Dear Margo® by Margo Howard

I wonder if people in LW2's predicament ever consider adopting an older child, maybe 12 or so, in a compromise where perhaps everyone could win. I know this issue has come up with May-December couples I know. It can be daunting to consider raising a child when you are 60, but it could be quite rewarding to offer a home to a teen who needs one, and taking on someone who would be an adult in six or seven years might not be nearly as overwhelming as starting with a baby who needs to be watched over for the next 18 years.

Most women who "yearn for motherhood" want an infant. They want to be a part of every new stage in their development. Although it is admirable for those who do adopt older children, it does not satisfy the need for those who want the full motherhood experience from infancy on. Although this woman wants to raise a child with this man, he has made it clear that he does not want to raise a child with her. I don't believe he'd even agree to adopting one. I say find someone who wants to make you happy enough to raise a child with you.

LW1; I think you are borrowing trouble. This person that you all hate so much probably won't have access to your records at all. I'm not in the medical profession and would like to hear from posters who are, but I do't think every single person who works at the hospital can have access to your records. For example, if she works in the cafeteria or the gift shop, she won't have access to your records. If she works in pediatrics, she's not gong to have access to your mother's records. However, if she's in the billing department, she may. Still, I wouldn't worry about it until you have some reason to. Most people who are as unpleasant as you say your SIL is, have some type of professionalism.

PS: If I was the hospital administrator taking your complaint call with no collaborating evidence, I would tell the SIL. You could yourself be doing something illegal by contacting her new employer, it's called defamation of character and could potentially be a problem for YOU. Relax until you have reason to complain.

LW2: You and your boyfriend are at two seperate places in your lives. He's done the kid thing, he's done the babysitters, early morning feedings, waking up to "Daddy, I threw up", getting NO sleep for the first year (thank you, my daughter, for leaning to sleep through the night at 2 months!), the calls from the teachers ("Junior has started to eat paste") the junior high dramas, the high school stuff.... he's done it all and doesn't want to do it again!

If you had said your boyfriend didn't want kids and he was in his 20s with no kids, I would say something very different here. But he's in his 50s. He doesn't want the parenting experience at this stage in his life and he's DONE IT so he knows what he is talking about. You however do feel the need to be a parent and that's ok too! Move on and find someone who has similar goals.

To nanchan's comment I would add my two cents: I work for the Social Security Administration. A big part of my job is reviewing medical records, but I technically have "access" to people's Social Security earnings records, assuming I have a Social Security number. However, "access" doesn't mean that I'm entitled to view these documents. We have strict privacy guidelines, which are reviewed twice a year, and a database that keeps track of the records we access. If we (or someone logged in as us) access something that isn't related to our jobs (say, the earnings records of a friend or family member), the system will flag it, and we will be suspended or terminated. There's not a lot of discretion in how these situations are handled at my job. One of the first things we were warned about was that people we knew might ask us to look something up or check on the status of their claim, but it could cost us our jobs to do so.

Now, I don't know what kind of policies or protections hospitals have in place regarding private information, but I have to imagine they're similar. If the sister-in-law has a job that gives her access to this information, expect her access to that information to be monitored and tracked against the things she's supposed to be working on. If she steps out of line, expect there to be unpleasant consequences. Now, if she's determined enough, I suppose she could access the information through another employee's computer or log in, to deflect attention from herself. In that case, though, I would expect that someone would notice she was spending all her time trying to get access to privileged information rather than working, and there'd be consequences for that. So, yes,maybe she could get some information that would make you uncomfortable. But I doubt she could continue to do so for very long without being disciplined.

LW1: I don't know that you calling the hospital would accomplish anything. A lot of people who work there are probably snoops. You can only say something if SIL has already breached privacy, not because you think she is going to. For all you know, she might be too busy to snoop into your records.

