The initiative to enlarge our family came from my husband. I was set up for a distant prospect, wanting to have a baby in five years. My husband already had a son growing up, my spouse was seven years older than me, and my post-institutional life was just beginning when we met and decided to start a family.
When he proposed, Frank confessed that he loved his son by his first wife in addition to me, and he really wanted their companionship to be unaffected by our family relationship. I assured him then that I would never interfere with their meetings, and would be happy to get to know the boy so that I could be involved in his life in some way, too.
Frank was delighted, and added that he dreamed of our child together. His dream shook my confidence in prioritizing my career, and I made it clear that I was not ruling out an addition in the foreseeable future.
After we were married, my husband’s mother joined me in convincing me to get pregnant. She was convinced that the sooner I had a baby, the better. She did not specify why better, and for whom better, but she constantly dripped on my brain, roughly understanding when I was having not the most pleasant days for women.
Gradually I began to be “surrounded.” My mother-in-law and husband took my mother as an ally, and all meetings with relatives were reduced to talking about pregnancy. In the end I gave in and, to the rapturous delight of my husband, mother and mother-in-law, I waited for the baby.
I waited without tension, I took all the tests on time, met with my doctor, one day he even said that he was not interested in me, my pregnancy went on so smoothly and without any nuances. We began to meet much less often, and in recent months we crossed paths only a couple of times.
And now, the long-awaited moment, I gave birth to my son! Naturally – maternity leave, a lot of restrictions, sleepless nights… And my husband, nothing has changed. The only thing I noticed was that he paid a lot more attention to his oldest son, Dennis.
Yes, my husband sometimes walked with the stroller, ran to get diapers, but he did not have a real fatherly attitude toward our baby.
– He’s not used to it yet,” his mother excused him, “I guess he got confused between two kids, he and Dennis are thick as thieves, and soccer, and fishing, and Jack still doesn’t recognize him…
Of course, it was hard for Jack to recognize the man who walked with him during naptime, and communicated very little between feedings.
Then excuses and reassurances began to sound from his mother-in-law:
– Wait, Dennis will soon get away from his father on his own, he’s a big boy, then Frank will give Jack all the time…
I tried to talk to my husband and explain to him that I didn’t like this disproportionate division of his attention between the two children, but Frank immediately reminded me of my promise not to prevent him from talking to Dennis. Then I told him that I knew how to solve the problem – we needed a divorce so that Dad could visit his sons one by one.
Now my relationship with Dennis had cooled down, and he was emphasizing his “attention” to his youngest son by going out with Jack regularly. Naturally, I don’t like it, so why all these shows? The desire to communicate with children should be natural, not contrived.
I hope that my husband will reconsider his behavior, will understand me, and will not divide the children into “older” and “younger”.
