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She DID accidentally give the wrong medication to a child. She is pregnant. Whatever she takes can pass through the placenta to the baby.
But hey, at least she doesn't "look" like an addict. SMH.
I think I have to divorce my wife
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But hey, at least she doesn't "look" like an addict. SMH.
I’m well aware of what she did. I didn’t just wake up to this situation yesterday. I’ll be honest - I’m concerned about the baby now but it just doesn’t feel the same to me right now as an actual living breathing fully formed person living outside of her body. I’m pissed off about what she’s been doing while pregnant and know the negative short and long term effects it could have but the level of rage I feel when I imagine the baby or child ingesting something possibly lethal after birth is on another level. I feel very disconnected about the thing growing inside her right now. It doesn’t mean I don’t care. I feel somewhat powerless right now because it’s not growing inside of me. I think more about what will happen once he or she is born. I spend most nights in bed lying awake and researching things like the effect of opioid use in a developing fetus, the possible behavioral and cognitive problems he or she might have, things i never thought I’d be dealing with. By the way, your previous comments are correct - I was irresponsible and this pregnancy shouldn’t have happened.
I think my comments about her appearance are being misinterpreted. I don’t mention it as a way to say her addiction is any less serious or that she’s any more responsible to care for a child than any other addict out there.
She’s a junkie and her life totally revolves around her drugs and she’s not different than a disgusting looking person living on the street in that respect. I say it more because I think many people, especially those who have not know someone in their life with this problem hear “heroin addict” and it’s like this one singular image of this messy toothless drug fiend comes to mind and they can’t fathom how I haven’t left her ages ago. In their mind the person is dirty disgusting heroin addict and that is all they are. In reality my wife, like many addicts, doesn’t look like that and to those who love them they are not reduced to ONLY an addict - it’s way more complex than that. Maybe everyone on this site already know that but I’m used to people not being able to realize that.
I’m not saying that she is special or different than any other addict. Of course she’s special to me but I don’t think she has some sort of super power that makes her any less susceptible to the effects of this drug and lifestyle. I’ve seen the disgusting side of it. When she’s in full blown addict mode and actively using she’s filthy, makes a mess of our home, lies, and hurts people. I’ve witnessed her shoot up, seen the track marks, stayed awake all night to make sure she was still breathing at times, watched her nearly die from an overdose (she’s had 2, but only one since I’ve known her), not to mention the time she was in the hospital for days because the drugs caused such bad constipation that she hadn’t pooped in weeks. Everyone at the company I work for knows my wife is a junkie. When living with her I barely leave the home except to go to work because I’m so worried about her either killing herself or doing something disastrous like burning the house down. I live with constant anxiety and feel the need to constantly check in with her when I’m away. Staying away from home has been so difficult but I’ve managed to stay away for a month. I’m usually sick with worry and still feel the need to be in constant communication with her. She’s not to blame for the last several things I mentioned. Those things are my choice because I’ve chosen to stay with her up to this point. I’ve done that to myself. It took me a while to realize that.
I notice a difference in her appearance, but someone who didn’t know what she was like before would probably never guess her issues unless they saw her nodding off. I was only trying to explain that she’s doesn’t look like this monstrous crazy drug fiend on the surface. It DOES make it more difficult for me as far as trying to detach from her, despite all of the ugliness I’ve seen. It’s not as if she relapsed and suddenly became a different person. I sometimes wish that had happened, as if she could just suddenly totally transform into a literal monster so I wouldn’t be able to see any traces of the person I married. I still see parts of that person when I look at her and in her personality at times. I feel like she’s still in there somewhere. Being in a relationship with an addict just does crazy things to your mind. I fear what will happen to her if I leave and she’s left to her own devices. There are a number of terrible things that could and would likely happen. I get that I’m supposed to let her fall and to not enable her in any way but it’s so much harder than I ever thought it would be.
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I recommend that you put your money into divorce first or you are going to have to split all that money with her. Once you file, any money that you save is yours alone.
Everything you’ve said here is spot on.
I want to trust her but let me be clear that I will not trust her to take care of a child. There are no plans for me to ever leave her alone with a kid. It will take a long time and a huge long term effort on her part before I would ever trust her with that.
