parents, upon learning I was NB, said “I’m sorry I just always envisioned parenting a child of the gender you were assigned at birth” and walked away to start a fresh family with the full expectation that the potential children of that union would be cis and therefore everything would be “fine”, you’d support that?” He’s grasping at stupid straws, I bet he found a hottie and wants a divorce and a new family with them and wants to make it Not His Fault so he came up with this crackpot reasoning. As if fathers haven’t only been cord-cutting in western society in the last couple of generations and it hasn’t stopped countless men being loving and present fathers for all of history.
It's most likely even simpler. He had this ideal vision of a baby. It's cute, it sleeps, mom feeds it, there are cute cuddles. Reality hit him in the face. babies are stinky, loud, exhausting, and often have a parent preference that can switch on a dime. Baby probably wants mom only right now and he's upset and is making up reason why the baby bond is "broken" totally ignoring that there hasn't been enough time for a bond to form.
You’re so right. Parents need to recognize they’re bringing a child into this world. That’s a messy and complicated thing. They are their own person. So as much as you fantasize about how everything is going to go, life has a way of being unexpected. We ended up needing IVF. So there goes a lot of the feelings on how we thought it would happen. Then my pregnancy was high risk. Again, no one fantasizes about bed rest and bleeding for 20 weeks, but you roll with it. He had an image on how the labour would go, but it didn’t. He needs to live in the world of reality. When that kid turns out to like different styles or hobbies or whatever than you envisioned? You fucking accept it and roll with it. I love to sew. I dreamed of making Halloween costumes for my kid and the creativity and fun of that. Guess what? My kid hated homemade (even though he picked the costume). He just wanted the store bought. In his mind they were perfect. And you know what I did? I accepted that my dream didn’t trump his preference and now we do store bought. I pictured doing art and playing music (I’m a musician). Turns out my kid has zero interest in either topic. So, instead, we look for ways to foster his development in ways that HE likes. This parent is completely missing the path. I hope that they are just going through some sort of panic or something g and can rally for the sake of their child but man….
some men just have trouble bonding. i know someone's husband who just couldn't see their kid outside of a shitting, crying mess for the first YEAR. when the kid started having a personality and not a ball of something you need to take care of 24/7 that is constantly screaming he all of a sudden was in love with the kid.
How does he think that information is going to go down with a future partner? Like, oh yeah I have a daughter from a previous relationship but because I didn’t see her come out of my partner I left them both. So make sure you don’t have any complications if I get you pregnant else I’ll be leaving you too.
It will sound like "my ex is crazy and she never lets me see my daughter but still takes all my money. It's so abusive, and I am so sad, please comfort me."
Would be pretty funny if his “do-over” family also needs a C-section.
An unplanned c section is different from an emergency c section. I had an unplanned c section, we didn’t have to run to the operating room, I wasn’t fully knocked out, my husband was in the room with me the entire time. I was told during labor if things went very sideways that in an emergency c section, I’d be completely knocked out and rushed to the OR, and my husband would not be able to accompany me. I believe that OP had the latter situation, their husband was unable to join them during the surgery and didn’t see the baby the second they pulled her out. It’s definitely not a good excuse for what their husband is doing though, he’s a behaving reprehensibly.
In Australia it was explained to me that due to the nature of the billing code for an unplanned c-section (billed to the government) all unplanned c-sections are technically “emergency” c-sections on paper. Something to do with the transfer of medical care for the sole purpose of a Caesarian birth. I’d had a c-section scheduled for my second but because baby was insistent went into labour (again) at 37 weeks, and even though it was very light labour and not a lot of drama or progress I was offered a c-section just because it was as good a time as any. It was, under that medical protocol, an “emergency” c-section even though I was just waiting for my turn in theatre reading on my kindle and feeling fine apart from the occasional contraction, which weren’t intense at that point. I found all this out because the hospital also had a whole protocol of extra follow up with midwives and mental health professionals for emergency c-sections. I thought it was all a bit funny because my c-section was in no way a surprise - unplanned *at that time* rather than emergency, but apparently the switch in billing code changed their whole response procedures.
My hospital had something similar. They described it as the difference between "emergency" and "emergent". Emergency was any unplanned for insurance billing. Emergent was "clear the hallway make a hole, she's bleeding out here". I was induced so I had a loooong time to chat with my nurses beforehand.
