Breakingmom Tales: Or A Collection of Stupidity & Dumb Choices

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yurble
Pretty sure any money he would make would just be poured right back into the hobby. Of course he'll argue it is necessary to build his brand and so on, but there are multiple reasons people can rarely take fairly niche hobbies and do well with them, and one of those reasons is that they are so attached to it that any success feels like a justification to keep going deeper into it.

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He has been quite insufferable lately about this. We have two little ones, back to back, two c section nonetheless so the dr made it clear that I needed to go on birth control because my body needed time to recover and a third pregnancy soon could be dangerous. So I have an iud right now and he wants me to take it off I’m not even one year postpartum with my second and dr said it at least needed 18 months between pregnancy but also I don’t want any more kids so there’s that.

But he wants us to use natural family planning or whatever the name is, I don’t because I know he won’t respect the schedule or calendar I don’t know how you would call it but hope you get it and I’m still breastfeeding so I’m not even sure we would know my fertility window I haven’t had a period in a while. Anyway he guilts trip me and is mad about it as hell because I won’t give in. I know this is controlling even though he makes plenty of excuses why I need to get off it. I’m good with my two little ones they’re a lot of work already and take all my energy and time. Disclaimer this is just a vent because sometimes I have to get things off my chest and I have no one to listen, no need to tell me to leave, I know my situation sucks but it is what it is, im just venting.

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Sadly this is not necessarily true. I'm a student midwife and have had patients whose abusive partners ripped theirs out. I knew of a patient (not mine) whose partner cut their nexplanon out of their arm. Hopefully OPs husband is safe, but the fact that he's pushing for this at this time is a huge red flag.

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I(32F) am a single mother of two kids (6M and 5m F). I am a single mother by choice (my kids are donor conceived).

I am lucky enough to have a good job (French teacher in a private school), and a paid off house (parents’ life insurance and inheritance).

Before I had either of my kids, I made sure to have a year’s living expenses saved, then I would take a sabbatical to recover from birth, as well as bond with my kids. While on sabbatical, I still tutor some kids for some extra income.

My friend (34F), just had a baby 2 months ago. She is the breadwinner in her household, and her husband has been unemployed since he was laid off during COVID.

It was great to be pregnant at the same time, as well as having a friend with a newborn. But it has turned sour.

She has been saying how jealous she is of me being able to take off a whole year from work, how she would have loved to not worry about losing their home, how she doesn’t even have a couple hundred dollars in her savings account, let alone a whole year’s worth of living expenses….

I usually ignore it, or brush it off, because I kind of can understand the stress she is under.

Well, starting about 10 days ago, she started hinting at not being able to afford daycare, and any mention of her husband taking care of their kid is brushed off. Then she started remarking on how much free time I must have, which I deflected by saying -truthfully- that being a single mom to a baby and a small kid left me no free time actually.

Then last night she came out with it, and asked if I could “do her a favor” and watch her kid while she’s at work. I was firm, but polite, when I said that I couldn’t, that I am not capable of watching two kids under 6 months.

She started almost begging me, saying she can’t afford daycare, and if she is not back at work, she will lose her job, and they will end up homeless. I again brought up her husband, and she said that he was not good with kids, and isn’t capable of taking care of her kid.

I kept saying no, she kept pushing, until it escalated to her calling me heartless, and me telling her that it’s not my problem she chose to have a kid with a useless man.

Now she blocked me, I am feeling very guilty about what I said, and feeling like an AH.

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Cambion
From the other pit of breeder despair - AITA - Moo asks if she's an asshole for telling her friend she married and bred with a worthless man-baby who, despite being unemployed for several years, cannot watch his own kids because he's "not good with them."

Then, uhhh, how's about you GET GOOD WITH THEM?? Since you're their PARENT?? The hell kind of a horseshit excuse is that?

The author tells her friend her husband is useless because the Moo friend wanted the author to brat-sit her new loaf. She wants the author to watch her kid "as a favor" while she goes to work because she's too poor to afford daycare. She was wise to say no because that "just a favor" would turn into a regular thing.

I also see no mention of paying the author for her time, so I assume she would be expected to do it for free. I also love how this woman seems to think the author has free time with a newborn and a six-year-old. Force Duh to watch the kids. They may not get ideal care, but they probably won't die and it's free.

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Cambion
Sounds like she let an abuser charm his way into her life and probably once he got a ring on her finger, turned off all the facades and showed his true colors. I hope she can either find birth control he can't fuck with or can get the hell away. I wouldn't even take the brats with me. Let him deal with them since he wanted them. What a fucking shitshow.

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Venting is great but it sounds like she knows her situation sucks. I had to finish my education and get a job before I could even think of leaving and I know it takes time and planning, but she really doesn't have a choice. This kind of abuser would likely have no problem killing her if he felt the need.

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TLDR; my husband says he won’t clean up empty beer cans covered in dip spit until I legally change my last name to his. Am I overreacting by intentionally not changing it now?