I do feel that she should be given a chance to be the mother of her child and to be involved in her child’s life. It’s not the life I ever wanted for a child of my own but it feels wrong trying to completely sever them from each other without at least giving her a chance to get her crap together. It’s just figuring out a safe way to do it and limiting any possible harm. I do not want her to have any sort of custody over this child. Part of the hesitation with divorcing her is that I feel like if I stay married to her I can just have total control over the situation. If we divorce, the courts will be involved unless she will agree to some sort of plan my lawyer and I come up with and I don’t see that happening. I know it sounds nonsensical, but being in a relationship like this sort of makes you obsessed with trying to control situations since there’s this crazy thing happening in your life that’s totally out of control. You’re constantly in damage control and trying to keep everything in order until you can manage to detach from this person. I understand I have a lot of work to do because this has totally screwed with me and altered my brain and behavior as well.
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Why aren't HER PARENTS stepping in to help support her right now while you are staying away?
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It is not nonsensical at all, it's called co-dependence...and you should know that if your child spends any significant time around her when she's using, that child will develop those same coping mechanisms, except with no healthy frame of reference for how relationships should be (like you have).
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The problem with this is that you can never control her. Yes, you would be able to shield the child from her, but you can do that better divorced, if you can get full custody. If you stay with her, you won't be able to protect your finances or the disruption that she will cause on a daily basis. It's better to make your life apart from her where you do have actual control over most of it. (We can never have control over everything.)
Her not having you there to clean up after her makes her more accountable for her own actions. It allows for natural consequences better than if you are there trying to keep life going properly in the household. With you there to clean up after her all the time, she can disassociate from her responsibilities more easily.
She has deserted you. She has deserted the marriage. She is abusing your child and can't stop until he is born. This will continue if you stay married to her. If you divorce and get full custody, all of you will have a better chance of recovery.
I agree that it's the right thing to do to allow for your child to have a relationship with his mother, but this really isn't about your wife and what she wants. This is about what is best for the child. If it can be done in a healthy manner, it would be good for your child to have a mother who loves him, even if she can only visit him from time to time.
I think they’re exhausted by it all. I wish she would leave our house and go live with her parents. In part so that I could have my house back and so that I would know she wasn’t all alone, but that’s not fair to them. Her mom does want to help and be involved with the baby. I think she’s scared I will take the baby away and she’ll never be able to see her grandchild, her first grandchild. She’s concerned for the baby and she doesn’t believe her own daughter is fit to be a mother but I think she feels the same way that I do about wanting her to have a chance at being involved in some capacity. I’m sure the tides would change if I tried to just cut all ties and run. Her dad seems to think she’s just going to give birth and start caring for this baby like any normal mother and somehow she’ll be cured. He’s delusional, worse than me.
My parents have been telling me to divorce her since they found out about her drug use. It was depressing telling them the news of the pregnancy because it was not a happy announcement like it should have been. It was a sad day for them. My mom is constantly stressing about it but they will support me in this 100%. One of my sisters is a stay at home mom and has already offered to take care of the baby while I work. I feel guilty putting that burden on her but she says she wants to do it. I have a somewhat flexible schedule that I set myself but I can sometimes work 7 days a week and/or evenings and that is really required for what I do. I’m lucky to have my family because I’m not sure I could pull this off completely on my own.
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Having a strong family support system is gold. You are extremely blessed. My family is like this too. My daughters share childcare, as they each work a part-time job. It does my heart good to see all my grandchildren loving and enjoying each other. They spend a lot of time together. So don't feel badly about taking your sister up on her offer. I'm sure you will be able to help her out in some ways as well. As long as she feels appreciate by you, I'm sure she'll do whatever she can to help. And thank her husband too, because he is making this possible as much as your sister is.
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Hey, I've been thinking of you...how are things going this week? Have you received the results of the paternity test yet?
No results yet. I’ve started to fantasize that it won’t be my kid. Maybe that is a good way to summarize how this week has been going for me mentally. I’ll come back and explain more later. It’s still early today and if I get into it now it might derail me mentally for the rest of the day.
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Just my opinion, but considering she’s on drugs now, has done heroin during the pregnancy, and accidentally takes dog pills (if heartworm preventative it was probably ivermectin, if dewormer, probably poison….
I would not bring a baby into the world that is addicted to drugs and sure have behavioral and cognitive Disorders. Life is hard enough without being born with at best, major handicaps. Just my opinion.
Even if the baby is not yours, I think she should terminate the pregnancy. This is crazy to do this unmerciful thing child. I think what she has done should be criminal.
listen to what you’ve said. She’s ONLY OD’d once since you’ve known her. Dude, how many times is too many?
You aren’t just ruining your life by staying with this woman. You enabling her is going to ruin that baby’s life as well.
She was LAUGHING about taking dog medicine accidentally while pregnant. Normal people would be in tears and at the hospital begging to verify that the dog medicine wasn’t harmful to her baby. Your wife is absolutely an unfit mother and has no business having a child.