LW2: I do believe you will regret not having a baby, only because you are already wondering if you will. That means you're halfway there to regrethood. Did hubby not inform you of his wishes beforehand? Anyway, if you think you can be a good mom, then you probably will be. talk to your husband, maybe he's willing to do a 70/30 deal, where you do 70% of the baby caretaking, so he will be more amenable to having a baby. I don't see how adoption will make your life any different - it's still a baby, and it'll still be your husband's baby, and he'll still be responsible for it. Plus, it takes a long time to adopt, and he'd have to sign paperwork and give up some of his time. Of course, if he's not willing to do any of that, then perhaps you need to think about moving on.

Salty, LW2 isn't married to the guy. That's the whole point. Should she stay with him knowing she wants a child and he doesn't? I agree with those who say she should move on. This issue is bound to spawn all kinds of resentment in short order - and if she has an "accident" as some unscrupulous women have done, it'll just get worse. If he has the sense God gave a goat, he'll get a vasectomy pronto so there won't be any "accidents." But she still should move on.

Re: Maggie Lawrence

YES! I couldn't agree more. To me the letter almost read like permission to trap the guy and as another poster said on another site, the results could be bad. At best the man would be a reluctant father and at worst he could resent BOTH the LW and the baby for taking him back to another point in his life he thought he'd passed through already.

I hopee he's snipped as well!

LW2: Find another guy.

LW1--Personally I think you're being incredibly paranoid. Worrying about whether or not your hateful sister-in-law, who happens to be a medical professional, will peek at your medical records is like worrying about being struck by lightening every time it rains. Nothing is truly private in this day and age of electronic databases that track everything from what you browse on-line, what you purchase at the grocery store, to where you travel using your GPS. I think you're giving yourself and your family too much credit with regards to how interesting your medical records are to this person. Not only have you probably already revealed many more private tidbits about yourself and your family on your FaceBook page but in all reality your SIL probably couldn't care less what your cholesterol was the last time you had a blood test. Calling the hospital to voice your concerns over this non-issue will make you sound like a fringe lunatic. There are laws in place that protect privileged medical information and your SIL has to abide by those laws or risk her livelihood. My advice is to get over it.

LW2--"Almost everything about my four-year relationship is perfect. But the one thing that's not is a big one: He is two decades older than I am and already has a kid who has a teenager of her own." Um, from where I sit that's a pretty big one to me! I think you're delusional and setting yourself up for major disappointments on several fronts. The only piece of advice I have for you is good luck with that.

What the hospital should be willing to do for you is flag all of your family's digital medical records (the most
likely current form in which the data is maintained). Then, if your sister-in-law gains access to your records
for any reason, the hospital administration will be made aware and, through them, you will know. By handling
the matter in this way, you are more likely to obtain a swift and permanent resolution of the problem. And you
and your family's medical records will remain safe and secure.

Re: Brian
Most hospitals do monitor who accesses medical records. If the hospital feels the access is inappropriate, they will escalate the issue. Ask the privacy officer to track the employee's ID in respect to the records of family members.

LW1: Paranoid much??

LW2: Forget it. This is a no-win situation and one of the MANY reasons huge age differences often don't work. I was the product of such a marriage and I can tell you it's no fun at all. Do NOT foist an elderly father on your future children. And whoever suggested adoption instead is nuts. He is likely too old to qualify, and if he's reluctant to boot, any social worker worth his/her salt will see right through that in a home study. And if he doesn't want children, what makes you think he'd want to adopt an older child with baggage and special needs, either emotional or physical??

Why are my comments always deleted??

LW1: You could always call HR and tell them of your concerns plus adding you will sue them if she accesses your family's records. You'll probably get her fired or close to it so you really need to think about how you're going to face the consequences of your actions. Punishing her for something she hasn't done yet is kind of ridiculous. If you didn't handle her past actions properly that's on you.

LW2: Why do you want to raise a child with him? I think you have a romantic unrealistic view of raising children. Do some research and spend some time by yourself thinking about what you really want - then make a decision.

