I feel seriously rough. I felt reasonable on the evening I had it done but since I've come home I've just been in a ton of pain (I think walking half a mile with DD4 was a bad idea) and today I think I am getting a fever.
The nurse phoned me to check on me and she told me to take plenty of fluids. I still have to take DD4 to nursery today, they are having 'Red Day' (all the children go dressed in something red), so I have got her in this red velvet dress.
I simply must get her there; I don't want her to miss out because of me.
Jo.
PS: when I feel better I will answer everyone's dream queries.
I hope you are feeling better soon. You are obviously in so much pain, both physical and emotional. Was donating your eggs an act to "atone" in some way for feeling like you are a "bad mother"?
Jo, you are not a bad mother. For whatever reason your H has got custody of your children, it is very obvious to me that you went through some temporary lows that affected your parenting. Anyone can see that you love your kids and want so much to mother them. It must be very difficult to bear the loss of your children, and your "complete" family.
While you wrote about you and Andy a few post previously, about him pushing you on the bed and stuff, it just seemed to me that the man was very unstable and arrogant. It seems that Andy is like a drug to you. Just as my H was to me. And we all suffer from the yearning, of course, to be a "successful" mother (father), and have a complete and happy family.
I think you might want to really step back and have a good, long hard look at your exH. And also, to take care of yourself much more, and ask yourself what you really really deserve. To be kept at arms length and dropped the odd crumb? To be hauled along a roller coaster by your fingernails? To be used and then thrown back again when no longer wanted?
Jo, if you lived down the road from me, I would be right there with you now, making you a cuppa and giving you a hug. You deserve so much more than you are getting. But please learn to love yourself more. The rest will follow.
I hope you feel better soon. Take it easy for awhile, okay?
I agree with everything that livnlearn had to say. You can't live off the occasional crumbs he throws your way. But only you can decide how long you want to ride this rollercoaster hoping that your XH will be the man you want.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. Abraham Lincoln
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. Theodore Roosevelt
I donated eggs for a lot of reasons. The first being that when I was 17, I was misdiagnosed with PID and told that they didn't think I could have children. Well, I had a few months thinking I was infertile, and it was terrible. I cried my eyes out, outside the clinic and we vowed to have a baby as soon as possible, hence DD1's birth when I was 18.
When she was a year old, I enquired about donating eggs because I wanted to help women facing this plight (the minimum age limit for donating eggs was 19) and they sent me an information pack but at that time I was setting up my business and having more of my own children so I was too busy. I decided to put the idea on the back burner for a few years.
Then I also had 2 miscarriages, 2 threatened miscarriages and 1 pregnancy which I stopped in 2003. There were medical probs, but it would have lived and my reasons were more social (sitch with Andy and the court) and mental health reasons (depression).
It was a horrific experience and has plagued me with guilt for the last 2 years. I told myself after that, that I would do everything in my power to create life instead of destroying it so I again thought of the egg donation, but I was still in court at the time so couldn't.
I lost DD3 at the same time (she used to live with me), of course I had already lost my elder two, so I sunk myself into raising the one daughter I had left. It doesn't cure the emptiness, though.
Then this March I took my kids for a birthday party at Lanky Bill's Fun Shack and there was this poster on the wall, saying 'COULD YOU GET ANOTHER WOMAN PREGNANT?' and then this web address for egg donation. I took down the details and when I got home, I looked them up, found the CARE clinic in Nottingham (pioneers of IVF and creators of the world's first IVF baby) and I phoned them and said 'Do you need any eggs?' They had at that time, 178 women on the waiting list for eggs, so I started going there in April. I had to have a month or so off because of my m/c and another month off because of side-effects, but 7 months later, I have finally donated, and 9 years after I first got the idea.
I don't think I am a bad mother; I think he thinks I'm a bad mother, and I think he plays on that because he knows I am bothered by what others think, esp. him. I should be stronger, but I'm not. All I want is peace, at any cost. I'm too tired for any other option.
I agree he is totally unstable. I quoted what he said to me about taking things slow and 'we have a future' etc and he completely denied saying it, even though it was only 4 days prior.
It's like he'll say or do something and then a few days or weeks later will re-invent it to suit his current agenda. I told him that in those words. But at any rate, I am starting to believe that out of the two of us, he is the one with the mental illness, and I am going to do my best to keep away from him as much as possible.
I really wish you were here to make that cup of tea - sounds very inviting! I've had lots of water and that seems to have taken the fever down, and I slept whilst DD4 was in nursery.
Hi Jo, I also agree with all that Liv had to say. Of course, you know I'm not a big Andy fan.
Many years ago, before I was married, I dated a guy that made me crazy. Very similar to Andy in that he always kept me off balance as to his feelings, expectations, etc. However, he wasn't cruel like Andy is. After 2 yrs of me being a total nut case, I knew that to save my own sanity I had to get away from him even though I "thought" I loved him desperately.
I did some pretty drastic things. I moved, quit my job and got another one, got a different phone number, etc. He continued to look for me and ask people about me but none of my friends would tell him anything. They knew I was desperate to save myself from his craziness. About 8 months later, we met up and I was completely over him. I looked at him and wondered why I ever fell for him in the first place.
People that hurt you physically or emotionally do not love you. Period. I really do think that Andy is unstable. Maybe he has a drug problem. He definitely doesn't like to be without a woman in his life. Just don't allow you to be that woman any longer.
I've noticed over the last several months that you seem happier when you don't have much contact with him. Stay the course, Jo. You don't need him. If anything, he needs you to control and have power over to feel good about himself.
