Male BPD's becoming a Father... What is "common behavior?"

[Herodias]

Can anyone tell me their experiences with a Male partner with BPD when you were pregnant and first had a newborn? I am trying to see if there are any similarities in behavior when they are about to be and first become a Father... .thanks.  Mine was very nervous and excited... .I ended up miscarrying and he would always ask is I felt sad about it.

[livednlearned]

Hi Herodias,

I'm so sorry to hear about your miscarriage  :'(

Do you think he was asking you about your feelings because of his own sadness? How did you respond (or do you respond) when he asks if you are sad? With my ex, I think that question would probably lead back to his own insecurity about whether or not I loved ex. Meaning, was I relieved to not have his child = was I relieved to not have him.

My son was ex's second child (brother from another mother), and while he was nervous and excited, I realize now that he was feeling a lot of stress that he dealt with by drinking. The day my son was born, ex went back to the house with my best friend and he drank to excess.

[Herodias]

Thank you for responding... .Maybe he was... .I think it was more of him seeing people at work having kids and/or his sister doing the same and the attention she got from his parents. He sees people on Facebook and all his hometown friends having kids as well. I guess he wants to fit in.   I would just tell him that under the circumstances, it was probably for the best that we did not. He was in and out of hospitals, jail and drinking heavily... .totally unreliable. Sometimes after I had a hysterectomy he would say, "lets have a baby"... .I thought that was so mean!  He brought up more recently after his gf was pregnant, that we would have had a 7 year old... .he said maybe things would have been different if we had the child. I said, no... .they would not.  He thinks this baby is going to somehow make him grow up! He said he  feels nervous and excited, just as he did with ours. He said he wants to be a good father. He has put this gf on a pedestal because she is "the mother of his baby" he won't talk badly of her, even though she is not who he would have chosen to have a baby with... .I guess sometimes I start to get down and think maybe that's all possible... .for him to "change",  but I know in reality it is terrifying for him because he said he never wanted to pass on whatever was wrong with him to someone else. Plus, these people do not just change!  I can picture him getting all emotional and crying when he holds his baby the first time. But I see him total jealous of the baby and the lack of attention he will get. I see him holding the child when he is drunk and not handing the baby over to her when she asks. (He used to do this with the pets) I see her getting terrified and if that doesn't send her packing, I am afraid for the child. I hope his mother warns this girl, when she meets her. His mother told me she did not know what he was capable of... .that was a warning I should have paid closer attention to a long time ago. I am glad I didn't have to deal with being terrorized by him with a child to look out for as well. That would have been awful. The times I had to run out of the house to get away from him were hard enough on my own! I guess I am just looking for answers because we all have such similar stories when it comes to how they were with us... .that I wonder if there are similar stories to having a child with someone. I have heard allot of talk about the Mothers with BPD, just not the Fathers. Your ex going back to the house and getting drunk with a friend, totally sounds like my stbx... .I can see him doing that for sure.

[whirlpoollife]

Sounds like your x wants a baby like kids wanting the new toy everyone else has. Then after awhile he will loose interest. 

[Herodias]

Whirlpoolife, that could very well be... .

[livednlearned]

People with BPD don't do stress very well, and having a baby can be very stressful.

99.9 percent of the parenting fell to me. I even taught my son to throw a ball, poor guy. 

My experience is that it is very, very challenging to raise a child when one parent has BPD, whether it's the mother or father. Sometimes people say it is like having two children, and I would agree, except that one child has the body of a grown person and access to car keys, who can legally drink and spend money recklessly.

I know for me, with a child who seemed to have a similar sensitive genotype and therefore perhaps more susceptible to growing up BPD, there is no way he could've survived 18 years with a BPD father. Some kids might be more resilient, but not S14.

The hardest part, though? Dealing with the court system. I never experienced the mother bias people talk about, though perhaps because my child was not in his tender years when we divorced. It felt like it took all that is negative about BPD and magnified it.