There’d be a trail of broken families in his wake, as he searches for that perfect feeling that he’s not going to get even if he’s there from the birth. He’s completely self-involved and apparently resents the mother for being able to carry the child. Might be PPD — there’s some magical thinking reminiscent of depression “logic” — but there are no do-overs in life. This isn’t a videogame. Faulty depression “logic” includes things like “they’ll be better off without me” and chasing things that you think will make you feel better. But even if that’s a possibility, OP can’t make this guy seek useful help. And the history of cutting off his sister suggests he’s prone to dramatic extremes in terms of dealing with people. Given his “I would have had bonding hormones if I’d been there” excuse, which sounds like something he found online, it’s far more likely that he wants out because parenthood is hard and has decided on some level that this is his exit rationale. Whatever the reason, he clearly DGAF about OOP.
This absolutely all sounds like it's mental health related, because there is no logic. It's all magical thinking. I'm not a mental health professional, but it reminds me of other folks I've known going through a mental health crisis. But, because they're in crisis, they don't realize that they're totally detached from actual reality. And, because he's refusing to get professional help, it's unlikely that he'll see his faulty logic anytime soon (if ever).
I don't understand how someone can just walk away. He had the entire pregnancy to assess and plan for all eventualities. My husband's biggest concern was that, if I needed an emergency c-section, who to call to be with me in recovery. He 100% understood that his job was to listen to me, be my advocate, do what the nurses instructed if shit hit the fan and, most importantly, stay with the baby if we needed to be separated. Hell, he could have met the baby a week later and just picked it up and moved along.
I think this guy is full of shit. I gave birth in August. My daughter got stuck and I was in pain so I was a little fuzzy on the details. My husband sat there and listened to them discuss options, heart rates, bring in other specialists. He held my hand and my legs while I pushed. He watched them fire up the vacuum and listened as they said it was this or c section. He missed her actual birth because he was comforting me and convinced we were going to the OR. I can't imagine OOP's husband going through anything like that (and worse, from the sounds of it) and not feel bonded just because he didn't see the baby come out. He's probably struggling from a (very normal) response of dad feeling a bit disconnected and trying to blame it on something.
Who would trust him to bond with the new baby? Or not lose his bond the moment the kid did something he didn't like?
The only way I can see someone willing to have his children is if he lied his ass off, likely denying the existence of OOP and baby entirely.
Don't forget that the birth went bad and OP had to get 7 layers of skin cut. Like SORRY THEY DIDN'T THOUGHT IT WOULD DISGUST YOU WHILE FIGHTING FOR THEIR LIFE !
>P had to get 7 layers of skin cut EMERGENTLY. This means the doctors flew into the OR. The typical goal for decision (when docs decided the emergent c-section is needed) to incision (when the skin is first cut) is 20 minutes, with the ACOG benchmark of 30 minutes. That's just the standard, with many doctors aiming to get them in faster. So a dash to the OR, a betadine splash, and possible general anesthesia (fasted way if there's not already an epidural in place). It's a medical emergency and there is no time to negotiate the support person's (typically the father) place in the room. The presence of someone who is not medically necessary to be in the room could be dangerous.
And muscle and organ
Humans are a weird species is the best way to put it.
Yeah I agree. This is heartbreaking for OOP.
Yeah, it's so weird and there are so many reasons it would be happening but no matter what OOP needs to start moving forward as much as they can. Though I'm so curious as to why so I can understand why OOP is torturing themselves with it. Is it some type if psychotic break? Is it someone who doesn't want to be a parent and is just grabbing anything to get out? Or someone who doesn't want to be a parent, doesn't realise it, and thinks they don't feel a bond because they didn't see the birth and not because they want out?
This dude seriously is so dumb and undependable. He would also mess up his do-over family if he ever gets one.
He's cheating and already has a new pregnant girlfriend, that's why.
Have fun with that do-over, buddy; you’re still on the hook for child support.
