Tough Decision

Off-Topic
1

Hey, people…

Me and my girlfriend JUST moved in together after being together for 6 months. At the same time we found out that she is pregnant.

Now, I feel that I`m not ready to “do this”, because, well, Im working part time at a grocery store, and starting my studies this fall, which Im not even sure Ill finish, seeing as Im not even sure if i wanna study the subject (sociology), but just check it out to see if its the “right thing” for me.

My girlfriend on the other hand, cant wait to get the baby, shes ecstatic about it… but like i said, Im not too happy about the situation, because we are not really sure if we are able to live together, having shared an apartment for only 3 weeks. And, not surprisingly, fighting almost constantly.

Because whatever we talk about it ends up as a discussion about whether or not we should keep the baby.
And its a sensitive subject.

She cries herself the sleep almost every night telling me she cant go through an abortion.
Well, the time is running out, shes on her 9th, maybe 10th week, and here in Norway we can only do abortions at week 12, at the latest.

So yeah, this really is urgent…

Im not asking you to make a decision for me, i just want other peoples view on the matter… Even though Im sure there are people out there whos gonna curse me, seeing as this is a very delicate subject to most people… I mean, either youre FOR, or AGAINST, and its an ethical question and all this, beliefs and stuff… you know what i mean?

Anyway…

I havent got the net at home right now, we have ordered it and all, but its a slow process, so ill just come to this internet cafe and look through your replies and reply back…

I mean im so confused, at one moment im sure i wanna get rid of this baby as soon as possible cuz i want something like this to be 110% planned ahead, i want the baby to have a stable family, with a good economy and all the opportunities and benefits that I got when I grew up…

I was no accident.

The other moment Im sure i wanna keep the baby cuz im kinda excited at the same time, becoming a father and all, but its natural isnt it?

Both feelings probably are…

The bottom line is time is running out.

Ill check in on you guys later, I miss Renoise.com… :(

Stuff just really suck right now…

See ya around

EDIT:

I hate it to sound like IM the one running the show, as if IM the one whos going to decide whether or not we should keep the baby, Im not deciding anything, I hate to sound like Im playing God or something…

Truth is we havent decided anything yet, we are still arguing / inegotioating. (or however its spelled)

Sorry if i offended anyone.

The reason Im telling you people is because Ive only told my two best friends, and my mom, noone else, because honestly im embaressed about this.

Sorry for making this post so long.

Bye now

2

Ok, i’ve just read the first couple of lines to get the basic information of your post, dont have time to read the whole stuff because my newborn is taking alot of my time, and thats about what i can say about it, if you’ve done what you wanted with your life, have the degree you’ve worked for so long, made the tunes you wanted, or your ready to put life and your dreams on hold for a couple of years; then go for it. Its times where you actually feel blessed and there are times you will not, like in the morning.

So go for it if your ready, tho you can never really prepare for this. :)

3

Dufey, it’s really brave of you to open up completely and tell us about this! You know it’s impossible to give advice about things of this magnitude… In fact my best advice would be to not do follow anyone else’s advice :rolleyes: You have to do what you think is best… for me things most often work out best when I follow my feelings and don’t think to rational.

Anyway, I hope it all works out somehow. Either way, don’t regret the decision you took afterwards, that won’t lead to any good.

4

Dufey I feel thankfull seeing that you consider “us” forum people as friends.
Me, they… it feels good that you share your private life as you would with your best friends :)

About the subject:
As weird as it goes, I’m about to feed you with some questions you can ask to yourself :)

Life goes on through unpredictable ways… but still, is your girlfriend the girl you decided you want to totally melt with?
We have girlfriends for very different reasons sometimes… and not everyone might be suitable to project your genetics into future because only 2 “entire” beings can shape a new single entity, or at least this is the way it’s supposed to be.
Are you an adult person? Is she?
Note that being adult it does not only means being economically indipendent… but emotively indipendent as well.
DON’T rely on “Acting as an adult” to reach that status… living toghether and having babies in the hope of becoming “more adult” for this… is like eating just a dessert and pretending you have eaten the whole dinner.

Anyway… honestly, the situation you depicted is not exactly leading me to think you’re going to have an happy time… <_<
You know her since 6 months… man… 6 months… barely enough to let your body calm down from the “chemical actraction”…

My opinion is that you have expressed your mind already.

Oh well… anyway… whatever it is, don’t be “convinced” by anyone.
Don’t let MY words “convince” you… don’t let you girlfriend “convince” you.

