u/SaltEven

Probably longish rant: I'm in my early forties, and have birthed hella kids. Like, we are a large family. The "plan" (I guess??) was that after our last one 2 years ago, we would be done. I'm old. And tired. And I've sacrificed a lot if not all of myself and my body to have and care for these kids. I felt it was only fair that he be the one to get a vasectomy. I've done enough.

I say "plan" bc in all honesty, his agreement was reluctant at best. I'm sure he had a lot of "reasons" but the one he liked to mention the most was aaaalll the men he knows whose vasectomies failed and she ended up pregnant again. So he thought all along I should get my tubes out. I don't want to do anything hormonal or iud due to metal sensitivity, so I literally googled perfect condom use and that's been the deal.

Well unsurprisingly, our youngest baby is coming up on 3, and no vasectomy in sight. As I'm now entering perimenopause, my period has started to not be as predictable. So a few months ago when it was late and freaked out, after it came, I had a light bulb moment.

I realized that even if I sucked it up and made an appt for him and dragged him through it, the mental and emotional labor of contraception wouldn't be over for me. I'd still worry about the vasectomy failing. And the only way to ease that fear and reduce the failure rate would be for him to do annual sperm count tests. Which of course, I would have to be the one to track and manage and make happen.

And ladies, I'm just so fucking tired. I'm so fucking tired of carrying almost all the mental, emotional and cognitive load of this relationship. My husband has not been to see a PCP for almost the majority of our marriage, and I was delusionally expecting him to make a freaking vasectomy happen? Ha.

I've been in therapy the last few years, and I'm just done. I've been working on my codependence, been diagnosed with auDHD, started meds etc. and a big part of that is just letting go of expectations and waiting on him.

Yes it really sucks, and yes I'm very, very resentful that I was the one to undergo a significant surgery because I can't rely on him to be an equal partner in many areas. But I also feel so very free, empowered, and a lot of relief. I will never be pregnant again. And that was my decision, my initiative, and my doing and I didn't have to wait on a man.

Anyways, I had the surgery this afternoon, and so far so good.

And just to get this out there for all the DIVORCE comments I might get, I'm not leaving him. I'm a marriage is for life gal, and he's a good man, just struggling with a lot of the same issues I see women experiencing in a lot of relationships.

Dinner: (made by my mom who is in town to help) linguine with clam sauce, tomato "bruschetta" with tomatoes and green beans from her garden, and salad.

TLDR: After years of waiting for my husband to get the vasectomy we agreed on, I finally realized I’d still be carrying the mental load of contraception even if he did it. So today I had my tubes removed instead—resentful that it came to this, but also incredibly relieved and empowered that I made the decision myself and will never be pregnant again.

Hi, about a month ago I set up my first wildlife pond in a half whiskey/wine barrel I bought newly cut. It has no liner, so whatever is in the wood is in the water.

I'm in 9b in the USA, so hardly any rain available. I use my hard tap water to fill, and let it sit out a couple days for chlorine to evaporate or if in a hurry, have used some aquarium dechlorinator. I seem to need to add about one 5 gal bucket of water each week due to evap and leakage.

I've got some frogbit, horsetail reed, and last week put in a small bundle of hornwort. No soil, only some pond gravel stuff and a bit of the clay soil the reed came in.

It is SMELLY. From my bit of research, I understand that the water needs oxygen, and the smell is from decomp organic matter (I tried putting a couple tadpoles in, they died in a few days and I could only find one to fish out).

I would prefer to leave it stagnant, as I have a mosquito dunk in there and want to attract mosquitos so their larva can die. I'm also hoping eventually frogs could survive there and I don't want to discourage them from laying.

So my question is, is the smell "normal" in the sense that I just need to wait while my plants grow and establish, and things eventually balance out? Or is there something I should do different? Again, most of the pond advice I see suggests adding a bubbler or fountain or whatever, which I'm hoping to avoid.

Ty!

After wanting one for awhile, I got this nepenthes from Lowes a couple weeks ago. I left it alone to adjust, until today when I saw this sight!

I have a hatred (maybe irrational idk) of these little mesh plugs, so I pulled them out, washed off the crappy soil, carefully removed the mesh bags, and planted each plant in its own small pot with a 50/50 mix of long fiber sphagnum moss and coarse perlite.

I was already losing some pitchers, so I'm assuming I'll probably lose all of them now. But I'm ok with that, assuming repotting and separating was the right move. Basically, did I do the right thing or should I have left it alone?