LW1: I'll add that not only will someone who violates HIPAA get fired from his/her job, he is subject to prosecution, which includes jail time and substantial fines. As someone who has to deal with patient billing records on a regular basis, this is something that was made clear to me at every job that I've had in healthcare finance.

LW2: If you're that hellbent on being a mom, best bet is to break things off with your boyfriend and find someone that wants children. Margo shouldn't be using the "He may change his mind" line, because chances are that he won't. I just hope that the boyfriend got snipped so there aren't any "oopsies" there.

LW1-
This is one of the cases where there is nothing you can do until some sh*t hits the fan. Wait and see. Chances are that nothing will happen.

LW2-
*IF* adopting a 12 year-old child will content your motherly instinct, broach the subject and see what kind of reaction you get, but... Chances are what you want is a BABY. He's been there, done that, and he doesn't. And, by the way...DON'T suggest adopting a 12-year old if you think this is the gateway to getting him to accept a baby.

1. "I can't help but wonder if I'll regret not being a mom."
If you're wondering right now, it's because the answer is yes.

2. "He wants me to be happy"
No, he doesn't, or at least only up to a point. He wants you to be happy with that HE wants, not with what YOU want. What you need is to find someone who wants the same thing you do.

3. "What I want is to raise a child with him."
This ain't happening. Sorry. Even if you got pregnant "by accident", chances are 99.999% that it would break up the relationship.

4. "I feel no real desire to be with someone new."
Of course not, but you have two options: motherhood or him. Door A or Door B - your choice.

5. "He's made it clear what he wants. How do I proceed?"
What you want is in direct contradiction with what he wants. Pushing him in a direction he clearly doesn't want to travel is not going to change him. How do you proceed? You either resign yourself or you move on. Pick your poison.

@It's Me
Click on "Contact" at the bottom right of the screen and ask them.

LW2-

P.S.: I strongly suggest you don't procrastinate. You have to dump this guy, meet someone you want to have children with and get the relationship to the point where it's talked about with him. You're late 30s already - 38, 39? Still young enough, but you have no idea when you'll hit The Change. Some women menopause quite early.

Re: WinehouseFan

I agree with you about the elderly father thing. (PS: welcome back posting! I've missed you!)

LW2, first off make sure you see a doctor to see if you can even have children. My cousin recently found out, the hard way, that her uterus can't carry a child, and, oddly enough, she has no eggs. I'm not kidding. No eggs. None. She's devastated because she and her husband both want children.

Personally, the boyfriend is an idiot for dating a woman your age, knowing that you are fertile and may want children, and stringing you along is just plain cruel. Can you imagine, for a minute, not listening to your biological clock which you admit is ticking, not being blessed with your flesh and blood, and then you break up? How happy will you be then? Then you will have a broken heart and an empty house, without the giggles and kisses of children. Get rid of the man, and find one that wants a family. I'm sure you fella is a great guy, but it's YOUR future, too. Sure, love hurts, but unconditional love is forever, and that is what you will have towards your future children. Good luck.

Re: happymom

Not all women that age WANT kids, though...so to say that a man simply shouldn't date a woman that age who doesn't have children is silly advice. However, being a childfree woman myself, when I dated a man, I made that point perfectly clear fairly early in the game so that if my desire NOT to have children was an issue, we could part ways without too much investment.

If we're going to namecall this couple, however, I would say that the LW is the idiot for picking the older guy, not the other way around. She is the one with the biological clock, so she should be looking more for someone her own age as opposed to an older man who has already been through parenthood and is probably not interested in going through all those stages again. He was simply happy to have the ego boost that comes from daing a "hot young thang."

Regarding LW2's dilemma, they've been together 4 years, so clearly this isn't just a fling or just dating -- and her letter also suggests that her feelings about becoming a mother have been evolving over the years.

"I had always been on the fence about having a child". Seems perfectly reasonable to think that when they started dating they were pretty much on the same page, had talked about the issue, and it didn't seem a roadblock.

