Is waffling on having baby solely on your husband?

Q. When my husband and I first started dating (seven years ago) he was upfront that he didn't want any more kids. He is 47 and has a 20-year-old daughter. I'm 42, don't have any children and was previously married to a guy I should never have married. From my past experiences, I knew that being in a good relationship was the top priority and bringing a child into a bad relationship could be a disaster.

While we were still dating, he would tell me out of the blue he thought he'd like kids after all, but we needed to wait until we had a house of our own, he was more financially stable, his daughter was out of high school, etc. I had started feeling as if I really did want a child, but never mentioned it because it had to be a mutual thing we both wanted.

We have now been married for two years and bought a house a year ago. He mentioned one day this spring that he decided he would like to try for a baby, he had done research because of my age, etc. I told him he needed to be totally sure and this wasn't something he should do just because I wanted it. He assured me that wasn't the case. We agreed that I needed to get a little healthier and would talk to my doctor when I went for my yearly appointment. Over that time I began to eat healthier, started to exercise and have lost 20 pounds.

The day of my appointment in September, he had the deer-in-the-headlights look of panic. I was shocked and disappointed. We had some tearful conversations (my tears) and he felt like a jerk (his words). Later he told me he just got cold feet and he really did want to have a kid with me.

So I've been off the pill since September, he's been depressed and blah for about a month. Well guess what ... he doesn't know if he wants a baby.

If he had never said another word about it after he first told me he didn't want kids, I'd know there would be nothing to discuss. Now I'm just getting jerked around. How do I overcome the sadness and disappointment that I feel on so many levels?

A. Jerked around indeed, I'm sorry you're in this spot. It certainly doesn't seem intentional on your husband's part - but even with the best of intentions, uncertainty like his can make it so difficult for you to know what to feel, why and when. If coping means traveling a path, then each "maybe" is a fallen tree across it.

The way to make peace with this is to tend to each obstacle in succession. First there's the grief at not having a child. Just because you once saw your future without one doesn't mean it'll be easy to envision that again. You have changed and your new vision will have to as well.

I expect you also won't be able to use the same "being in a good relationship was the top priority" rationale as you did before, at least not wholesale and not right away. Your marriage will need some repairs before it can carry that weight again.

That's why I suggest facing the second obstacle, your disappointment in your husband, with a skilled marriage counselor - unless, that is, you believe you can bring both raw honesty and compassion to your discussions without a professional guide. However you approach it, it's important for you to air your dismay at the path he took to "no," and ask for his help in overcoming it, lest it harden into resentment.

There's a final obstacle that I'm not sure you even see, and that may be the key to acceptance on the two other fronts. That obstacle is, and always has been, you.

Take a careful look at the path your letter describes. You accepted his initial no-kids stance; you accepted while still dating - so, at age 36 to 39 - his "but we needed to wait" conditions (house, money, daughter's graduation!?); last spring, years past 40, you chose to wait till your yearly appointment instead of making a special one, stat.

Do you see the pattern? A woman already at or near the end of her fertility readily agrees to wait wait wait.

You couldn't force fatherhood on him, I agree, but you veered so far the other way, so deep into passivity. Either you didn't read up on fertility (itself part of the pattern?), opted for denial, or deep down you're as ambivalent as he is about a baby.

Certainly there's nothing wrong with having doubts or not having children. And people who want things badly do tend to find ways to get them. Is there any chance that's what happened here - that you stalled for your own subliminal reasons? If so, that's your clear path to finding some peace.

• Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, or chat with her online at 11 a.m. each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com.