Feel it

:)

5

Abortion is definetly still a very controversial topic (as much about who gets to have a say and who don’t as the embryo floating in there), and an extremely tough desicion to make for both parents… So I don’t envy you this situation at all, it must be really hard…

My views on the situation are really not interesting, but you should keep some things in mind:

Don’t allow yourself to get bitter over any desicion made! You are in a tough spot right now but when things are in motion you should always face forward in stead of looking back on how things might have been. Be it an abortion and continuing your life as it is, or having this baby…

Also, wether the baby is planned or not won’t make any difference as long as the parents never feel recentment toward it for making such an abrupt change of their life. The kid needs love, food, clothing etc which can all be budgeted somehow. There are no accidents btw, just events. Good or bad? Totally up to you to decide. :)

About education, it will always be there… Knowledge have no expiration date. ;)

I wish you the best luck whatever direction your future holds, coming forward with you thoughts like this is a f****ing inspiration, man!! I’d never have the guts to spill my most inner thoughts and frustration like that… All my respect!!

6

wow… some seriuos decisions you need to make… :blink:

To be honest i think its hard for me to sugest you something constructive.

If i put myself in your situation then i think the most important for me would be how i feel about that girl… If i really love her (and if she loves me of course) then things will work out i think.
You are not 16-17 years old fortunately…

But if that is not the case, and you dont feel like she is the one then i think this would not be the right thing to keep that baby. At least i would make my decisions mostly upon that.

follow you heart. Dont think like “this would be the right/honorous decision” or some like that…

7

As others have said here Dufey, respect for coming forward to everyone here on this and I hope things work out for the best.

I will state that I am personally against abortion in most cases (not going to apologise for this or get into a flame war with anyone over this as it is just my belief).

My first reaction to people who talk about abortion is to think why not adoption?

This would make sense to me if both parties in this didn`t want the baby, but I can see your situation is more complex than this.

I also believe that it is wrong to pressure someone into having an abortion who doesn`t want one, but from your post it seems that you are not doing this anyway.

I know I cannot change you to have the same beliefs as me (where they differ), but on this issue it felt important enough for me to air those beliefs.

Wish you all the best Dufey in a very difficult time.

Paul

8

this is a topic I know well, unfortunately…

I was touched by your words and, even if it is really difficult for me, I will reply.

dufey, I know what you are experiencing: the troubles I’m in now, are due exactly to the same situation.

Yes, this is the damned thing which depressed me so much since January… I’m revealing this just to support dufey. It’s really so strange that this is the only place where I’ve written about this topic, since she didn’t want to spread the news. I’ve just suffered in silence.

Posting this reply as a guest would have been not the best way, because I want to prove that my experience is true, so I write the post using my identity.

Though, my troubles have been already solved, in a way.

My girlfriend always told me she cannot be pregnant, but this proved not to be true right the first time we made love in an unsafe way.

Although she told me lots of time as it would have been great to have a baby, as soon as she had the news, she fallen in panic: she immediately phoned me to say that she wanted to keep this by herself, and left me.

I was shocked, of course. I wasn’t sure about what to do, like you dufey, so I decided to let her decide… I just said: “you are the one who can feel what’s really right”, and she decided that we weren’t ready to form a family because we do not knew each other adequately (we never lived together more than 5 days in a row), so she decided to let the child born without a father, to avoid to let him grow in a potentially terrible family (we both know what this means).

The day after, she phoned again and told me she said bullshit, she said she loved me and wanted to marry me, and we kept on like this for a month then.

She is not italian but lives in Italy since 9 years, so we started to collect info about wedding between italians and foreigners, and stuff like this.

After that period, she felt that way again and just disappeared.

We do not live in the same city, so disappearing was quite easy, though being difficult at the same time (she loved me, after all…)

Yes, that’s sad, and left me a sense of void which I didn’t managed to fill completely in any way until now. I can only wish you that everything will go better than how went to me, but firstable I suggest you to see what she really wants to do, and try to support her, whatever will be her decision, though, of course, trying at the same time to express your opinion, but be careful: really strange stuff will happen during these months: she will have lots of humoral changes, she even won’t want to have you near her, and one hour after she will cry because you’re not there, and stuff like this… so just have patience…

I’m sorry if anyone who knows me in real life will read this one day (Parsec will, but I mean someone who sees me everyday), he will probably hate me, or try to convince me to make another try or whatever…

I’ve made everything a man can to convince another human to make something he WOULD like to make, believe me…

If you read this and you know me in real life, please respect my pain and just keep this for yourself, as I did for 4 months.

Expecially for my former girlfriend:
please forgive me for this. I really miss you.

Things just went this way, and noone but her could ever change them anymore.

Again, have better luck, dufey.

9

You’re an educated man.

Penis in vagina, no adequate birth control, pay the consequences…

Good luck, whatever happens.