"I feel the pull more as I approach my late 30s." So her feelings have been changing, which sometimes happens; his feelings have not changed along with hers, which also happens.

No harm, no foul against either of them.

But unfortunately, she can't have everything -- she can't have this man AND a child, not without ruining the relationship (most likely). So she has to decide what can she live without -- him or a child -- and then make a choice accordingly.

Sometimes relationships have expiration dates. That doesn't mean either person in the relationship is a bad person or did something wrong or stupid.

@Mike H -- excellent post! I am 41 and just had my first (and likely only) baby six months ago. When I got married, I was 24 years old, and I told my husband (before we got married) that I knew I didn't want kids then and that I honestly wasn't sure if I'd ever want them. To be honest, I couldn't imagine wanting them. My standing joke to my husband (for more than a decade) was, "sure, we can have children -- just as soon as YOU can get pregnant!" About four or five years ago, my husband, who had previously been completely on the same page as me (i.e. content to be childless), realized that he really did want children after all. He knew how I felt and believed that as the one who has to get pregnant, I had "more say" in the matter than he did. He came to me and basically said, "I love you, and I would never try to make you do something you didn't want to do, and I don't want to put any pressure on you. I just want you to know what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling so that we can do some soul searching together." At the end of the search, I honestly still wasn't sure, but what I realized was that for a lot of people, embarking on parenthood is a leap of faith -- you're not really sure what you're going to get, you're not really sure if you're going to be any good at it, but some of the most important things we do in life require a leap of faith. And I realized that there was no one I'd rather make that leap with than my husband. So, I went for it. We're only six months in, so I can't say how it will all go, but I will say it's an amazing adventure, and I love my little boy and am so glad I finally took that leap. My only point with all this TMI is to back up what you said -- people can feel one way about having children and then have those feelings change over time, and as long as everyone's been honest from the beginning -- and been willing to talk about it when things change -- then it's not anyone's "fault." For the lucky ones, like my husband and me, we were able to grow together instead of apart. That is not the way it always goes.

LW2 -- Do NOT adopt a child unless you are fully prepared to go it alone as a single mom. Your BF isn't going to be any more interested in being a "father figure" or "adoptive father" than he is in actually fathering a child. Understand that you really do have a very straightforward (but not easy) choice: the man or motherhood. As others have noted, if you're already starting to wonder if you'll have regrets, you probably will. You know what your choices are, and the time for making choices is growing short. It may be a good idea to go have some fertility testing done, as it will answer a lot of questions for you. If you find out you can't have children, you may simply be relieved and stay with your man -- or you may find you want a child even more and that you want to adopt, even as a single mom -- decision made. If you find out that you CAN have children, I suspect the way you feel about that is going to make your choice more clear, as well.
A dear friend of mine married a man who was quite a bit older (I want to say he was 15 or more years older than she was). When she met him, he had four kids (all under the age 12), and he had full custody of them. He made it clear that he would never have more children. She had to choose between "having kids of her own" with some other man, or helping the man she loved raise his existing children. She chose the man and his four kids and never looked back, and she (to my knowledge) has always been happy with and at peace with that decision. Of course, her situation was different from yours, in that she did have the opportunity to help parent these children. Your BF's children are well past that, so you need to be doubly sure that you are OK with being childless.

@Ms. Rowena: I respectfully disagree with your suggestion. It sounds good on paper -- almost like splitting the difference. But there is no "happy compromise" when it comes to having children. There is no "meeting halfway." You're either all in or all out. The man doesn't want to be a father to any more children, and I seriously doubt adopting an older child/teen is going to be palatable to him -- or to her, frankly.

@Happymon & LIsa

Good point about checking on her own abilities to have a child first. It would be heartbreaking that she resign herself to leave a man she loves to have children and then find out that she can't have any.

