u/LadyMoonstone

We have a 9 month old and a second on the way. I’m tired of us fighting all the time. He isn’t supportive of us having a second baby even though we both wanted one. I always said I’d do this alone if I had to. I said that my last pregnancy and this one too. We’re in a blue state bordered with another blue state so I do have options. I can’t do an abortion with the pills due to an uncommon allergy to one of them.

I’d have to do a surgical one and I can’t find a Planned Parenthood here that does it so I’d need to go to the neighboring state. I haven’t had any real positive feelings about my pregnancy throughout, in part due to all of his issues and also how once again my family isn’t supportive either. We also had a relative very unexpectedly get super sick and die and it shook up our world a good bit and really fucked with my kids dad. My friends are so excited for me and have all said they’d help me, and I know they’re being truthful on that, but even so I just feel so fucking alone. I want this baby and the absolute last thing I want is to have an abortion, and I feel like if I have an abortion then he finally “won” and I’ve given up everything else.

This isn’t about winning or losing, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s “won” by wearing me down to the point that I’m actually becoming open to doing this. I have no clue how I will do 2 under 2 without him and I don’t have the money to easily leave anymore or to even rent a different place and I can’t move home. I decided a few days before I found out I was pregnant that I wanted to go back to school so I could do a bit more within my field. I start school Monday. I’ve worked so hard on that.

I’ve been exploring resources and researching as best I can so I can make a plan with my life. The school thing is only possible right now because the school gave me an override to enroll in classes without payment because they are still processing my financial aid award, but I will qualify for grants, and I also submitted some additional paperwork for additional funding, which I’m honestly hoping will be enough to maybe help me float through on bills a little bit too while I go to school. I left a toxic low paying job a few weeks ago and I’ve been doing Amazon and DoorDash to try and make ends meet. I have job interviews lined up and because I have some very specific skills within my field, it does make getting employed a bit easier.

The job I left wasn’t in my field. It was just something I took on because I needed a break from what I do because it was wearing on my mental health and my last job within my field did not handle things appropriately with my pregnancy and I had to report them to the state. But everything I dealt with last time I was pregnant makes me a bit afraid for being pregnant again and potentially running into a similar situation.

Honestly, I might delete this later, and I don’t really need advice about how my kids dad is a piece of shit or how I’m depressed. I’m aware of both. I’ll probably still just go through with my pregnancy and deal with a lack of support from him and from my family and if it hits a point where I have to go live in a motel or my car to make this work, then I will, but I’m just tired of feeling like shit. I just want to feel happy and have my family and not have to lose my second child and be able to make something of myself… I’ve been crying all day and I just need to get this off my chest.

I’ve posted a bit about this before, but breast-feeding was a horrible experience for my daughter and the last time, and I struggled a bit with guilt initially with transitioning my daughter to the formula. That being said, moving her to formula was the best thing that I ever did.

This time around for my second baby, I think I want to just do formula, and maybe if I am feeling OK enough with it, I might pump a little bit, mainly with the wearable, even though I know the wearable does not pull anywhere near as much as the one that kind of chains you to the wall

I am sticking with my same midwife that I transferred over to in the middle of my last pregnancy, and I plan to deliver it the same hospital as last time. Do I just bring this up with my midwife at my next appointment? Or do I wait until I’m at the hospital? Or how do you approach the topic of wanting to start with formula feeding from the beginning? If I have to do a little bit of breast-feeding and/or pumping in the hospital, I will do my best to deal with that, but I am already anxious about that part, and this baby isn’t coming until almost the end of January.

Monday, I had a DPD shift. I believe it was three hours, and it was to Longview and the last few stops were between 15 and 20 minutes apart, which was ridiculous and most of the boxes had at least two stickers on them so they didn’t make it out to Longview earlier that day. Today I have a three hour shift and it’s to Longview again and the traffic is so insanely bad today that I’m not even getting to Longview until halfway through this shift.

At least this time it looks like all of the stops are clustered close together, so it won’t be as much of a nightmare. I also had a crazy amount of boxes today, including some larger boxes and this is day two of us having a car seat seat without a removable base and I see now why my partner told me that it’s gonna be a pain to have that car seat in. That one is not Amazon‘s fault, I should’ve listened to my partner when he mentioned the car seat thing. I didn’t even think about trying to remove the car seat before heading out and I had to kind of just throw things wherever they would fit in the car because of limited time and the amount of boxes.

At least my awful Salem routes were usually only a small number of packages in the evenings or nighttime, and we’re only super bad if it was a four hour midday shift. I probably shouldn’t complain, I probably could’ve just walked away from the shift, but my occasional Longview routes used to not be quite this messy. It’s also weird to have Longview multiple times this week. Purely coincidental, but still unpleasant.

Came for a 6:45pm shift. Parking is absolutely chaotic here and not only are all spots full, everyone has to park on the orange areas and other no parking zones or are just throwing their hazards on in the lanes. I had to park in the orange to be able to even park and that was after hunting for a while. There are so many people here and now at the last second there’s a huge group swarming the ID scanner. What is this mess? I think I’m gonna cancel my 6am Tuesday shift and I’ll just stick to DPD2 unless I can find maybe some midday VOR3 shifts.