10

That is a sad story It-Alien, hope things may pan out around this situation in the future for you.

11

damn Conner… where is your sympathy? :blink:

Its sad, and i really feel the pain for you guys…

12

Hi Dufey, I really can understand how confused you must be, and that is allright!

You two have a hard times right now…You have a hard time, because you are not sure and she have a hard time for the same reason.

I had some of those dark moments myself, and our child was even planned! However I got to know I would lose my dream job maybe two weeks after we got to know she was pregnant.
That made me think sometimes that maybe she should do an abortion and made me sometimes think I regreted that I made her pregnant.

But for most people there will never be a perfect time to get kids.
Either it is study or after that it is career or it is unemployment or it is something else.

It seams like she really want to keep the child, so she probably will.

And then its easier for you if you stop thinking that you even have a choice, because you have to accept the way it is, that you did have sex unprotected. And do the best out of the situation.

Something that I tried to do was to find rolemodels, fathers who had children but still managed to do things after which they wanted.

Look at me, I still hang around here :) I was unemployeed the first 8 months, but when I look back that was only a good thing, I was able to help out.

You say that you want to study and try things out, and I can see that you did not think of a child at this moment in your life.

If you want to study, you will be able to study eventhough you have a child. There are people with children who study.

When the child is about one years old it can go to daycare.
Then you can really concentrate on your studies, its not that long time.

Eventhough its not what you had in mind, it will also be fun.

They might get sick and there will be nights when you can’t sleep much (during the night).
But remember its only the first few months that are though and the days will go by, there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

My son is now 14 months and since he was 8 months he sleeps regularly from like 7-8 o clock in the evening to 8 in the morning, then he sleeps 1,5-3 hours in the day.
And you do not have the child by yourself all the time the child is awake.
So you do have time to do other things.

Sometimes it will be hard though.

But even when they are awake you can do things, read, look on tv, talk to friends, write, listen to music etc. Its also fun, when they are awake.
You will get to play with them, build lego, kick balls, read books, tell them stories, show them the world.
You can teach your child music etc.
You will start to remember things from your own childhood that you have forget.

You want the child to have the benefits you had when you grew up.
It surprised me but they don’t cost much, as far as I know atleast not the first years, and you know happiness does not come from having most money, but from being loved, so as long as your kid is loved it will be happy.

Also girls, that are pregnant get hormones storms, it can make them very easily upset, and cry very much, you should keep that in mind.
She is not like she will be when she is not pregnant.
So if you argue a lot now, it does not have to mean that you will argue that much later.

The fact that you argue is not very strange either.

But if you really try to do the best of the situation you will find out that you will argue less and you will have more good times. (But remember the hormones).

Also there are parents forum on the internet, (search on parents and pregnant in your language that is) they almost allways have a section for fathers or to be where you can ask for more advices.

13

Doing an abortion is pretty disasterous for the hormonal system as well as for your girlfriend’s psychics, it gets fu##ed up pretty bad and you would not know what to do with your girlfriend if you would go through this.
Avoid that at all costs there are plenty solutions that can help you out.

If you worry about having the proper income for taking care of the child, there are lots of foundations that can help with a solution. There are lots of folks who have arrangement because they have a legitimate reason not to be able to take care for their children even if they have the right income: captains on transportboats (shipper-kids) or parents that are considered too young to raise their childeren. They just get raised by another family until they finish their education or their parents have the right living-situation to be able to take care of their own kids.

Think about it, but start looking for that kind of help now.

14

Wow, what a thread. Big respect to Dufey and It-Alien for being honest in such a setting. Positive thoughts to both of you. The whole subject area makes me feel so young and naive, my only advice would be: listen to the thoughts in your heart, they are true. If you deny those, bury them, then the long term pain of that denail will hurt much more than child-care payments.

It’s funny, I read stuff like this and confirms that I really don’t want this to happen to me. I need to conserve as much energy as possible for my art and consciousness development. I’ve not had a girlfriend in 4 years and she was the only half serious one. It didn’t really feel like much either. My passion for music and thinking are much more satifying, much more resonant, so I don’t know how good any of my advice would be :( I find some people have their calling in raising children, while other people can do a lot more good for the world by concentraiting on other things.

And, I think, there are too many couples in the world staying together because they believe they have to. They are so unhappy. There is so much social pressure for people to remain together. Too many obligations locked in misery. Things can get moving again when they break that unnecessary obligation. A hard thing to do… I know…

Not much more can be said… :(

15

Foo?, I see your point and I mostly agree: girls can be a great waste of time and energy, and I also like more to spend time writing music or words rather than go shopping or something like this, and I think we all here feel the same.