Seriously, drugs, OW1, OW2, You cant deal with people like this Jo. When you talk with people that do what Andy does, what is talking back to you looks like Andy but it is not Andy. Its the dope annd someone who always has an escape door if things get rough.
Drugs and OW are not part of a person that wants a commited relationship. Drugs and OW are part of someone's life who wants what they want when they want it. They want things easy and can't or don't want to do the work that it takes to ger through the tough parts of life.
If you want a life with Andy, the drugs have to go. Same with getting drunk if that ever is or was a problem.
Take care of yourself Jo. The dream thing is interesting.
Dope is weed, y'know, cannabis, which is actually legal in the UK now since they changed the law recently. It is legal to have a small amount on you to smoke, but illegal to poscess large quantities or to sell it on. It's one of the more mild drugs.
He started smoking it when he was 15, not helped by the fact that his step-father does. I put up with it till he was 22, then he took me to this dope party at his parent's house and one of the men got so stoned and drunk, he stumbled into our DD's bedroom, woke them up and scared them (they were then aged 2 and a half years and about 8 months old).
My babies were crying and I was furious so I told Andy never to smoke again. He didn't until just a few months before he left me, when apparently he took it up in secret and used polo mints to disguise the smell.
I thought until the last few days that it was just a very ocassional thing (as when we used to house share in 2003 I only ever saw him smoke about twice), but on these 2 recent visits to his house, he has been smoking ALL THE TIME.
He smoked it right after breakfast (not a good sign), every time Rose or EX-OW1 come in (about 3 times) he smoked it with them, he smoked it in front of our children (when he always told me he didn't - and he told me before that he would only smoke in the garden, he didn't, then in the evenings he was smoking all night on both evenings, except for when he was eating his meal.
He smoked it when I was having a miscarriage, he smoked it right after I'd come out of hospital from a general anasthetic.
It was like he was a completely different person when in his home than how he behaves when he visits mine. He also evidently is still emotionally attached to EX-OW1 even though there is no physical R anymore, as he spent more time with her after I came home from surgery, than me.
He leaves the kids with her all the time, from what I saw (instead of me), and even when I do have them and do fun stuff with them like baking, he still criticizes me, this time because I don't phone them in between times.
Well, he doesn't phone DD4 ever except on her birthday and whenever I phoned in the past, I always got one of his OW, so that just upset me and I stopped calling. I'm not going to phone ever, and this is another one of his control things. He's always going to find some deficite with my parenting, no matter what I do or whether I phoned them or not.
Would you believe that he cited me disagreeing over DD1 having earrings as a reason why we can't be together (that was in April 05, for heaven's sake!). He cites little, tiny, unimportant things like that from MONTHS and MONTHS ago to justify sleeping with me and then running off.
I told him that was pathetic, and that earrings didn't even matter in the scheme of things, and that he was expecting a partner and a mother for his children to literally agree with EVERYTHING he thinks regarding them.
That's why I just can't be there for them and don't plan on being a part of their lives; I know some people on here think harshly of me for not trying to see them more, but he's so freaking controlling that I can't. If he can get so het up about me telling my DD1 not to wear earrings (which I can, she is after all my DD), then I just can't put myself through the stress of trying to parent them.
I am far, far happier and calmer when all of them are not there, because I have peace then, a break from his constant criticisms and from being talked down to, I can do what I like, when I like and not have someone telling me how crap I am. I would be miserable for the next 15 years if I had to parent them like that. I just won't do it, they are his excuse to be emotionally cruel to me.
When I reminded him that I tried to be there for him when his dad died, he just rounded on me that 'it wasn't that difficult' for me. The man just doesn't think about any other human being, only his own needs. I said, 'Andy, your father died, I was having a miscarriage, I was looking after the kids all the time for you and never once did you ask how I was with losing this baby, now you just compare me to EX-OW1 and tell me she is better at looking after our children.'
He cringed when I said that but didn't say anything in response.
I can't, I just can't. Seeing him and how he is at his home, and how he couldn't even be there for me when I'm having surgery, his obviously strong friendship with OW, the smoking, the drugs, the indifference.
I am walking away from the lot of them, I have to for my own sanity. Since I realised that after thinking about it for the last couple of days, I have felt so much calmer and more at peace with myself.
I am only 28, I could start again at this young age, with every aspect of my life. I could change my job, go volunteering in the rainforest or something (I have seen placements advertised for 4 to 6 weeks, and they give you all the training etc), I could carry on writing, broaden my social circle, meet somebody new and maybe even have a family with someone who actually wants me to be a mother.
I am sure, even with R's being uncertain, I would not find someone that treats me as bad as Andy, again.
I've got my trip to London, my makeover, and a holiday coming up in the next few weeks which I am really looking forward to, my books are just coming out right now, my DD is going to star in the pre-school Christmas Concert and they're making it into a DVD. I completed my dream of being an egg donor, I have DOZENS of reasons to be happy, and I could be happy all the time if I just let go of the crazy idea that I am part of his family.
I can make my own family. I need to do this or I will just go under; I have invested 4 years of my life trying to fix a situation and to mother my non-custodial children, and that in my opinion is about 2 years too long. I won't find love and happiness, and have a family that I can actually be part of until I let go of this.
I wanted to carry on trying but seeing what he is like and still being put down after everything I have tried to do for all of them these last few weeks, I have genuinely had enough this time.
From now on it will be about me and DD4 and only us.
