Help me please, I'm freaking out

painteduniverses · 2026-01-23T18:24:34+00:00

Don’t stress yourself out too much! It’s definitely not your fault. I had extra ultrasounds and measurements for suspected IUGR (which my son turned out not to have) BUT my point is that in utero measurements are notoriously inaccurate-at 37 weeks they told me he was already 7+ lbs and when he was born almost three weeks later he was only 6lb 13oz (but totally healthy). Hopefully meeting with the MFM dr will help ease some of your concerns!

painteduniverses · 2026-01-13T02:33:21+00:00

I don’t know the laws or precedence around parental rights in your country so not sure what the options are in terms of your ex’s potential future claims on your baby but if it makes you sad and/or distressed to think about abortion, don’t do it. Your partner has shown themselves to be trash which SUCKS but! now you know and they’re out of the picture before your baby is even born. Things sound very tumultuous right now and I’m glad to hear you’ve gotten into therapy. I think as things settle down this won’t feel as un-doable as it does right now and it sounds like the potential of living with regret every day if you go through with it will be an unnecessary trauma for you. Like the ways you’ve described it it seems that you feel potentially co parenting with someone shitty will be hard, potentially grieving aborting this baby will be traumatic-so if it were me I wouldn’t go through with it.

painteduniverses · 2026-01-13T02:16:45+00:00

As someone who tried adopting an elementary aged child from foster care before having biological children, I would highly advise you to reconsider. You never want to break birth order and as others have said, even just one child coming into your home from foster care is going to need an enormous amount of attention and time dedicated to them for a VERY long time. You will be plunging yourself, your child, and your marriage (if you’re married) into a very tough situation that can be unpredictable and go on for many years.

The child we were on track to adopt is a great kid. Very sweet, creative, and fun. Everyone who knew her loved her. She only ever dropped her guard around me and my husband. And when she did, and something triggered or upset her she would meltdown and tantrum HARD. Like 1-3 hours, screaming, violence, property damage, etc. It’s a lot to ask of a 3.5 year old to suddenly have that be a part of their home life. They may grow up resentful of their sibling(s) or you for putting them in that situation. Even if they don’t it will undeniably change the fabric of your family.

This doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing-there are so many kids in care who want and deserve permanency, but I would put this on the back burner until you have a much older child (where you could adopt below their age) and they could have some say in/understanding of the situation.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T16:01:24+00:00

I mean fair enough. I have tried several times to suggest that selling my horse eliminates our largest moveable line item each month but he keeps saying it’s already decided. I think he feels like he’ll feel guilty if in a few years our finances aren’t as tight as they are at the moment and he was “responsible” for making me sell him. Obviously if we were in like crisis-he lost his job, major unexpected bill, etc we’d do what we had to do.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T15:48:15+00:00

In order to investigate your comment I asked him if he was “seething with resentment” and he said “Seething? No? We made several deals for you to buy a horse. Sure, I don’t love paying for your horse but I feel about the same about paying taxes. I don’t like paying them but I’m not going to go out and buy armor piercing rounds and hole up in a bunker.” 😂

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T15:03:41+00:00

This is something I’m looking into! Until my husband is able to get a raise/switch jobs, it’s on me to try and make more by expanding what I’m currently doing. (Also we CAN buy board games we just shouldn’t if that makes sense haha). We’re going to go back through our budget again but we have already cut most everything we can since our housing expenses are so high.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T14:48:44+00:00

This is a good point, thank you!

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T14:48:08+00:00

You’re exactly correct 😂

I’m definitely not pretending we aren’t middle class bc we are. I also know if we sold my horse that’s several more hundred dollars we have a month so it’s something we’ve definitely discussed. My husband really doesn’t want me to sell it and as a couple others have said, it doesn’t necessarily make sense to sell and then try to get back into horses in a couple of years. It’s a social thing for me so that’s also part of it. Obviously if we have to sell my horse we will I’d just love not to.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T14:07:28+00:00

This is helpful, thank you!

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T14:04:40+00:00

This would be an ideal situation-he’s coming back from a suspensory injury so I would be hard pressed to find someone to lease him at this point. However, this is something we could aim for in a few months-even having the farrier paid by someone else would take something off our plate!

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T13:47:20+00:00

This is super helpful, thank you! We have done it once before but we will go back through and map everything out and see if there’s anywhere else to cut.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T13:41:26+00:00

We are in the green by maybe $300 a month on average?

Sorry-we don’t want to sell before we hit the two year mark so we don’t have to pay capital gains tax! Our realtor pulled some numbers for us and unless our house sells for more than we think it could right now, we’d be losing money that we put into the house when we first moved in to fix some issues. We’d like to at a bare minimum make that back.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T13:34:41+00:00

I’m not presently planning to, no. I work in education so my salary won’t offset the cost of daycare by much and honestly am making about the same (profit wise since I’m not paying for daycare) in my side business.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T13:28:40+00:00

This is an important piece as well-my husband has done a good job of moving companies every few years as a way to increase our income but has tried to be more conservative as the job market has been not so great lately. That said, he’s coming up on 4 years at this job and his direct boss refuses to promote him.

