children . . . . should I give up on the idea?

LignumVitae

Oh Charleeh, I think the fact that those things worry you probably indicate it won't happen to you. I won't go into much detail here but if you want to discuss further then message me. Mr LV comes from a very dysfunctional background which involved alcohol, drugs, violence and lots more tags which would now put a child under the care of somebody other than their parents. Because he had all that to deal with he is a doting dad, he loves our girls, I have to stop him being too over the top for things like christmas and birthdays (no point in going too wild at 19 months). I won't lie, there are times when he struggles to know how to parent having never experienced being parented in a traditional sense but he can talk about it and we discuss it. There are times he feels he could or should have done better but there are never times he could or should have loved them more and I imagine, as you clearly have a strong relationship with your husband, you found a way to love through all you had been through and as my old and slightly eccentric great aunt wrote on our wedding surfboard - all you need is love. She was quite right!

PS I also cried for lots of my pregnancy, including the night before I was due to be induced that I would be a rubbish mum and that I should stick to dogs. I'm not too terrible at it most of the time

stickywicket

charleeh wrote:

I think I need to research into if the children develop any issues caused by medications - thats the main issue that bothers me.

That shouldn't be an issue if you are simple able to stay off the meds long enough to (a)get pregnant and (b)give birth.

I think maybe you're idealising 'normal' family life and then feeling you can't live up to it. None of us can. We all mess up as parents. There was always a lot of love and laughter in our house but we were never clingy as a family. Having children of their own has brought us and our sons closer together because they've now realised that actually we didn't do such a bad job after all Don't make it too complicated. As long as kids are much-loved you can't go far wrong. As for the possibility of not loving them? I just don't know. It's not something I could ever envisage with mine.