Prenatal vitamins gathering dust... wife has cold feet

Hypothesis #6 - she's losing interest in you and doesn't want to bring kids into a relationship that might end. That would explain the suddenness of the baby crazy -> barren womb change, tracking a change in the relationship.

How you two doing?

>no kids is a dealbreaker
>already married her

for better or worse, huh?

Usually I hate it when people comment this, but you reallyyyyyy need to talk to her about this and not us. We are not to know what "hypothesis" is the correct one.

>>16785958
Basically, this. They're a deal breaker to you. You're married. Clocks ticking.

You may come off as an arsehole but you need to tell her they're a deal breaker. It's better to look like an arse now than never have kids and regret it.

Why don't you talk to her about it? Have you guys been actually trying? Also, it could be a combination of all of those factors that you listed that is making her put off having children. It is a big, scary decision to make, not to mention it destroys the female body (sometimes it never recovers.) 29 is still quite young and there's still time for you guys to have children.

>>16785963
Pah... "clocks ticking" at 29? No, it's not. My mother gave birth to me when she was 42 years old, without the help of fertility treatments. That's 10-12 years to have children, or more. Also, just because someone is menopausal does not mean they can't get pregnant. If anything, they're more likely to, because their hormones go up and down and there's even the possibility of multiple ovulations in a month.

sit down and have a conversation with your wife LIKE ADULTS and sort it out
either you are going to have a child or you're going to divorce. the older she gets, the more likely that your child will have defects/complications
>>16785977
>it didn't happen to me so the statistic isn't accurate
get bent

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>>16785977
And a massively increased probability for complications. At age 42, the potential for a baby having Down's Syndrome is 2%. Not to mention the fact that with a mother who is old as shit, the kid is going to miss out on a lot of interaction simply because the bitch gets tired.
My youngest was born when my wife was 33. Personality-wise, he's 180-degrees from my oldest, who was born when she was 25, plus, once you're in early middle age, you'll need to take time to focus on your marriage, as well, to keep it evergreen, and that's a hell of a lot easier when your kids can fend for themselves more.

OP needs to talk to his woman, find out what she's thinking and be sure they're still on the same page with plans. If not, one of them needs to stand and deliver in terms of actions matching intentions.

OP, you and the other faggots in this thread bitching about the man's alleged right to knock up "his woman" really remind me of the kids who beg for a puppy.

BUT I WILL FEED IT AND WALK IT AND LOVE IT AND GIVE IT BATHS AND TAKE IT TO THE VET AND EVERYTHING

...Then give it about a month, when the puppy is starting to grow into a dog that requires constant training and discipline, starts chewing on all the furniture legs because it's fucking teething and shits and pisses everywhere because it's still not toilet trained, the kids who wanted the puppy so much mysteriously disappear, and only reappear upon threats with sullen faces.

Do you know how much fucking work a baby is? Do you know what a woman goes through medically, before and after the baby is born? Have you considered the very real possibility that you may have children who are genetically predisposed to the same nerve disease your wife has?

Your wife is 29. 6 years from now, she will be 35 and that is hardly "clock is ticking" for childbearing age.

Yes I fucking understand that to a guy who doesn't have to shit out a bloody watermelon that in turn cries and spews crud whenever it fucking likes "kids" seem to be a lovely concept and all, but you sound exactly like the kind of guy who wouldn't remember the name of the kid's school principal.

>>16786004
>And a massively increased probability for complications. At age 42, the potential for a baby having Down's Syndrome is 2%
>2%
>massively increased
This is exactly why women do not have time to deal with men.

>>16785945
Here's a really off-the-wall idea:

Why not ask her?

OP here. Thanks everyone. She and I have been talking a lot about this over the last year or two about this. I'm coming to <adv> now because we've been trying to talk and it's just going in circles. We had an argument on Friday and another on Monday. You can only revisit the same disagreement so many times before it gets frustrating. She and I agreed that we should go to marriage counseling. I hope that will help. I'm not usually one to hypothesize - I'm more of a straight-to-the-point, anything-is-cool-to-talk-about kind of guy. But I just get this feeling that I'm not being shared her real reasons. I hope counseling will help her feel safe enough to really say what's on her mind. She wanted to talk about it tonight and doesn't want to wait til counseling. I'm not scared of talking, but I'm scared that it will go badly like the last few times. Too many arguments and it will be hard to talk about at all.

>>16786060
>>And a massively increased probability for complications. At age 42, the potential for a baby having Down's Syndrome is 2%
>>2%
>>massively increased
>This is exactly why women do not have time to deal with men.

2 of every 100 kids born from 42 year olds will have down syndrome. That is not a small risk at all.

