u/Scared_Homework4738

Hi all, so my husband and I have been undergoing therapy for past two months. Essentially we both started off on the childfree side (him strongly; me more ambivalent to children as didn’t particularly like them but didn’t have experience).

As I’ve gotten older and spent more time with kids (and more time with kids I know/like), my feelings have changed and I now want a baby. He remains in the no camp, though there were occasional conversations of “if we had a kid, our lives would look like this,” from both sides.

We did a few sessions of therapy to work through some of the anxiety and disengagement that led him to be a no and to help us talk through the issue more productively as ultimately my feelings were always that I choose our relationship and our lives together, our home, our cats, our shared goals (and I don’t want a baby with anyone else), but wanted like to know that it’s a definite no and not from a place of his own anxiety and childhood trauma/self esteem issues around kids, so that I can grieve and move on.

Throughout the process he’s been able to work through some anxiety and see children more positively and see where I was coming from in having felt I wanted them and did say he had shifted a bit as there were a lot of things he’d never considered as he had just shut down on the topic of kids due to fears about money and his poor self esteem. But the session last night was ultimately that he still remains a no with the full information, and that he will always be a no despite having fully explored it all and worked through the anxieties that had previously made him shy away from even considering it. He’s shifted a bit into the positive but he doesn’t think he’ll ever shift enough to be doing it for himself and not just doing it for me and opening up to resentment and pain down the line.

He has a few individual sessions to work through his own issues so he can confirm his position and work on his anxiety and some remaining feelings he has that he wants his decision to be for the right reason and still has some doubt due to the anxiety. But I feel we’re at the point that it’s a no and that’s not because of the anxiety; he just genuinely doesn’t want kids. And that’s okay, I’m the one who changed. And I don’t want a kid with someone else, I want a baby that’s 50% him and I’m not willing to sacrifice our lives together to seek something that may not happen if I can’t find someone or can’t have kids for any reason and certainly won’t be the kid I want (his) with the partner I want as a co-parent (him).

So we’re waiting until he’s done his individual therapy (on the recommendation of our couple therapist), then we’ll reconvene with our couples therapist and then I’ll do individual therapy to figure out grieving and accepting the no with all knowledge that we gave it the good college try.

Partially sharing this to get my own thoughts out, but also to share what might be a useful story for someone else who has gone through the same or thinking about therapy.

Today I feel like my heart is breaking and that any last hope I had left is gone. And I just want to mute every group chat I’m in where people talk constantly about their babies and their kids. I want to uninstall all of the social medias where all I see is friends kids, pregnant people from school, parenting advice from an algorithm that knows I might want to have kids. And I want to sit in a hole and cry and try and figure out how my whole life moves from centring on this conversation for the past 6-12 months and dreaming of kids to being about moving forwards and being together.

For some context, my mother had breast cancer about 15 years ago when I was a teenager. At the time I didn’t really understand what was happening and as we had a difficult relationship, she wouldn’t really talk to me (other than to explode at me when she felt she didn’t get enough attention). Pretty much the extent of the conversation was when she told me she had cancer two days before her mastectomy and said “you’ll have to get the school bus on Monday, I have cancer and I’m going to the hospital.”

A few years after she was diagnosed and successfully treated, I went to my doctors to investigate BRCA diagnosis. She had breast cancer in her early 40s, and her mother and grandmother both had it in their 50s/60s so BRCA was likely.

I was referred to the genetic counsellors but essentially they said, whilst I could start having checks for cancer in my 40s, she had to get tested in order for me to be tested for brca. When I discussed this with her, she told me that it was morbid and she didn’t want to know if she had the gene. She didn’t care that this meant that I couldn’t get tested.

Last week I got the news from my brother that the cancer is back, in the other breast so treated as unrelated. He wasn’t supposed to tell me but thought I should know. But we’re pretending I don’t know at the moment. She told him that she would ring this weekend, so I was waiting to hear from her and never got a call.

I’m so anxious and upset about everything. I don’t know what’s happening, I don’t even really know the prognosis other than it hasn’t spread as she won’t tell my brother anything more, and whilst I have a lot of issues with the woman, I would like to know what is happening and I would like to discuss the brca testing again.

Though again, I doubt she will think about it from my perspective: ie that I don’t want to ever get breast cancer if I can take preventative measures, that I’ll have more options for surgery if I have surgery preventatively vs reconstructively, and that I’m currently in the process of starting to think about having kids and would like to make an informed decision about pre implantation genetic testing and IVF, plus impact on breast feeding and freezing eggs if I had brca and chose to have my breasts and ovaries removed.

There’s so many things spinning around my head and she’s just withholding information from me and only talking to GC brother and telling him to keep things from me. From what he’s said, the NHS have been talking to her about BRCA and she’s just ignored it again.

Hi all, not sure if this is the right place to put this but thought I would see if anyone else can share their experiences of getting tested on NHS as I'm going through the journey now and maybe just need somewhere to vent/see where others have had success.

My mother had breast cancer when she was early 40s. Before this my nan and great-grandmother in the maternal line all had breast cancer, I believe in their 60s. When I was living away from home for the first time I went to my uni hospital and they advised that I could be tested due to the high risk, but one of my family members would need to be tested first. I have a very complicated relationship with my mum and grandmother, and they were both of the opinion that is was morbid and they didn't want to know, so the NHS said they couldn't test me.

I have always felt that their daughter/granddaughter needlessly getting breast cancer was more morbid. I'm a scientist, I'd rather know, accept my risk and get preventative mastectomies and have a lot more options for reconstruction.

When I eventually managed to convince my mother that it would be a good idea for her to be tested, I went back to the NHS in my new area and their criteria came back to say I wasn't high enough risk and testing wouldn't be an option. Mainly because I don't have any other relatives, specifically sisters or aunts, with breast cancer. What they don't seem to factor in is that I don't HAVE any sisters or aunts.

Recently my mother was diagnosed with a second, much more aggressive breast cancer. We're currently not speaking about it (again, complicated relationship, and also I believe she's only just found out and is waiting on further info on stage/spread etc.), so I'm not going to be able to get her on board right now to fight the testing case.

I want to go back to the NHS now with this further diagnosis and I think I have a greater chance of getting tested, but since my mother is back to being secretive and dealing with her own cancer, I don't think I'll be able to get her to get the testing that will help them sequence me. Has anyone had any luck with getting tested without needing the relative to be tested first?