I'm 26, finishing my PhD in a few months, been married for almost 3 years. I've been with my husband for 4 1/2 years. He's a college grad and has a stable job as a software engineer. We own our own home (an old Victorian one-bed apartment in need of some DIY to make it a two-bed, heh). I'm about 13 weeks + 3 days, according to our first scan, which happened on Friday.

Right. So we'd been talking about kids a lot, but never really decided until January that we wanted to try. We thought about our finances and our situation, especially with me finishing the PhD and not in full-time employment.

We thought we'd qualify for government assistance (child-care allowance basically) because our friends had qualified. It was a stupid assumption.

Child-care (daycare) costs approximately £700 - £850 per month in my city. This is approximately $1400 to $1700 per month in US Dollars by the current exchange rate. Topping it all off, I have humongous US Govt student loans to pay back, in the six-digit range.

Long story short, if we have a child, we have to have childcare, because I have to go to work to pay back my student loans. My husband's job pays for the mortgage and basic expenses. My student loan repayments are the same amount as the mortgage repayments. So we thought the government (UK) would let us qualify for child-care assistance. Assuming this, we started "trying" for approximately two weeks, while we waited for an appointment with a government agent.

Turns out, we don't qualify at all. My husband earns too much. We decided we couldn't afford a baby, so we canned the idea and said, "Maybe in a few years". That night, at 2am, I peed on a stick and found out I was pregnant.

And here I am, 13+ weeks later. Really quite unnerved by it all.

I'm not used to being in a situation where I can say, "Jeez, that was dumb, Rat." But here I am. And I am quite ... I dunno.

Are there any ladies out there who thought to themselves, "I don't know how I'm going to feel about my child"? I am not a maternal person. I have never really wanted children, and it's only the fact that I love my husband that I could ever imagine having children. If it wasn't for him, there's just absolutely no way I would want it at all. I always said that if I had become pregnant and didn't want it, I wouldn't know what to do. Now that I am pregnant, I know it's the love from and for my husband that prevents me from termination. But the night we found out I was pregnant, we talked about termination very seriously.

I'm so cerebral. I don't know if I'm going to love this kid or not. My childhood was pretty harsh, and I have never thought of myself as mothering. It's not an instinct I think I have. It frightens me. Also, I've really hated being pregnant... it makes writing up my thesis very difficult. I already resent being pregnant... does that mean I'll resent my child? No child deserves that!

I'm not feeling sorry for myself. I just feel unnerved and bewildered, and more than a bit vulnerable. Not emotions I'm used to feeling 24/7. If you Specktra Moms have some supportive comments, I'd really really like to hear it.

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I'm not a mom. But I hope that my comment is still appreciated.

All I can say is that I'm here for you. I'm sorry that you're going through a rough time. But perhaps your feelings will change as your pregnancy goes on. Maybe when you have the baby your feelings will change and you will love your child more than ever.

Just remember that life doesn't always go as planned. And everything happens for a reason. Good luck with everything

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I don't think termination is right. You willfully were trying for a child so either "suffer" with it or at LEAST be kind hearted enough to give it to a family that will love it....

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for you.

i'm sure that it will all work out. it's perfectly natural to feel scared that you won't be a good mother when you're pregnant. it's a totally new part of your life.

i'm not a mother myself so i can't speak from first hand experience... but i have in the past felt that surge of motherliness (for want of a better word) when meeting little baby relatives. it's odd because it only really happens when the baby is either somehow related to me or the baby of a close friend or colleague. random babies = zero response.

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N15 · red hair · green eyes

Please don't take offense.. but this really peeves me.

I've been married almost 4 years and my husband and I have been trying for the last year and a half to get pregnant. Each month if I am even 1 day late, I take a test... it's negative and I am seriously disappointed about it. We are at the point where we are ready to go to a fertility specialist to help us conceive.

Termination should not be an option. You had sex, sex causes babies, and if you weren't wanting to get pregnant at this time you should've taken preventative action. This isn't anything new.

Be mature enough to deal with it. I don't have anything else to say. Sorry. I don't mean to be a bitch, but it really upsets me because I have been wanting a baby so bad for the last little while it pisses me off when people are ungrateful for this beautiful gift of life they've been given.

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I'm not a mom, nor have I've ever been pregnant, but what you're feeling could just be nerves kicking in about the big change a child will bring. It sure sounds like it....you know....almost like you're over thinking every little thing. You'll manage. Honestly, I have friends (I think we all know women) who don't have a pot to piss in and they manage.

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I don't post here but...

I'm not familiar with the real estate in the UK but is there anyway you can refinance your mortgage to keep the payments more affordable or maybe your husband can ask for a raise. Also, do you have any family members who don't mind babysitting. I have a friend who was in this tight situation as well, she worked nights so she can have the days to herself and the little one while her husband worked and vice versa.

Believe me, what choice you make will affect you life. I had made a choice and still think about it years after.

Good Luck

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Well right now ur going true alot, hormones and everything (dont u love being a woman) u know its hard being pregnant some people say they love it but its not always easy. But i can honestly say when u see ur little angel u will fall in love i promise. You will have these feelings u never thought u had, to protect ur baby with all of ur heart im sure you will be a wonderful mother its ok to feel 100 different emotions while being pregnant i did, Good luck with everything.

Well, I think I was pretty clear above that we aren't terminating this pregnancy. I'm simply scared, feeling quite vulnerable, and looking for some support. I wasn't looking for justifications to help me decide to terminate. I'm at 14+ weeks now, and if I haven't terminated by now, I am not going to.

As for "suffering", I think that's a ridiculous argument.

As for adoption, again, that's out of the question.

I realise from the other thread that you are vehemently pro-life, but I think you should put aside your feelings and think about what I actually posted and the reasons behind the post. Is it really more important for you to state your opinion than to offer a bit of compassion?

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Thank you. I sometimes feel a bit like ... I dunno, like I'm some kind of strange woman for not enjoying the pregnancy and not being in love with the idea of having a baby.

Sometimes the hormones surge and I get this overwhelming sense of happiness. I'm a scientist though (technically an archaeologist, but I'm on the processual side of the field so that makes me a scientist), and I know that's just a surge of hormones. I try to hold on to the emotion because I want to be happy about this, I want to be excited... but at the moment, I am just terrified I'm going to be a terrible mother.

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Thank you. My husband just received a raise in April, so I think it's a little too soon to ask for another one. As for the mortgage, it's only a year old, and even if we refinance it, it wouldn't free up much. I think that's a good option to think about in a year's time if we're really stuck though - thank you for mentioning it.

I have no family on this side of the planet, apart from a cousin and aunt in Germany. My in-laws live a few hours away, and they're completely over the moon about this. I am very lucky to have their support, though I think babysitting may be tricky because they do live a bit further away from us.

We do have friends that can babysit, so that will help. I think ultimately though, what's bothering me is the finances and the worry that we won't have enough to look after the baby the way we wanted.

When we made the choice to try for a pregnancy, we planned out the finances and thought we were fine, so long as we qualified for a certain amount of childcare benefit. We didn't want to raise a child with very little money. We wanted and were trying to be more responsible than that. We were so stupid not to check more thoroughly before jumping in the sack! And maybe I'm so hung up on that financial misplanning that I can't get past the feeling that we've doomed a kid.

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