>>16786060
>OP, you and the other faggots in this thread bitching about the man's alleged right to knock up "his woman" really remind me of the kids who beg for a puppy.
But no one's saying that?
If OP wants kids, he has a right to reconsider his relationship. Waiting around for 6 years only to have her reveal she doesn't want kids anymore is just fucking retarded He needs to figure out as soon as he can if this relationship is doomed.

>>16786154

If you go around in circles and not understanding each other, having a mediator should definitely help in allowing you to communicate more effectively.

>>16786347
>potential
>will have down syndrome
Are you also that idiot who thinks the nation actually has a 50% divorce rate because we have 1 divorce for every 2 marriages performed each year?

Compared from age 35 to age 42, there is a 2% increase in potential. Every pregnancy, no matter the age of the mother, has a base potential for down syndrome that is dependent on genetics.

Prenatal screen takes care of that "potential", and to begin with, how many hundreds of thousands of babies do you actually see 42 year olds popping out anywhere in the world, and where exactly are all these down syndrome babies that should be filling up the nation's short busses?

The number of idiots on this board who have never taken a statistics class is fucking amazing. What was it a couple years back, that
25% of all children are not born to their biological fathers, jesus christ, what did parent teacher nights at your school look like then?

>>16786351
>But no one's saying that?
Yes, there is a lot of bitching about OP's alleged right. And you're one of them.

>If OP wants kids, he has a right to reconsider his relationship
>right
See what I mean?

>Waiting around for 6 years only to have her reveal she doesn't want kids anymore is just fucking retarded
Yes, she'll be at the ripe old age of 35. Ow her arthritis ow her gout better change her diapers.

>He needs to figure out as soon as he can if this relationship is doomed.
Just as it is a dick thing to dump or cuck your spouse because you find that your spouse is infertile, it is a dick thing to dump or cuck your spouse because she believes kids are more than she could handle.

How baseless and ridiculous is this? OP and everyone else is painting a picture of this cackling harpy going "HAR HAR SUCKED IN I PRETENDED I WANTED KIDS AND THEN NOW I DON'T I TRAPPED YOU INTO A CHILDLESS MARRIAGE" when in reality we're talking about someone who was unable to even take care of her own self for a long time just learning to pick up the pieces in her life, and asking her "so let's pretend the last decade or so of your life didn't happen, have you considered going through several traumatic medical conditions for a year apiece to obtain a physical, mental and financial obligation that lasts at least 18 years provided they don't have the same condition that crippled you for that decade we're pretending didn't exist?"

Do you anons also sit from the comfort of your screen and insist that landwhales who are just starting to drink diet soda and eat more salad should be running the Boston Marathon?

>>16786374
>Compared from age 35 to age 42, there is a 2% increase in potential

I'm not the guy who offered the statistic, but the statistic he offered was "the potential increases TO 2%" not "the potential increases BY 2%"

>>16786390
>And you're one of them.
Except I'm quite clearly not. If OP's wife doesn't want a baby, there's nothing he can do about that. It's only his right to have some idea of where their relationship stands and if it's feasible to continue.
He's not obligated to stay with someone who no longer shares his goals.

>Yes, she'll be at the ripe old age of 35. Ow her arthritis ow her gout better change her diapers.
The question isn't "Can OP wait 6 years to have a baby?" it's "If she doesn't want a baby AT ALL, why wait around for 6 years on a relationship that's already doomed?"

>it is a dick thing to dump or cuck your spouse because she believes kids are more than she could handle.
No it's not. It's called a relationship. If two people aren't a good match and their desired lifes don't mesh and can't come to a compromise, they probably shouldn't be together. It's no one's fault that some things don't work out. OP is no more obligated to give up his dream of children than OP's wife is obligated to fulfil his dream of children.

>and everyone else is painting a picture of this cackling harpy
That's your projection.
People change, goals drift. There's nothing wrong with that. But if OP and his wife's values are no longer compatible, that's an issue that needs to be addressed in some way.

Stopped reading there because I'm already repeating myself.

>>16786374

Ah, the retardation is strong here.

OK, prenatal screening, well, genetic screening in general, defines 'high risk' as being a probability greater than 1 in 250 for a given factor. High risk for Down Syndrome, just one of a panoply of potential genetic fuckups, starts at age 36. Even WITH genetic counseling and screening, by age 35, women enter high risk, but younger women miscarry with more regularity, so 36 is the 'official' start of high-risk. From there, the frequency of live births of window-lickers increases asymptotically, which is a big word for 'really fucking quickly" until age 45, where it's 1 in 4. Dr. Paul Benke's studies of Trisomy 21 are pretty conclusive, and the stats he published are a standard.

