Fears of a first time possible dad

LegacyUser

Back story, I'm 34, gf is 25, we have been together for 18 months, living together for past 12 months, madly in love with each other, families get on great. Basically all great!

We started talking about having kids within the first 4-6 weeks of seeing each other. It's an important issue for both of us. One of my regrets was not having children earlier in my life, and she has always wanted children. We've spent nights talking about names, schools, not baptising them, choosing which surname etc.

Recently, we had a couple of late period scares. One of which may have been a miscarriage. I can't say for sure as she never went to a doctor about it, but she was 3 weeks late, followed by a painful heavy period.

She has become noticeably more broody recently, looking at, and cooing at all the babies we see on the street. She's been raising the issue of when will we have children a lot more as she fears waiting too long.

I really want to have children with her, but I'm near paralysed by fear of the money involved. I'm only taking in around €300 a week, and she takes in €200 at the moment. We both owe our housemate (we share a house with two really good friends) somewhere in the region of €1,500 as well. The housemate has stressed that there's no mad rush on paying them back, but it's another weight on my mind.

I am not in the most stable field of work with the recession and all, so I was looking at going back to college next year so I can get something more stable to provide for this potential family. The course I want to do however is crazy hours. I spoke to one guy who is in 2nd year and he had just finished two 70 hour weeks! I have a huge fear of balancing the course and all that is involved in raising an infant.

I was raised in the 80's, where money was a huge issue. Only my mother worked and we were constantly broke all the time. Many nights I remember going to bed with hunger pains. Ever since I was old enough to think of kids, I always said I wouldn't put my children through that. That I would be able to raise them properly and give them what they need.

As I said before, one of my regrets was not having kids earlier. I should have worked towards being in a place where I could raise children properly, but I had a nervous breakdown which ended up with me swearing off women. I had convinced myself no-one could ever love me and spun into a deep, clinical depression. My gf is the first woman I was with in 5 years. In that intervening 5 years, I had given up hope of ever be-coming a father. I add this in just in case people wonder why at the age of 34, I don't have a good job etc.

Needless to say, we don't own our home. I look at the newspapers daily and see the stories of families becoming homeless. That is a huge fear as well. My parents are divorced and live in small one bedroom flats, her family is in the West.

Saying that though, we do have good family support. Gf is fast becoming best friends with my sister. We take in her kids (age 2 & 4) every 6 weeks or so. Our housemates are like our family. They have also been involved in the conversation and really want us to have kids too!

I suppose I'm looking for advice. I've talked to her about this, and she knows my main concern is finances. What I proposed is we find out how much a child in their first year costs and start saving that amount so we can have something in the bank. Needless to say, one of my big priority's is to pay the housemate back first.

Thanks for listening/reading. It's good to get all this out of my system and I can't really talk to my mates about this.

Neyite

The first year is relatively cheap - if she can breastfeed, you save on formula, you can buy everything secondhand but you do need a new car seat and cot matteress. Everything else - buggies, clothes, cots, sterilisers, bottles, etc you can either family happy to offload their baby items they no longer require, or shop secondhand.

What does get pricey is the unpaid maternity leave - the 13 weeks that you can take as extra unpaid leave. If you add up annual leave from the two years that you may be off, you can stretch out your leave on full pay. Childcare is expensive when she returns to work so look into ways of managing that.

By the way, I rent, became a first time mother at 37 (dad 38) and I'm studying, as well as both of us working. We figure that we will manage somehow, this money scarcity is temporary and we will do what it takes to ensure that we have a child that is clothed, well fed and happy. If we need to emigrate for jobs to feed our family then thats what we'll do. And we hope to have at least another child.