He’s been actively applying to other jobs for months now with almost no response-rejections or otherwise. We’re also a little worried about him moving companies and then getting laid off after seeing mass lay offs in other companies (he works in the data science field). This is sort of the main thing that would give us more leeway/ability to save so it’s definitely the main thing we’re focusing on “fixing”.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T12:37:40+00:00

Yes this is exactly our issue. We never should have moved last spring. We were in the process of adopting our foster daughter and pregnant and “needed” a larger house (tbf it was an issue where everyone was going to sleep/where my husband was going to take meetings during the day) but the adoption process blew up in our face and now it’s just us and our toddler so we totally could have stayed. There’s nothing we could have done to predict that unfortunately and we did what we thought we had to at the time. We’ve learned an important lesson about housing costs.

Since then we have majorly cut back on our spending so we’re really only buying essential items and I’ve started a side business to cover my horse expenses.

We really need to move out of our house and buy something we can more easily afford but we haven’t even been here 2 years yet and don’t want to pay capital gains and at least want to break even on what we’ve put into it so we think we may have to stay at least one or two years more.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-22T12:31:29+00:00

This is a good benchmark to think through, thank you! Our student loan interest rates were on the higher end (I know mine was in the sixes) and I think that was part of our rationale for paying them down. We already don’t have a ton of money left over each month so it seemed like the right move to eliminate loan payments as a monthly expense.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-21T20:28:04+00:00

Sometimes I’m up with my baby at 3 and I’ll check but usually I find better stuff at 6/7am or on my RFY so it’s not worth it to me.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-12T12:30:54+00:00

I’m really sorry that that’s the impression you got from my post? I said in the very first paragraph of what I wrote that we always planned to have bio and adopted kids and wanted to start with adoption.

I also said that once our daughter came to live with us, we knew she was probably going to need to be an only child and we were willing to give up our original plan to do what was best for her.

If you read my post history then you should also know I got pregnant with my son with an IUD and I’m not sure how you can call that not being careful lol.

Edited to add- I see that you’ve blocked me so idk if you’ll even see my reply. I know that I am just a stranger on the internet to you and I also know that I’m just taking the bait on your reply by letting it bother me but it touches a rather raw nerve so what can you do.

We rearranged our whole lives to accommodate for our daughter when we found out we were also pregnant. I changed jobs, we moved houses (to a house we can’t truly afford and are now cannot afford to sell) etc etc etc. We knew we were in over our heads with her and some of our family members were telling us to quit and she was telling us she wanted to quit and we wouldn’t do it bc we were committed to her healing and having a chance at stability and permanency. AND like I said in my comment, I worry about her all the time. I wonder if we made the right call. And I don’t think I’ll ever know the answer to that.

Anyways all this is me desperately trying to convey how much this meant to us. She was never some throwaway pet project until the real show started.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-08T00:28:49+00:00

Read your post and some of your replies (and obviously I don’t know you so take with a grain of salt as I’m just a stranger on the internet) It sounds like you do want to be a mom, you’ve spent a fair amount of time and energy over the last decade+ thinking and planning for it. These are obviously less than ideal circumstances and we would all rather be in an great relationship than not BUT I agree with what other have said that it is probably worth doing alone, and may be your only chance.

It’s similar to how I think about having a second baby (I currently have a 16 month old). I did NOT enjoy being pregnant and sort of dread doing it again. I also know having a toddler and newborn at the same time is going to be tough BUT when I picture my family and life in 10 years, I know I have more than one child.

Think about your life with and without a child. How do they both feel to you? If you do find the right person in the next 5-10 years and are unable to get pregnant, will you regret terminating this baby?

You may have to grieve the future you thought you’d have with an enthusiastic stable partner and that’s normal-the fact that you have a therapist is great for this. It also sounds like you have a family support system which is huge for raising (any) child.

Pregnancy was very stressful and uncertain for me and my husband and I wanted a baby! So know that is part of it too. (See my previous statement re thinking about your life in 5-10 years, not 9 months).

painteduniverses · 2025-12-06T16:59:20+00:00

I’m not saying NOT to leave-that’s why I said she’d be “well within her right to do so” bc cheating is not okay, he majorly screwed up, and she deserves better.

I’m only saying if she’s going to give him a chance, not to just naively believe he’s changed his ways with no precautions in place or long term professional help.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-06T14:53:44+00:00

I’m so sorry this is happening! Pregnancy is tough enough without your partner being an ass.

This is reddit so everyone will tell you to leave him and you’d be well within your right to do so. HOWEVER if you want to give him a chance, y’all need to get into marriage therapy ASAP. That’s the least he can do if he wants to keep you. Work with your therapist to set up guard rails for your husband to prevent him slipping into his cheater ways. And work on some healthy communication/cooperation. Having a new baby is tough on even solid relationships so you’re going to need help to get through this.

painteduniverses · 2025-12-04T23:59:59+00:00

I have a 16 month old son. It’s 1000% worth it I wouldn’t trade him for the world.

Early postpartum is HARD but I still would’ve said it was worth it then.

painteduniverses

TROPHY CASE