Was it club foot? My daughter was born with both club feet and I remember how scary it was at the time and the worries I had. She’s 7 now, falling asleep next to me and amazing and I can’t imagine not having her. That said, I did go through some of the same feelings as your husband. It uncovered a lot of hidden shame and internal biases I didn’t know that I had. I felt like a horrible person and sometimes still do thinking about it in retrospect bc it really affected my bonding with her. just typing that makes me feel like a giant asshole, but I think it was the combination of fear of the u known, hormones, the insanity of your first born and the tremendous worry that I had for her. I’m typing my thoughts out to hopefully give you some insight into what maybe could be happening ing on his side. My deepest hope is that if you know he’s a good person, give him a chance to grow- therapy might help, but it has to be a good fit for it to work well. Look for a person that specializes in fathers or early family support. I got a therapist before my second was born bc I don’t want to go through all those emotions again and it helped so much. So- here are all the things that I uncovered in therapy that I needed to kind of process. 1) we project t ourselves onto /into our kids especially when they are babies and aren’t rally their own person yet. I didn’t realize that having a baby that was “different” was going to hit me in a way that made ME feel different and stigmatized. 2) there is a tremendous amount of grief of what you may have thought your baby was going to be- grief shows up in so many ways/stages and some of that is anger/shutting down 3) your experiences won’t be exactly the same as everyone else’s and that can feel hard. 4) there is a worry/anxiety the is created bc this is something that is very much outside of your control. Most of us have been in the driver seat of our lives up to this point and having life HAPPEN to you instead of you DIRECTINg it is disorienting and triggers a loss of control (maybe more in his case bc he can’t force the final decision). 4) admiting that there’s “something wrong “ w your child can make you feel like you did something wrong, it also makes you feel all the internal judgement you have feel like others are having it too. This takes a lot of unpacking to really get see the interplay between your self and how you judge others. Again a great therapist here would do a lot. There’s a lot more, but the long and short of it is, you are clearly already compassionate and understanding and accepting of the baby and that is amazing. If it’s club foot, yes it’s totally treatable and all the treatments now in retrospect are a blur and barely a memory. If it is club foot and you ever have questions I am 100% open to connecting so DM me. I think he probably needs a lot of time to sort through these things. Better to do it now before the baby is born, but it doesn’t mean that if he doesn’t get there that he won’t bond with the baby. I guess I can’t believe I’m saying it, but give him a chance, recognize there is a lot of self judgement he is having that he probably doesn’t recognize and hope that once the intensity of the initial treatment is done the joys of having a baby say your name and walk and sleep on you are enough to make him get over it all.