I would not bring a baby into the world that is addicted to drugs and sure have behavioral and cognitive Disorders. Life is hard enough without being born with at best, major handicaps. Just my opinion.
Even if the baby is not yours, I think she should terminate the pregnancy. This is crazy to do this unmerciful thing child. I think what she has done should be criminal.
listen to what you’ve said. She’s ONLY OD’d once since you’ve known her. Dude, how many times is too many?
You aren’t just ruining your life by staying with this woman. You enabling her is going to ruin that baby’s life as well.
She was LAUGHING about taking dog medicine accidentally while pregnant. Normal people would be in tears and at the hospital begging to verify that the dog medicine wasn’t harmful to her baby. Your wife is absolutely an unfit mother and has no business having a child.
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Most likely nothing a dog will take that will hurt a human. However a dog can eat rotton things that will give a person food poisoning.
To be clear, we never had a discussion where we came to an agreement to keep this baby. She had already made that decision. It was not something I encouraged. Even though I will be the one with most if not all of the responsibility, I have no say in this baby coming or not and I’ve accepted that now. My reaction at the time was not so calm or polite. There are a lot of variables at play with various possible outcomes but at this point, 17 weeks along, I’m planning on a baby being here by Thanksgiving and for me to be the primary parent. There is no way she will get an abortion at this point and even though this is a total crap show it’s a bit too far along for me to feel comfortable with the idea of that no matter how this all turns out.
It was a prednisone pill for a 14 pound dog. If she didn’t have addiction issues and accidentally took that pill I can guarantee she wouldn’t be at the hospital crying over it. I of course looked it up, mainly concerned over possible interactions with the medication she’s on now, but a tiny dose of almost all medications is not going to cause any harm to a fetus and most rational people know that. Maybe a call to the doctor to be sure and move on. Still nothing to take lightly and it could have been worse if she’d taken a larger dose of something that could have interacted very badly.
The medication she’s on now is an opioid but it’s prescribed by a doctor and it’s far healthier and safer than any street drug. It makes her extremely tired and she has a hard time functioning to the point where she’s been in tears on more than one occasion because she’s actually trying to get something productive done and it’s like treading water fighting the sleepiness and brain fog. She’s asked multiple times for them to reduce the dose but they’ve refused to adjust it. They keep telling her it’s normal to be really tired at the beginning but she’ll adjust. It’s been a month and she’s not adjusted. She would like to taper off of it but that’s not standard practice. She found a doctor who does ween women off opioids during pregnancy but he’s in another state.
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You seem pretty calm, cool, and collected about things. Seems opposites do attract.
I wish there was a way to change your wife.
Wishing you and that baby some luck.
Your wife is an incredibly selfish person.
I wish there was a way to change your wife.
Wishing you and that baby some luck.
Your wife is an incredibly selfish person.
Believe it or not I was in two long term relationships with normal stable women before this and everyone said what perfect matches we were each time. I got bored with both of them and was the one to end the relationship both times.
I used to be an emotional wreck about my wife. I’ve yelled, cried, pleaded, tried to make all sorts of deals with her, punched 3 holes in the walls once, which I’m not proud of and is not typical of me whatsoever.
At this point I’m sort of past those things. Eventually I just came to this numb sort of acceptance. Not that I wasn’t still a wreck over everything inside but I learned that all of the yelling crying and pleading did nothing. I then entered a phase where I told myself I either had to accept the way she was or leave. This is what they tell you in naranon and in related literature. I have a hard time with a lot of it and find some of it pretty stupid, but put into practice it often ends up making sense. For your own sanity you either need to accept the person’s behavior and realize that the yelling crying and pleading is just a waste of your energy and if you don’t leave then you need to just move on and focus on your own boundaries. I have been on the verge of divorcing her multiple times. Then this happened.
You just get used to these things in a twisted way. So the dog pill incident pissed me off and it could have been bad, but it’s nothing that I’m going to walk around enraged about days later. It’s a drop in the bucket compared to the other things I’ve dealt with.