It’s 43 packages, 39 stops, marked as a three hour route when I scanned, everything is in Vancouver, which is where I live, everything is a small box or light envelope, and it is almost all houses. Pretty sure my longest part of this is just gonna be getting back over the bridge into Vancouver. 1–21 are clustered very close to each other and then looks like maybe 5 to 10 minute drive at most to where 22–43 are and those look fairly clustered close too. This is amazing and I am so happy right now.

We have an 8 month old and a 2nd baby on the way. We are going to apply for a snap, and we did previously meet the requirements of both of us working at least 20 or more hours per week average, he does Amazon and DoorDash, I was working a very dead-end job that was actively cutting my hours down and I have just stopped working there. I am applying for jobs in my field and I am hopefully going back to school either summer term or fall term to be able to find out a degree that better aligns with what I want to do long-term and then I’m also going to be going through the process of trying to get my real estate license.

It looks like I should probably get work study once my financial aid stuff comes through. And then, while I continue to apply for a new jobs, I am going to do Amazon and DoorDash as well to help pay bills. I should be able to meet the 20 hour requirement with that, but I am wondering if I am able to qualify for the exemption because I also take care of my eight month old? Or how does that work when they are multiple adults in the household?

If we do get approved for food stamps, there is also a program through the college that I am going to be attending that helps get you through school and do stuff getting you into the workforce and so I’m wanting to participate in that. I’m scared about asking questions on this because I don’t want to be seen as lazy or worthless, prior to this year, I worked a very good paying job, but there was active pregnancy discrimination, and I had to report them to the state.

I want this to just be a temporary thing, but we need the help right now to be able to make it through easier. We did have an additional adult that was a roommate, but he’s actively dying in the hospital right now, and we are waiting to eventually get a call that he passed away, so things will be a bit tighter since the rent won’t be split 3 ways anymore.

I’m trying to plan for this for regardless of if my kids father is in the picture or not. He uses my car the majority of the time because the other car doesn’t work right now and we can’t afford to fix it. I use the jogging stroller to walk places with my daughter because it has good sturdy tires and so much storage underneath, which makes it easier for me to grocery shop and do things like that. Even when we were in a good place, even though the jogging stroller is so freaking heavy, we both tend to prefer it, again, because of the storage underneath. It is a Graco stroller.

Ideally, I’m hoping to find either a jogging stroller, or a stroller with strong all-terrain tires that I can use for long walks with the kids, and ideally one that can connect to the car seat seats that we already have so that I don’t have to shell out even more money that I don’t have at the moment. So far though from everything I’ve seen, it doesn’t look like what I am searching for exists? Am I just not searching for the right things or do I need to look for a different brand?

Edit: I’m not seeking advice on my kids father and his issues, or the fact that I don’t have constant access to my vehicle. He drives exclusively to be able to work I already know he is taking advantage right now, I just want stroller advice please. 🙏

I (33f) have an 8 month old and I’m 5 weeks along with my second who is due late January. With my daughter I tried to BF and felt like a failure for having to supplement formula and eventually go EFF, but after a while I realized that was the best thing I could have ever done for her and me and I wish I had done it sooner. My logic used to be that if I had another baby I would try again with BF and see if it went better the second time around and then not be hard on myself if I needed formula again. But now that I am pregnant again, I’m debating on just going mostly EFF and maybe pumping a bit if I feel okay with it at that point, but I feel guilty and a little anxious for wanting to consider skipping BF this time around. The other issue too is that my children’s father may be leaving so if I do 2u2, I truly don’t think I can mentally handle even trying to BF if I’m alone.

I’m using the no advice needed tag because I don’t want advice regarding my children’s father. I am aware of the problems and that this is not an ideal situation. I do want advice on how to do 2 under 2 as a single mom.

My daughter will be 8 months on Friday. I found out Saturday that I’m pregnant. I’m about a month along. My second baby is due late January. My children’s father and I haven’t been in the best place, but we care about each other, or at least I thought we did. He keeps saying I’m selfish and ruining everyone’s lives and if I won’t terminate, he won’t be having any involvement with our second child and will be gone.

I will do what I have to in order to try to make this work on my own, but I don’t know how to right now. I’m scared. I don’t have family support. I do have some other support. But I want my children’s father to stop being horrible and to not walk out on his family. He has his issues but he always wanted children and to have an actual family. This isn’t like him.

I have an M4 iPad Pro and an old MacBook Pro. I want to say I bought it back in 2018 or 2019. I am thinking of finally going back to college (at 33) to try to finish my degree and move into something more aligned with my career field that I’m taking a break from. I am trying to figure out if my old MBP and/or iPad Pro will be sufficient while I’m at the campus (it’s not too far from my house) or if I should just get a MacBook Neo.

I also have a great desktop PC that I built a couple years ago, so I will probably do more work on that when I’m home or if I do any fully online classes unless I need to work downstairs while the baby is up if her dad is working. I am thinking I will be moving into doing business this time around. My college background is in art, psychology, and some neuroscience. Business is more in line with what I want to do long term. I think if I did any art classes requiring a PC or a Mac, I’d do more of the work at home or at a school PC.

For more (theoretically) basic schooling, which is the better choice? I’m not sure how much longer my MBP is even supported at this point and I am pretty sure I haven’t turned it on in at least a year or more.

Came across this today. I signed up. Not sure if anyone else here used Talkspace but this seemed like a good place to post this.