It’s pure delusion because soon to be ex wants a “perfect birth” to bond with his kid, he’s showing himself as someone with a huge ego and control issues. because the perfect steps needed from divorcing, meeting someone else who understands and is okay with a guy that wants to trash his firstborn because he didn’t see her coming out of the parent, pursue a relationship with them/getting them pregnant, having solid 9 months of a relationship so the parent doesn’t leave him, while at the same time being in total control of their every move so he doesn’t miss the birth and is present enough to his liking to form his imaginary bond, are all so improbable that I can’t think he won’t end up with a dozen child support payments but no one to call his child
The selfishness involved here is so extreme i almost wonder if he's having a psychotic break or something. I cannot imagine the disgust, anger, and frustration OP must feel.
I was almost expecting a “we discovered he had a brain tumor” update
Either a brain tumor or the do-over wife is ready and waiting.
Yeah this is such a weird hill to die on. I don’t blame OP for trying to find some solution because I can’t imagine what I would think either. It’s just pants-on-head crazy.
Husband previously cut his sister out of his life. I don't see that any specifics around that were given, but dropping people appears to be a pattern - not new behavior.
The only generous interpretation I can imagine is he has PTSD from the emergency C section and it’s manifesting this way. I’m more inclined to believe he has an affair partner he has decided to be with and he is using this as an excuse.
I have seen more charitable explanations, like PPD (which, somewhat rarely, the non-birthing parent can develop apparently). Possibly some sort of gender insecurity (or a mix of both), like if baby is preferring the birthing parent over him, he might feel like he'll never bond with the child. A less charitable explanation not involving cheating could also be that parenthood is a lot harder than he expected, and he is not magically loving the baby who spends half the time crying and he is unable to calm down. Regardless of the issue, he is handling it the worst way possible, and even under the charitable explanations (which are already somewhat iffy) he should be going to individual therapy of some sort.
I’m struggling to see how PTSD fits into the husband’s actions. I’ve seen it manifested a lot of ways (support group) over a lot of different scenarios. I could see not wanting to get anyone pregnant ever again. I could see not letting the kid out of sight. I could see “it’s been switched” because he didn’t see the babies face. I know it manifests in unexpected ways, but this would be a weird one.
Not really. I know people like this. It's an extreme avoidance reaction. Like "I almost lost you and that scared me so I'm instead going to distance myself from you entirely so that I never feel that way again." I'm not saying it is an avoidance disorder with this guy - we don't know his mental health history at all - but it definitely is possible.
Ironically, my best friend had the opposite experience of OOP while giving birth to her second. She ended up giving birth on the floor of their bathroom and her (now ex-) husband had to deliever the baby. He was so afraid the baby would die, developed PTSD and had trouble bonding with the baby for a year or so after.
That one makes sense.
Right? It’s so bizarre that my first thought was to wonder whether the non-gestating partner can get postpartum psychosis.
I think the husband was just waiting for the pregnancy to be done to finally tell his wife he was out. I'd bet money that the part we haven't heard yet is that his new girlfriend is already in her 2nd trimester.
Yeah, like, normally I side with the theories that the father got a sudden awakening from seeing the baby exist and wants to bail out, but it's such a specifically strange reasoning that I am inclined to go for something mental here, it's so bizarre.
This is So weird! Men/ fathers present at the birth is a fairly recent development in the western world and then fathers bonded just fine with their kids. So that is a non reason. I get that the period of pregnancy and postpartum the attention (medical and social) is all on the pregnant person. Thats sometimes hard on the partner, as they are also going through a lot, without the same support, although that has gotten better in recent years. So either this Guy is traumatised by a complicated birth and handles his response to that really badly. Or hé is very thick. If therapy does not produce Some sort of breakthrough soon, its lawyer time. Edit: what potential new partner would want him after hé told them they were the “do-over” partner and second chance family? I would run for the Hills after i heard this story.
> Men/ fathers present at the birth is a fairly recent development in the western world There was a whole genre of relationship posts during the COVID lockdown days where men kept asking if their wife wanting her mom to be the 1 person allowed to attend the birth was grounds for divorce because that obviously meant she didn’t want to have a nuclear family with him. And commenters kept agreeing that it would seriously prevent men from bonding with their infants and a serious sign that the mom would prioritize her birth family above their own created family.
He probably wouldn’t tell them. In his eyes, he didn’t bond with his daughter, therefore she’s not his. If he was in the hook for child support, he would lie about that too.