This does not mean, however, that you can’t be engaged and be making music at the same time: I’ve been engaged since february 2004 until january 2005 and, though I’ve spent a lot of my time doing things related to my girlfriend, if I look back, I see that during that period I’ve made some of the songs I consider my best works ever, such as “Bound to reality” or “Per un attimo che non passerà”, or “Samba para mi”, and so on.

She was a great source of inspiration both for suffering and for joyness: what is important is to find a girl which has some active interests by herself, so that you will want to share your interests each others, or just respect the other one when he/she wants to stay alone for a period to compose or whatever.

In this case, it is not a waste of time.
I know it’s difficult to find such a girl, expecially in small towns, and I’ve been alone for a long time just like you, and I’m probably going to be alone for a looong period again :)

16

Hey Foo, sure its about social pressure. Because older mature people know that most children needs both its parents as much as possible.
However they also know that these parents need support, because its not good if they are to depressed.

But its about your own happiness.
And taking responsibility for your actions.

If you get a girl pregnant, even by accident, you should support her. Because its not only about yourself, its about her and its also about the child. You don’t have to be togther for the rest of your life but you should atleast try to be together the first year. Because even if the child was not planned you should try to know your own child, its the only way you can become happy I think. If you leave her its a risk that you will lose contact with your own child, and that is something that will probably make you even more unhappy or restless than staying for a while and giving it a try.

17

I believe that from your young and naive point you gave quite some advice! :)

What Foo’s remarking is something “more” than just the dangers of a mindless shopping. Is the generic perception of something that, as a matter of fact, you deal with on a daily basis when you’re into a certain psychology:

  1. …having a “quantum” of inner energy
  2. the fact that this energy is channeled via “intention”
  3. This energy can be diverged to “other” directions/intentions
  4. Social pressure is about deviating this energy

You can… but I think Foo was not saying that this is impossible.
He was just opposing this to a situation where you keep for you your energies instead of diverging them toward “someone-something” else… and I fully understand that.
Personally, being “engaged” sounds like some other suggestion by social pressure… You ARE with that girl in that peculiar moment… or you are alone in that moment. Quite easy and self-evident. This is -reality- (“what happens”)… and starting to give a name to that, calling that “Engagement”… and starting, by that, to imply/expect certain things OUT of -that- peculiar moment… under a certain point of view, is the beginning of the end.
Anyway, I get your point… and I can see your instinct is slowly driving to a similar conclusion as you already detached from the “social” image of the “engaged”.

PS: Hey Itty… maybe it’s true, you can be engaged and do music at the same time… but what do you know? You never did music anyway…
:P :rolleyes: :lol:

18

I think you can’t make her pursuate for abortion, it’s not your decision. Like others said, support the mother. You could try to talk about adoption. You did not tell us what kind (how deep) of relationship you have with your girlfriend, but after 6 months you probably don’t know eachother well enough to know that for yourselves. If she doesn’t like the idea of adoption, make absolutely clear that there is little chance you are made for each other since you only know each other 6 months and it is a fact people marry too often, too soon and divorce. Of course it’s better for everyone if you are a couple, but be sure you can love her for all those years. See, breaking up (/divorcing) after 8 years pretending to be “a happy couple” is more devastating for the kid than when you he/she has a seperate mother/father relation from the beginning.

Be mindful that there should be enough time for study. My father was unemployed and did study with 3 (!) kids around, but I actually did never miss anything because around where we lived it was normal to be “poor”, so it didn’t influence my childhood. Also my mother didn’t work till I was 4 years old and worked half time after that, though I don’t know if kids are more expensive nowadays… :lol:

Though, my father did get a job later on when we were older, this did help when 2 of us kids did go to an universiy. But my point is you should have enough years left to study if she is willing to work part time, later on after you get your degree you can get a “degree aproved” job, since you want to give your kids as much options as possible (to study etc).

19

how about wire hanger? harhar :D

20

I did not read everything but I agree that abortion against her will is the worst you could do. The situation is bad for you but on the other hand, you are about to be a father! You and your girlfriend have created something that will change the world (at least a bit)

But I agree that a baby will change your life and the life of your girlfriend drastically. Even if you two split up, the baby will be there because abortion is a thing ONLY the woman can decide about. And if you split up, you will perhaps not see YOUR child. That may sound harmless now, but when you are really old you need people who love and admire you and an own child will love and like you like nobody else on this planet.

Of course: A child means many changes in the way you live and the child will be staying with you until it is grown up.

I cannot guarantee, that your relationship to your girlfriend will last forever but try the best to get a good relationship with your kid (when it’s there)

Just my2cents