My husband and I got married about a month ago, just a “sign the papers thing” since it’s my second and he agreed he didn’t want a wedding. I agreed to go by his last name colloquially if people used it and said eventually I’d do it legally.

However, I have a 5 year old from my first marriage and a 2 month old from ours who is breast fed. My husband sometimes works long hours, so I have been single parenting all day and evening for about a month now. Even when he is home in the evenings around dinner he doesn’t help with either kid and just watches TV. He will drink 3- 4 cans of beer, leave them on our coffee table, and dispose of chunks of dip on the top of the cans. Sometimes he will move them to the kitchen counter. (Side note- he told me he would stop dipping when I got pregnant. He says he technically did because now his dip only has nicotine and no tobacco).

Also, I changed my name for my first marriage and it’s a lot more leg work than just getting a new ss card, which he can’t seem to understand. He thinks it’s a universal automatic thing that just magically applies to everything else in your life (yes I have explained this to him, doesn’t change anything).

The other night he brought up me legally changing my name and then texted me about it the next morning. I responded with a picture of his beer can/ dip pile and said “clean up after yourself”. He said he would clean up once my name was changed.

As you can imagine, I have been asking him to clean up after himself for years. He will do it once or twice but more often than not I wake up to a messy, beer can filled living room that smells like dip spit. The dip spit is also found in every sink in the house, the toilet and the tub, in counters, tables etc. I try to be sympathetic because he works long hours and is on call about once a month.

As I said earlier I have two children in the house who have to live with his mess everyday, with which he seems to have no problem. He also is pushing me to have another baby as soon as possible, which is def not happening because it’s both unhealthy AND I don’t want to being more children into this house in this state, which I’ve explained to him as well.

Am I overreacting to say there’s no way I’m going through the process of changing my name when he is incapable of being considerate of our home AND thinks that giving me an ultimatum to do the bare minimum should motivate me to change it?

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I’m so jealous of my childfree friend it’s driving me insane
I’m so jealous of my childfree friend it’s driving me insane

Hi everyone,
Throwaway account I just need to vent. I have a 3 year old son. I was 22 when I got pregnant. It was a planned pregnancy but honestly I don’t know what was I thinking. I felt like me and my partner had it figured out at the time and he was the one who really wanted a baby and I just sort of went with the flow. We definitely weren’t ready.

At the time I had a coworker (both of us have quit the job since) who is super childfree, let’s call her Julia. She became my best friend and I will bitch about her in this post but I realize I could not have done it without her. Julia always says she would never ruin her body like that, and she says she’s “more than that”. She’s also radical feminist so sometimes she says stuff like “i would never humiliate myself by raising a child for someone who all he had to do was cum inside/jerk off inside of me” and it bothers me a bit. I had the same point of view until I became the guy who let a man cum inside and now I’m trapped for the rest of my life. It’s frustrating as hell! Don’t get me wrong I love my boyfriend but I feel like our relationship was a lot better when it wasn’t for the baby.

She knew our circumstances and despite her opinion on pregnancy she was my #1 supporter. Changed her rhetoric to “I applaud all women who go through this. It’s such a unique experience. Your body is so strong” thank you but I know you’re being fake. She saw that I wasn’t having my “dream” pregnancy and she really did all she could to make my parenthood memorable and great. Every week she would be informed about the size of my baby at the given week, what parts of his body were developing, she would buy me snacks and fruits all the time, she bought a lot of stuff for my son before and after he was born, she did all the pregnant acitivies with me she saw on tiktok and she threw me the greatest gender reveal/baby shower party I could think of. I was upset cause while she got to be excited about all of this I also had to suffer through the dark side of the pregnancy throughout all her fun days.

Fast forward to my son being born, Julia is always around ready to help. Driving me to doctor appointments and genuinely having a great time. But I wasn’t having a great time- I was parenting. For her it’s fun but for me it’s my daily reality I cant escape. Now my son is 3 years old, she comes to play with him or takes him for a couple of hours when I need a break. Her and her boyfriend take him places, learn new things with him and I feel like I failed as a parent. She speaks to my child in English (we’re not native speakers) so he can learn second language at early age. I couldn’t care less to do that. she’s just overly motivated. My son loves her but cries when I’m supposed to pick him up. It’s driving me mad

I’m jealous of Julia cause she decided to remain childfree but still gets to enjoy kids and parenthood, in a way. She gets the best of both worlds basically. I hate that my son loves her like that, I hate that my bf says why cant you be like Julia. I hate that I have a child I cant just put away when I don’t feel like being with him while she gets to enjoy her life to the fullest. I hate seeing how excited she is when helping me. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate what she’s doing but I hate how happy and excited she is doing things that I have to suffer through.

This is fueling me with so much jealousy. I wish I remained childfree and just became full time aunt like Julia . Besides not having a child her relationship is in much better shape than mine as well. She keeps asking when are we going to have a second child and I so want to tell her to fuck off and have her own. I want to see her suffer too - not because I hate her, but I hate how much better her life is because she chose to remain childfree.