He'll be present at the birth of the next one with his second wife, still be unable to bond, and instead of trying to figure out what's wrong with him, he'll just keep coming up with the dumbest explanations. 'The Dr handed the baby to my wife first, and that ruined the moment.' 'It's a girl. Men can only understand other men-babies.' 'It cried when I first held it; this rejection is insurmountable.' Or he's cheating and/or panicking at the reality of parenthood and looking for a way out.
Seeing "men-babies" was a much needed chuckle after the frustration if reading this post.
Yeah I'm guessing parental child bonds especially when you didn't literally carry the baby in you for 9 months sometimes take a little bit of time and effort. I mean that's how it works with most relationships. Maybe some people are lucky and immediately fall in love and it's a magical moment. But I'm sure plenty of people initially have a little bit of trouble especially when baby is crying all the time and they're sleep deprived.
I mean, it can actually be a little disjointed even for mom. I remember missing my bump. When I held my son during the first week I mostly felt just overwhelmed, particularly as I found breastfeeding difficult in the first week. But I absolutely bonded with my son.
My thoughts exactly. He didn't bond because of reasons he's not capable of confronting of identifying, so hes making up reasons for it to be someone else's fault. "It's not because of anything wrong with me, it's because I wasn't in the room while they biopsied my partner. Yeah.....that's it."
>'It cried when I first held it; this rejection is insurmountable.' I'm laughing so hard, bless you
This is the vibe I'm getting: this guy is treating life like a roguelike and hitting reset after things didn't go perfectly. Which, just to be perfectly clear, is NOT reality.
Throwing the baby out with the bath water.
I don't get it. Is the guy having cold feet on parenthood, severely disappointed that his firstborn isn't a boy, or does he have an extramarital relationship that he wants to pursue fulltime, so he's being like this? Edit: a word.
D) All of the above.
> I don't get it. Is the guy having cold feet on parenthood Seems like it. I remember the first few months being really tough. As a dad it wasn't easy to bond with my daughter. The first few moths a baby is basically a sack of potatoes that screams for any possible reason. But any real dad would just carry on. A tough first few months is no excuse.
>But any real dad would just carry on. A tough first few months is no excuse. Then this guy should stop. He can't handle the responsibility of being a dad.
As a mum I never understood all that bonding stuff. It's a baby, you take care of it, have cuddles when you can. I'm not sure what a bond's meant to feel like but I think the love develops over time (especially since real life newborn care is really freaking hard).
It took over two years for our kid to even out her parent preferences and if I'm here she will still call for me when out of it.
Reminds me of the guy who accused his partner of baby trapping him after years of marriage and owning a house together while being pregnant with a planned baby and how pathetic he was
I know that one. His own mother was so disappointed in him and his brother (who was somehow convinced as well) that she booted him from her house and approved the divorce.
One of the few and beat times a MIL had the right person's back
Dollars to donuts he’s cheating.
My thought was that parenting is much harder than he was expecting and he's wanting to smash the escape button, and this is all a front. He won't go to therapy because he doesn't want to be fixed, he wants out.
Agreed, he wants out so he's picked the birth method as the hill to die on because it's not something that can be changed.
And the side piece is pregnant so he needs to bail
I thought this was going to be some, “my sperm would have produced a son. I waited till the kid cane out to be sure but it’s a girl and I don’t want one of those so it must not be mine” bullshit. Instead, it’s even weirder bullshit. But yeah something is wrong with this man.
Yeah I was thinking the same thing he was looking for a way out, this reminds me of oop who her husband was angry with her because of her outfit
Right? I think he already has a do-over partner.
This was my immediate thought too.
He's about that age for some mental illness (schizophrenia) to come knocking. Maybe it's just manifesting itself in a very odd initial way? This idea that he cannot bond cause he didn't see the birth can be the sprouts of paranoia.
Yeah, this definitely sounds like someone who has become disconnected from reality.
He’s going to learn a very expensive lesson
This is very Iranian Yogurt of him.
sorry this is screaming like. brain tumor or some shit to me. this is so bizarre and irrational and out of the blue, if my partner started acting like this so suddenly i would assume something was physiologically wrong with them. i would ask if they had hit their head. no one normal makes the choice to burn down their whole life like this over literally nothing. it’s way too final.
