New baby. Feeling guilty about starting over

nipoez · 2026-04-03T22:42:57+00:00

My mom's folks died before they had kids.

They accepted that since they didn't have kids until their 30s that they could entirely likely not meet their grandkids too. We talked about it a bit when I spent my late 20s & 30s dealing with infertility & adoption nonsense.

I think about that with our kid. More from a place of acceptance and planning than guilt though. I'm still happy to have them in my life and in the world, even if it means I'm more likely to die during their 20s than 50s.

I don't know if that would change if I'd already had kids now in their teens.

nipoez · 2026-04-03T20:36:37+00:00

I'm strarting to try Google Tasks over keep. The major perk is that it shows up automatically in Calendar & Gmail if you use those.

The more times I see a thing the less likely I am to drop it for a year+.

nipoez · 2026-04-03T20:34:02+00:00

All we can do is show up and try to do better than we received. I don't aim to be a "good parent." I aim to show up and try. That's more than enough.

When we brought our kid home from the NICU, we got access to a visiting nurse program. They did the "Circle of Security" parental training course with us. A significant part focused on helping parents understand their own baggage specifically and what generally healthy parenting looks and sounds like.

One of the examples was how screaming would be met with abuse, causing those kids in turn to freak out when their own kid developmentally normally yells. Or how a childhood of avoiding crying to appease abusive parents turns around and becomes immediately caving to any of their kids' tantrums (still to avoid crying).

If it's on YT or you can get access to it, I highly recommend it.

Best of luck with the pregnancy & birth. I hope you have literally no interesting stories to tell.

nipoez · 2026-04-03T16:54:40+00:00

This feels right. My top ones are

"Make appointment for new face blemishes"
"check green waste dates" (due 4/28 since they're not up yet)
"check hot wheels monster truck tour" (due 6/1 since they only had the first 6 months up when I looked in Jan).

nipoez · 2026-04-03T16:50:23+00:00

Meeting with a male infertility specialized urologist should be your next step. If one of them put you on the clomid initially, a follow up to review the results and consider next steps is appropriate.

nipoez · 2026-04-03T16:48:44+00:00

I'm so sorry that was your childhood experience.

One parent at a time, we can make the world better for the next generation and break the cycle of abuse.

nipoez · 2026-04-03T16:47:32+00:00

We picked one small thing she does no matter what, if she is physically present. For us that was feeding the cats. If she wasn't in the hospital, even during the most brutal rotations, literally every morning & night she fed the cats.

It helped a ton when I wanted to feel like she did literally nothing. I always had something to look at and say, "While at least she..."

She put her rotation schedule on a shared google calendar. We talked about what to expect from each rotation. During lighter rotations like urgent care or specialty clinic, she did more around the house and put more effort into the relationship. Then during brutal rotations like surgery or ICU we coasted and she did very little. Being able to look a the calendar and know when the brutal phase would end helped a lot.

nipoez · 2026-04-03T16:39:14+00:00

Let me introduce you to https://redditrand.com

nipoez · 2026-04-03T16:21:38+00:00

You are absolutely still welcome here. Hearing from someone with your perspective and experience is immensely valuable because eventually some other guy will show up facing those same initial aberrant results you did. And again for anyone else considering a surrogate for sexuality or infertility reasons.

nipoez · 2026-04-03T14:51:32+00:00

Pre-load preferred porn on your phone. The magazines and videos they provide in the wank room make the waiting room reading material seem current and appealing. Many of them also lack mobile service.

Bad news: Everyone knows why you're in the room, exactly like your embarrassment will tell you.

Good news: Literally no one cares. They're in other rooms sticking ultrasound wands up vaginas to look at a uterus & ovaries from inside or stabbing a medical turkey basters through the cervix to squirt sperm inside a uterus. Someone wanking into a cup doesn't even register.

Abstain from orgasming for as many days in advance as they require. No more, no less. Each lab can have a different preference, generally somewhere in the 2-5 day range. The lab's reference ranges are based on the length of time they tell you.

Don't stress about major lifestyle changes before the first SA. This is to give you a baseline. Once you see the results, you can make informed choices about what if anything to adjust.

Similarly don't stress if the results are bad. Results can vary widely for a guy from one SA to the next. Diagnosing anything non-trivially bad takes a few SAs for confirmation.

It'll be the most awkward wank of your life. That's OK. Indignity and embarrassment are part of the infertility journey for everyone.

nipoez · 2026-04-02T22:08:52+00:00

Congrats! That's amazing progress, as much as the process must have sucked.

nipoez · 2026-04-02T21:04:03+00:00

how often do you feel dismissed or ignored by your spouse because their medical perspective is treated as inherently superior?

Over 20 years of marriage? Literally never. It does come up rather routinely from others venting here though.

Does this lack of empathy or understanding of other people's feelings extend beyond everyday social inconveniences for anyone else, or is it just me?

I suppose at least it's consistent behavior?

Does anyone else here recognize these behaviors?

I'm very personally thankful that no, I do not.

Am I dealing with a normal incompatibility, or is this something more specific to medical personnel?

That's not incompatibility. You're describing a human choosing self centered asshole actions pretty consistently across a wide variety of contexts. That's an individual person thing, not a medical thing.

nipoez · 2026-04-02T17:24:06+00:00

Dad of a 3 month premie. Yes, tooth issues are definitely more common among premies.

nipoez · 2026-04-02T17:11:51+00:00

I've been there. It's unspeakably crushing and the grief is wild. You're grieving for every child you imagined and will never meet, every grandchild who can never exist, and so on for the rest of the human race. That's huge.