Now that we've established that your experience of not seeing retards in pubic is not a rational basis for dismissing the numbers cited here, we can move on.

Now, what you don't know, because you don't have relevant life experience, is that whether there's a miscarriage or pressure to abort a fucked up fetus, the emotional impact and trauma on the parents is significant. Devastating, for many. Pregnant women facing giving birth to a fucked up kid don't simply abort and try again, like fucking up a crossword puzzle. Even those women who CAN morally accept abortion pay a high price for it... and, again, this is all shit available in the literature, if you want to look at it.

Don't pull at appeal to authority when it's possible there's an authority nearby, young fella. It makes you look dishonest.

FWIW, in my first career I published original papers ranging from a predictive model of diffusion in turbulent environments to the use of manipulated osmotic gradients in selectively lysing dendrites in nerve cells. Statistics aren't magic. They're a tool useful in analysis, not in dialectic.

Wanting to have a family is such a strong basis instinct that stupid little reasons and hypothesis you have named, like the one that maybe she's afraid of being a mother cause of her own mother issues, are just you trying to come up with potential explanations when in reality the answer is very simple.

She just doesn't wanna have kids at this point in time, and the reasons behind it really doesn't make any difference, because the result is still the same.

And when it comes to such major decisions as having children, you should not do to unless you are sure.And no person should try to push you with your decision.

She has every right to change her mind and neither one of you should be standing in a way of your dreams, was it a family, a degree or travelling.

It's possible that she is not sure about your marriage and is therefore having second thoughts. Or that she simply wants to pursue other things in life, which she as a smart woman knows is a lot harder if now impossible once you've really settled down.

Maybe it's just me, but I think OP kinda seems like an over-analyzing control freak. Just giver her some space, okay. You can't change her mind and you shouldn't try to do so. The only person who's actions you can control however is you. If having a family is very important to you, tell her that you want it to happen in let's say 2 years, and if she can't promise you that, then you should both go your own ways and pursue your personal goals separately. If having a family is that important to you and your dreams are very different, go and find happiness with someone else who shares the same ones with you. It's only fair for both of you.

>>16786060
As a woman I have to kinda agree with this post. I mean, I've seen it so many times - men actually have no fucking idea what it's actually like to have a kid. Their image is that their go out and kick ball with it and hold it every now and then and that's as hard as it gets.

That's all very cute and I'm not saying that men aren't responsible, but what I'm saying is that most of them lack experience and their pre-thoughts are just unrealistic. I've been surrounded with kids ever since I was a child and I've been babysitting kids for years, so I have a pretty good knowledge on how it's actually like. And it's not always that nice of run. It's restricting, tough 24/7 work. Gets easier as the kid grows though, but in the beginning you are basically tied with the baby.

Not to forget all the physical changes you go through, how you give up your personal freedom and body and life will never, ever be the same again. So don't fucking push us with something as major as that. I'd say that amputating my arm probably had a smaller effect on my life than having a child of my own.

I want kids though and I like them a lot, but it's just that I have to be 100% sure about the decision before I take that step.

>>16786416
>>16786429
You just spewed a whole level of bullshit that doesn't mean anything: the reality of the matter is, OP's wife or any woman carrying a child with down syndrome is not particularly significant. If it is true that above a certain age a full 2% of births are downies and it is such a hassle to abort them because muh emotional trauma, the country would be overrun with them.

Do you even know what 2% of any given population subset even looks like? Down Syndrome is actually extremely rare.

>>16786416
I don't care what your bullshit basis for OP's "relationship" with his wife is that you and OP get to say something is a dealbreaker or not. Dealbreakers are things you talk about because -the deal of marriage is off the table-, not because "if you proceed to do these things it's a divorce".

OP has no right to dictate a severely impacting medical condition and subsequent physical, mental and financial burden on his wife just because he wants to play kickball with said burden someday. And please don't even start on whether a father puts in as much effort and workload in raising a child as the mother.

>>16786491
>OP has no right to dictate a severely impacting medical condition

He. is. not.

Ensuring your lives are still compatible is not the same as presenting an ultimatum or forcing a single option. She is under zero obligation to have his baby. She can literally do anything she wants, she can cheat on him if she likes and he can't do shit about it. But he's within his rights to re-evaluate if this is a relationship he can sustain for the rest of his life, whether it's because she's become a serial killer or she's gotten too invested in America's Got Talent.