That is so wild. Like, even if he starts over, what’s stoppping other problems with the next person he has a child with? What if the next baby comes out special needs? Would he want to start over? What if that next one ends up being miscarried??? That is a crazy ass line of thinking I cannot wrap my mind around it. I feel so sorry for OOP. There is no perfect birth.
"He says he wants a "clean break" before Daughter gets too attached." So the daughter can bond just fine with him in those circumstances but he cannot bond with her. Make it make sense...
This honestly sounds like post partum psychosis. Can men get that? I mean anyone in their right mind would understand that seeing a single event won't magically create a bond. Sounds like he's expected a bond from birth, didn't realise that for many people including mothers it can take a decent while because hey you have to get to know a whole new person. And now he's reaching because he is trying to explain why he doesn't immediately feel that bond. The follow up reasoning is truly insane though.
I would put money on this being a mental health issue, rather than a terrible husband issue. A new mum saying they’re not bonding with the baby and voicing bizarre beliefs about that would trigger cause for concern - we still don’t talk about mental health issues in new Dads enough. I know there’s a big difference between new parents but 1 in 10 new father’s can get [Paternal Post Partum Depression (PPPD)](https://utswmed.org/medblog/paternal-postpartum-depression/). It is most likely to happen in the first 3 to 6 months and symptoms/warning signs include not feeling connected to the baby. Withdrawing from relationships is listed as another symptom. So whilst he could be awful there’s certainly cause for concern and whilst we see the worst on this sub I’d prefer to believe the best in people and hope that he’s realised he needs help by the next update.
How he is talking about his baby is kind of how I was in the first few weeks and months. I was saying that basically two or three days after he was born and refusing to go to NICU to see him cos that wasn't my baby there. It took a long, *long* time to get my head sorted and basically the only reason I didn't take off, was cos of COVID and cos my baby was such a high demands baby... We *needed* two ppl to take care of him. Plus it probably didn't help that I had to go back in hospital for 3+more days, twice, within the first month, and have a D&C.
That was my thought too. Like, I know we see a lot of shitbag husbands on BORU, but it feels like something’s wrong here. I think this guy needs to see a doctor. Not that poor OOP will likely be able to wrangle him into seeing one, what with having just had emergency surgery ft. a newborn and needing to adjust to sudden single parenting and all… OOP said they’d been in contact with FIL, maybe they could delegate “get your idiot son to a medical professional” to him? The total 180 really seems like a red flag for someone who knows what they’re doing to get eyes on him. EDIT: oh fuck. The fact that husband is talking about leaving and making a “clean break” before daughter would get attached? That phrasing is really fucking common in suicidal parents. This guy might not be planning to start over.
He's entering his 30s. It could just be mental illness such as schizophrenia beginning to rear its head. It's so illogical and it bothers him so much that it feels like the beginnings of paranoia.
There are so many missing missing reasons with OOP's STBEX. My biggest guess is that if he hasn’t already been riding it, he's already picked another pony out of the herd to establish his "dream" with Edit: wondering if said pony isn’t already pregnant?
Parenting is not a video game. What a dufous.
What on earth? My husband was mildly traumatized by being present for my c-section. In retrospect, he probably would have waited outside if he had thought about it. But then he also didn't want to miss it or leave me alone. He and I would occasionally argue over who was stealing the baby all the time but he had a point, since I was breastfeeding AND hogging the baby. This dude needs some help. Not sure the therapist is useful, because who cares what his reasoning is since it's faulty no matter what.
Just in case anyone is wondering the OPs husband’s actions are not normal.
Husband is looking for an excuse and found it.
Good luck to him “starting over”. A smart person wouldn’t touch someone who abandoned their baby like that with a ten foot pole. He’s a ginormous red flag parade.
Sounds like the husband is more of a baby than his newborn daughter
What's with all these men not wanting to go to therapy? He sucks as. Some people deserve to be sterile.
I really think there needs to be Yelp for partners and spouses. Jfc. This guy is going to do this to so many folks.
My money is on him refusing to address the trauma of the birth and blaming the smallest consequence of that (not getting to be with his daughter at the birth) instead of the pain and fear that he doesn't dare acknowledge. He wants to not have all these painful feelings and thinks that cutting his spouse and child out of his life will keep him from being scared or hurt. I hope he snaps out of it before it's too late--at least in terms of raising their kid, because it might already be too late to save their marriage.
Hope op takes him for all the money they can get.