There is an unhealthy part of me that has to defend her and protect her which I hate but I recognize. But when people say things that aren’t true I have to correct it. She’s not “using drugs” now. She’s on a prescription medication. One that she doesn’t want to be on but she is taking because that’s what the “experts” say to do. The baby also is to guaranteed to have a major handicap. Long term research is surprisingly sparse, but there are increased chances of things like depression, ADHD, learning disabilities. I can’t do anything about it until the baby is here and even then it could be years down the road until something emerges. I think the biggest handicap the kid will have is a mother who isn’t reliable and cannot provide everything a mother should. That’s what I’m most worried about right now but my control over that is limited as well. When I say that, it doesn’t mean that I think it’s not a big deal or that I’m not pissed off at her for it. I am angry and worried. But if you had dealt with some of the stuff I have, you’d understand why I can at least acknowledge that what she’s doing now is way better than what she was doing before and to just be thankful that she’s following the doctor’s instructions. I’m trying to accept the current situation as is because I have no control over it or what’s already happened. I’m just trying to focus on what I do have control over.
I got the results at 5:30 this morning and I’m the dad. I knew I would be but glad I have proof now so I can make some more concrete plans.
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The only response I have is that you said you have to accept things abd have no control over it. I think you do have some control. You have a proven, indisputable addict on your hands. Right now, there is not a judge in the world that wouldn’t grant you a fair divorce and give you full custody of the baby.
You would then have total control over your life. I urge you to do that. Stop sitting in your hands and “ accepting“ things abd saying you have no control. That’s been your entire problem all along. You’ve accepted the unacceptable.
You would then have total control over your life. I urge you to do that. Stop sitting in your hands and “ accepting“ things abd saying you have no control. That’s been your entire problem all along. You’ve accepted the unacceptable.
The idea is if you remain in a relationship with this person you need to accept the things you can’t change, such as their drug use. It doesn’t mean you are okay with it, but you acknowledge that this is what they are doing and that you have no control over it. You’re then supposed to create boundaries for yourself and work on controlling the things you do have control over (ie yourself and your own behaviors, not another person). If you remain in a relationship with this person, you have to accept the way they are and focus on yourself instead of constantly trying to make them change or control what they do or don’t do. I don’t agree with all the tenants of naranon and co- dependency, but I do understand this idea of acceptance.
I now accept that she’s going to have the baby and I have no say. I accept that she used heroin during the pregnancy and there’s nothing I can do to go back and change it. I accept that she is on a medication right now that’s not ideal but is what is medically advised and cannot control that either. I do realize there are things moving forward that I do not have to accept and that I do have control over. I cannot control that she’s the mother of this baby. It’s not up to me to strip her of her parental rights. I could potentially put all my efforts into possibly getting the courts to do that, but chances are at this time that would not happen. She has not done enough to lose all rights yet (in the eyes of the court). In fact, if she says and does all the right things there’s no guarantee I’ll get sole custody either (at least at first, it could and would likely change after she makes a mistake). Even if the courts deemed her unfit from the moment the baby comes out, she’s still that kid’s mother forever. That part I cannot control.
I mentioned that I am trying to focus on things I can control, and that does include what will happen once the baby is born. You know that as a father I have no rights over the baby while it’s still inside her and as hard as it is I’m trying to accept that while doing what I can to support her in staying on track.
I’ve come to the realization that I need to divorce her if for nothing else but to protect my own parental rights. I refuse to have my child taken away from me because she screws up and I’m married to her or living in the same household. This is something I can control and so I am planning to do it. There are many other reasons why divorce is a good idea but it’s easy to sometimes push those aside, make excuses, and rationalize, but not this reason. I can file for divorce while she’s pregnant but it won’t be granted until after. I have no worries about it being granted.
I’m scared about the court awarding her some sort of custody or unsupervised visitation that I’ll truly have no control over until she screws up. I’m scared about leaving her with no health insurance. I’m terrified she’ll do something wreckless when she finds out what I’m planning. I do not think that I can completely stop supporting her in some way. I see myself doing all sorts of planning to make sure that even after we are legally divorced I can make sure that she isn’t just left with nothing and nobody. It sounds crazy I know but this is the best compromise I can make with myself right now.
I plan to tell her about my plans ahead of time and to explain why this has to be done. I can already anticipate the reaction and will be prepared for everything she’ll try to do. But I think if I can make her understand that it’s not to punish her but to protect our kid and to ensure he or she doesn’t end up in foster care or living with relatives that I absolutely have to do it. I have to be able to have finances that are protected from her access as well. Our child needs that sort of security and I’m hoping she can come to understand that. It’s going to be incredibly difficult for me to do. At this time I’m not interested in stripping her parental rights and am hoping that this will at least scare her into realizing she has to do more to make herself a healthy trustworthy parent if that’s what she ultimately wants to be. I do think she has it in her somewhere because I saw how amazing she was when she was dedicated to her sobriety, but it will take a long time and immense effort and dedication and will be completely up to her to decide.
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