I’m on the verge of cutting contact with her because her happiness is making me depressed

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Cambion

I guarantee she's gonna tell her friend about her bitter jealousy and the friendship will probably end, and then Moo will have to find someone else to be the cool aunt to her spawn. I will not feel the least bit sorry for her when she loses a source of significant support all because she's an envious bitch

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I recently splurged for a beautiful Lovesac couch (over $6,000) and someone in my family decided a month later to have a potty regression.

He has peed a high volume of pee (not just a little accident) many times (like three or more times).

The cushion covers are machine washable (which is why we bought this couch) so the covers do not stink. But of course the pee permeated the cushions themselves. Many cushions.

We have already sprayed these cushions with Nature's Miracle. Days later, the smell remained. Next, we sprayed them with a vinegar solution. A day later, the smell remains.

It seems it is worse when the kids jump around and play with the cushions. Stopping them from doing this is hard as they're little boys and we live in a small house.

Does anyone have any advice? If there are no other options... will the smell ever fade?

I am pretty desperate as the smell has begun to give me a nightly headache - or maybe it's the anxiety about the smell. And small house means we can't just go hang out in another room.

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Moo
It seems it is worse when the kids jump around and play with the cushions. Stopping them from doing this is hard as they're little boys and we live in a small house.

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Bromos, I am losing my mind and my patience. My autistic daughter just turned four and I’m finally trying to go full on with potty training. I wanted to try last summer but my husband convinced me she wasn’t ready and to wait. I think the real deal was he just didn’t want to have to deal with it. I took off a week last week and worked with her pretty intensely with the support of my daughter’s therapists.

In my opinion she made a lot of progress in terms of being more aware of her body. She’s now sometimes self initiating by walking to the bathroom and pulling down her pants and sitting herself on the toilet. She’s nonverbal and is learning to use an AAC device, so I don’t think it’s realistic to expect her to tell us when she needs to go, but she can show us if we let her. I am back at work this week and husband generally looks after her from when she gets home from preschool/camp around 2pm until I get off work at 5:30pm.

I want to keep her in underwear as much as possible to allow her to keep building that body awareness. Husband refuses and is keeping her in pull-ups with no ability to independently access the bathroom by herself (child gate keeping her in the playroom). He says she’s not ready for potty training and he won’t believe she is until she can ask us to go before she needs to go. How in the hell do I deal with this man? He would keep her in diapers forever without giving her a chance, just because she’s autistic and he doesn’t want to clean up accidents.

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mr. neptune
Why does anyone spend $6000 on a sofa when they can buy one for less than $600 at Big Lots? Still a lot of material to go into a landfill because of "potty regression".

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Our daughter was recently diagnosed with a gluten intolerance. Her dad thinks it's bs and wants her retested. He doesn't understand, even though I've explained it to him, she's been gluten free for so long now that the tests wouldn't be accurate. And the fact that blood work and an endoscopy aren't something you want to put your 7 year old through twice because her dad is a dumbass.

While making gluten free biscuits this morning he moaned and groaned the entire time. Complaining about how stupid it was and how long I was taking.

I'm trying my best here. I'm trying so hard to do things right for our daughter. The lack of support I have makes it so much harder. I don't see him making any gluten free biscuits and gravy so our daughter can have her all time favorite breakfast.

He would just rather feed her whatever and act like a 7 year old having bathroom accidents is because she is "lazy and doesn't care."

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u/enmodefarnient
I tagged this as humor, but there is nothing funny about this.

We’re closing out our first month of summer break and I find no joy in being around my own children. I have a ton of home projects I wanted to complete…most are incomplete or not even started. Instead, I spend my days refereeing petty arguments and bouts of aggravating between my two children, both under ten years old. I shuttle them to different parks/splash pads, the pool and play dates here and there.

In the past, I kept my little one enrolled in day care and spent tons of money on a string of camps for the eldest. I decided to buckle down on the budget (and test my sanity) by keeping them both at home with the exception of two camps.

I’m over it. I’m tired of not being able to do one single thing without hearing them whining, hearing my name called, or seeing the five millions messes they have made while I have been cleaning up the last one. I am tired of not being able to make a necessary phone call (medical, finance, general life) without having to excuse myself to deal with my children. I am tired of not having a second to myself until my husband comes home at almost 7pm each night. Even then, he wonders what is for dinner and I am so tired of playing Cinderella, so I get upset with him.

Am I the only one rowing this boat?

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u/enmodefarnient

My parents have both passed away. My FIL works and my MIL is a hypochondriac who won’t watch our children unless he is there because she takes frequent naps throughout the day and doesn’t want to deal with them for long periods. (bolding is mine)

They were just here visiting and my husband mentioned them taking them for a couple of days and…crickets.

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My mom kept her grandchildren (before mine were born) even when she was going through cancer treatments, so it is bewildering to me that my MIL can’t/won’t keep them for two days to help us out.