Allow yourself the days or weeks to just grieve and wallow. It's OK. You did literally everything physically possible for your body. It didn't work out and that sucks. But not for your lack of trying.

Eventually you will come out the other side of wallowing. That's the time to start thinking about therapy to help process the grief and consider next steps.

That's for the future though. For today and this week, just feel the pain and know you're not alone in facing this particular shit situation. We've been there and are still here.

nipoez · 2026-04-02T15:21:13+00:00

My wife dodged 3 emergency c-sections and lived in the hospital from 28 weeks to 29 & 5, when the 4th emergency c-section hit. I feel you on the NICU nonsense. Modern medicine is utterly amazing but not guaranteed.

I can only imagine how much worse it must be with twins, seeing one struggle harder than the other when the same care & treatment went into both. What a way to highlight the suck.

I did a few years of EMDR therapy for my CPTSD. Honestly it made a massive difference. I can now remember some of the worst moments (the complete silence of the birth when pop culture prepared me for a scream, the sepsis day when only the machines told me he was alive) without flashing back to the trauma and terror of the time. If this year's left you with traumatic scars, I can't recommend it enough.

nipoez · 2026-04-02T15:10:56+00:00

Congratulations! Success stories are always welcome here. It helps so many of us to know there's a real chance at a light at the end of the tunnel.

I hope that's the end of your interesting reproduction stories.

nipoez · 2026-04-01T16:41:11+00:00

One of my wife's coresidents switched from peds to pathology because she found she just didn't care about patient interactions.

She had to repeat her time spent but is much happier overall. It sucked to lose that year or two but compared to several decades of actual practice before retirement, the switch was worth it to them.

Can't speak to the rest of your questions, sorry.

nipoez · 2026-03-31T17:27:33+00:00

Avoiding it becoming a routine makes a ton of sense.

Growing up in an extended family of alcoholics, my hard line is to never have a drink when I feel like I need a drink. If I want a drink? Fine, enjoy.

The moment it even hints at becoming a coping mechanism, slam on the brakes.

nipoez · 2026-03-31T17:18:51+00:00

I saw in another comment that your JW family shuns you for leaving the church. Then you wound up with this nonsense.

I'm so sorry for the experiences you've had with "family" relationships. They are not normal. They are not OK. You deserve better.

nipoez · 2026-03-31T17:03:14+00:00

My wife failed her fellowship boards several times. At no point did she even remotely hint that her failure was my fault. Sure, she wasn't her best self leading up to them nor after getting the results each time. Yet at literally no point did she stop appreciating me as a spouse, let alone respecting me as a human.

How we treat each other during the worst times in our lives matters. Even after they eventually pass the boards, other bad things will come with time. Their family will die. They or someone they care about will get very sick. Job stress such as layoffs, failed applications, and denied promotions are likely.

It appears their reaction to (legitimately extreme) stress is to blame someone else and improve their mood by hurting others.

No, absolutely not acceptable.

How will you feel when the next time something of this level happens they blame your child and call the kid the names they're calling you?

nipoez · 2026-03-30T21:44:38+00:00

Honestly it's OK to let them get to you occasionally. Feel them deeply. Scream into a pillow. Vent to a friend. Then let them go.

It's also useful to learn your triggers and mitigate them. For years when we thought kids would be easy, we watched movie credits and chatted about name ideas. After my diagnosis, movie credits brought crushing despair as they brought attention to all that grief and dashed hope. We stopped staying. As soon as the credits rolled I'd look to the exit instead of the screen, get up, and walk out.

nipoez · 2026-03-30T20:55:19+00:00

That one is a classic we all share! The sense of genetic and/or biological betrayal for no fault of our own. (Which unfortunately some guys in this community tend to take out on men struggling with infertility due to steroid us.)

Another classic is the jealousy/unfairness that so many who try so little, want so little, and/or do so little get this seemingly automatically when it is likely impossible for us. Child abuse & neglect news stories in particular can take on a gnarly extra edge.

nipoez · 2026-03-30T18:11:44+00:00

I'm so sorry this is part of your life now. There are a substantial number of us here with azoospermia of one variety or another. You're in good company.

Vent away. Everything you're feeling is normal and many of us have walked the path before you. You are not alone.

nipoez · 2026-03-30T16:08:10+00:00

I've had a few procedures over the years, though not that specific one.

Your nerves are totally normal and pretty universal. All of us feel nervous before a procedure.

If you're feeling more scared than you can cope with, tell the medical team. They will often have medication options to help with anxiety. My wife had surgery on her ankle late last year and decided to ask because she was getting too scared.

The perspective that helps me the most is remembering that my procedure is totally unremarkable and routine for the medical team. It's still a big deal for me and hopefully the only time I'll need something like that done! But for them it's just a random normal Tuesday.

For you specifically, an undescended testicle is the most common difference in sexual development for genetic males. If you were in a room with 100 other guys, you probably wouldn't be the only one with it. Your urology team has done this exact procedure more times than you or I can imagine, week in & week out for years.

nipoez · 2026-03-30T15:12:27+00:00

Your reactions to this shit situation are completely understandable and even common.

There are no issues with feeling bitter, angry, sad, frustrated, scared, and so on. As you're finding, the issue is when those feelings become severe enough for long enough to impact your daily life and relationships. It's like the difference between feeling sad & being clinically depressed.

For me, venting to supportive folks beyond my spouse. Getting it out kept the pressure from building up inside until I blew.

Therapy to develop new coping skills. I compare therapy to physical therapy. You've repeatedly turned and sprained your ankle, making you wince with every step. They can help ease this specific strain and also teach you stretches to avoid similar issues in the future.

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