You'll forgive me if this isn't the right subreddit for this. My girlfriend reddits, is quite the sharp lady, and could probably figure out I am talking about her. So I'm trying somewhere she wouldn't be normally subscribed to in hopes I can speak/think freely on a throwaway.TL;DR of the situation is at a young age, my girlfriend had an ovarian cyst requiring removal. In the last year it was determined her other ovary had a cyst and just Monday it was re-evaluated and it is now gotten bigger.We've only been together a few months but our past history with relationships has brought us really close. We're both in our 20's (where she's closer to 20 and I'm closer to 30) and we've already begun theorizing the possibility of family/marriage/whatnot.So with the news, she spoke with her mother and found out that she is more than willing to financially and otherwise help to raise a theoretical child if my girlfriend has the chance now to bear her own before having her last ovary removed. She herself is not fully ready to be a mom but if this is her only chance at having and raising her own child without a surrogate, or being forced into adopting, etc. she's thinking about taking the plunge.And then that leaves me. She is absolutely not forcing me into being defacto sperm donor for this theoretical child (we won't know what the options are until she sees a specialist soon). Initially, she would ask that we draft up paperwork where I give up my parental rights in the security that if things ever go awry between us, I cannot attempt to take the child away from her. The contingent I would want is that in the future my rights can be restored in the future or by child's age whichever. I avoid child support while retaining the ability to be dad, or otherwise as a part of the child's life in some way.For me, I'm not quite ready as a person to transition into a dad. I've been fortunate enough to have only one possible pregnancy scare with any women in prior relationships and otherwise have gotten lucky in that I'm able to be childless and focus on graduating college, securing a job in my career field, and moving out again (I moved in with my grandfather after my grandma passed away a few years back- got free rent out of giving up my apartment and I'm blocks from campus).I'm not quite ready to be a dad for myself but I do care for my girlfriend enough that I'd want to be the one giving her a child. I've been the boyfriend to women prior to her that have their own kid from a past relationship and the notion of raising someone else's child instead of my own is still just strange to me. I also have a friend that I got to watch go from boyfriend to dad. It's inspiring for that, but to me it's just not the same.When I broke the news to my best friend last night of this possibility, he told me to wait and think about it. Think about how my parents would react (neither me nor my little sister have kids nor have either of us settled/talked about kids with them). It got me thinking about how my parents could* be angry knowing that I fathered a child and then immediately gave up the rights to. That realization sent me into a shock that I've been stuck on for the last 24 hours.On the other hand, if my girlfriend decides to get pregnant, she will find a donor- and if all continues to go well as it has with us, I'll end up "raising someone else's kid" (to me, which is selfish to think) and I may lose the chance myself to biologically father my own flesh and blood.I have no idea what to think anymore. We're going on a 3 hour road trip, just the gf and I, on Saturday and will have lots of time to talk. I just need some extra opinions on the matter so I don't blindly make a decision that will affect me somehow for the rest of my life.Thanks for reading and I hope someone has some advice that can help guide me through this whirlwind! via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2pHkAYu
No comments:
Post a Comment