No one is obligated to stay in a relationship where they are no longer satisfied.

just fuck her no condom big deal

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>>16786629
this.

there has lately been an emphasis on preparing for parenthood what with women having children later and later and this is good. preparation is important. but it becomes an argument toward perfectionism when taken further. there is no perfect moment for being a parent or having a child. and obsessing over this perfect moment will only lead to anxiety and discontent. on the other end of the spectrum we can say no preparation is needed and life for your children is just what happens, which is also stupid.

make a bit of a checklist on what largely affects development and see where you are (these probably aren't the strongest factors, but you get the idea)
1. finances
2. relationship with partner
3. prep on things like a family doctor, what education you'll want, how much time you can spend after work, who can you rely on when you're not around, etc.
4. read up on literature. there is a correlation between making babies listen to music in the womb and improving their IQs but that's because the type of parent who would go to these lengths generally does a better job of caring for their kids, not music inherently. read things like pic related instead. learn better parenting styles, etc.

your wife, see. with you first worlders, you make a big fuss out of everything. and to you, third worlders must seem lazy and unthinking. i couldn't imagine visiting a marriage counselor over a decision like this. there's balance in everything. control can lead to anxiety and laxness can lead to chaos

>>16785945
That isn't uncommon, especially when first married. There is a fair amount of societal and family pressure, modern culture makes out pregnancy and childbirth to be much more dangerous and painful that it actually is, and switching from 'abstract dream' to 'concrete planning' makes lots of people nervous about lots of things.
Sit her down in a non-confrontational way and simply ask her what is going on while stressing you just want to know so you can help.

>>16786060
Lighten up, Frances

>>16785945

Maybe she no longer wants kids. People often change as they age. I can't blame her for not wanting to give up most of her adult life for the sake of kids. If kids are a Must Have for you then consider volunteering to be stay at home dad while she lives her life. Or do you expect her to do the majority of the work while you continue to enjoy the fruits of your adult life?

>>16786660

>Sit her down in a non-confrontational way and simply ask her what is going on while stressing you just want to know so you can help.

Whaaat? Actually communicate? Nah, go running to a website full of people with no life experience and take a poll. Whatever the poll results are, just assume that's the case.

OP here

>>16786390
Whoa whoa, no one is calling my wife a harpy. She's the love of my life. Some people just want kids, some people don't. It's going to be painful if they are in love with each other. I'm hoping she just need time to overcome some of her fears and that she's just reconsidering. 35 is not a crazy age to start kids but I do the math. 35 for her and 37 for me... plus 18-20 for two kids to graduate high school, another 4 - 6 for college, then they have kids around 35, a few years with my grandkids and I die at 76. Waiting this long means I don't get to be active with my kids and a lot less time with grandkids.

>>16786416
Exactly. This is a little bit about "when" but the big question is "if". She is the owner of her body and if she says we'll wait 5 years, she can still say no later. Then I'm 36 years old and like I said no kids is a deal breaker... so that leaves adoption (she's said no), fostering (she's said no), egg transplant (she's said no), then... *gulp* divorce. She's not really leaving me any options.

>>16786429
There are many people with opinions. Few with accurate statistics. Just for the record, I'm not paying attention to any replies with statistics about complications. It's not what I'm asking for <adv> on.

>>16786461
I am analyzing it for sure. It's hard to admit to OVER-analyzing something that will be the most significant decision for the rest of my life. Kids are going to take up about 25 years of near total bandwidth, and still it will be work and I want to plan it right. But you're right, I can't rush this or control it, nor can I analyze my way through it. And she's awful with ultimatums, I give them and she digs a deeper trench. An ultimatum can make her decide (and usually what I want because she loves me and wants to stay together) but then she loves me less for using the threat and the relationship suffers.

OP here

>>16786473
We kind of have a different set up than most husband/wife couples you've met. I'm the one with the most experience with kids - worked with them for a decade - and I have a strong possibility to work from home and be the stay-at-home dad. I can't be the one to get pregnant but I'm going to be way more involved than your average dad. Honestly, I wish I could have the baby (think of that Schwartzeneggar movie). I wouldn't have the complications she would have because she is underweight, has a history of surgeries, medications, etc. I wish I could take her pain... but I just can't. C'mon science make it happen!

>>16786655
She's first worlder for sure. A trust fund kid with a bank president, insurance company owner, stock traders in her family tree. Me? I grew up on welfare with a teenage mom. Kids are always possible, just not always a good idea. We own our own home, she's got her BA, I've got my MBA. We're totally ready but she'd stalling now...

>married woman that doesn't want kids

Then what use is she at all?

>>16787560
Too harsh. We have fun, laugh a lot, and our quality of life is so superior than being single. We balance each other out on so many levels. Plus sharing everything from home, car, food, appliance is way cheaper, and you can afford nicer things too, plus tax benefits, discounts on car insurance, health insurance, the list goes on. Marrying your love is great. But much of the reason for marrying was that she and I would have kids someday.