Contact the hospital. You don't have to name your psycho SIL (and I have one of those too, so I can feel your pain!) just ask some questions about the availability of your records to employees, what guards they have in place, and what their liability is if your records are compromised. If you aren't happy with their answers, you may, unfortunately, be forced to switch to a different hospital for your own peace of mind. The HIPAA laws are there to protect us, but if your SIL is as messed up as mine, they wouldn't even slow her down. Mine has already been to prison for crimes she committed, knowing the consequences. At least at the time, she didn't care. She was far more concerned with hurting others. And if any member of your family has any medical issues they don't want known, it would be small comfort to have her fired, fined, or even jailed, if that information were all over town. Putting her in jail wouldn't take the knowledge out of circulation. Seeing mine in jail didn't un-burn the house, or all the family mementos that were in it.

To LW2: Definitely go have some testing done to see how your biological clock is doing and let that help you make your decision. I'm 41 and my husband and I started trying to conceive when I was 38. It is true that some of us have fertility issues earlier than others, and I was told my eggs were all done and we couldn't conceive (after a year and a half of trying). We decided together to use a donor egg and I just had a baby girl in November. LW2, I cannot tell you the profound joy and amazement I have in being a mother, and this is after 20 years of being a hard-core career girl with near disdain for full-time moms and drooling babies. It is the best thing that has EVER happened to me and my previous life pales in comparison. Don't take this decision lightly. Your feelings toward this man could change and you will regret having let him influence this huge decision at this crossroads in your life. Just because he doesn't want to do it again doesn't mean he should rob you of it!! Please don't wait. !!!

Lw2 see if he'd be willing to try foster parenting. It might satisfy your mothering urge and it wouldn't be a permanent commitment.

@MT -- as I did with Ms. Rowena, I have to respectfully disagree with your suggestion that she ask him about foster parenting. Sure, it doesn't have to be a permanent commitment, but I'll bet it sure feels like it is for the months or years that you do it. Her boyfriend is done parenting. He's made that clear. You can't approach parenting halfway, whether your fostering, adopting or birthing. You're either all in, or you're not. BF has made it clear -- not only is he NOT all in, he's all OUT.

Re: Shirley

UN-burn the house? Oh my God. I'm sorry you went through that.

@MT
Fostering might sound like a good compromise, but it's not. Normal parenting is challenging enough, fostering can be twice as bad. Fostering is not parenting part-time or half-way in, it's parenting X2, often with a vengeance.

Very often, these children are psychologically and emotionally damaged and at the very least, angry at the situation that sent them into fostering - and acting out. Some of them have been through multiple foster homes and been abused and/or molested in some of them - of top of the situation that sent them into fostering in the first place. At the very, very best, they'll be confused, angry, afraid and in need of a LOT of patience, love and possibly professional training on the part of the foster parent. The amount of energy needed to face all that is enormous. Not a good bet to foist on an older man who doesn't even want to be a parent again.

Re: Lisa

I would add, to reiterate one of Winehouse Fan's points, that it is incredibly unfair to the child to have a parent of any type (birth, adoptive, or foster) who is not passionate about parenting.

So sad for the child to become a victim of the mother's needs and not to be loved for being it's own incredible self.

LW1: I'm a nurse, and I'm not allowed to look at medical records of anyone I'm not directly caring for. I could get fired and lose my license if I "snoop." The laws regarding this are strict, and the hospitals have a handle on it. They will make this very clear to your SIL when she starts her job.

LW2 - There have been hundreds of advice column writers who have said, "My relationship would be perfect if only...<insert flaw here> was different!" And the truth is, that "flaw", which often isn't really a flaw, rarely goes away, and the person already knows, however shallow it seems, that they would ultimately be happier out of the relationship than staying in it because of said "flaw".

In your case the "if only" is of your man wanting to be a parent. I'm pretty sure you know in your heart that it isn't going to happen and that you already know what you need to do. I understand it will be painful to do it, but I think you need to.

HIPAA gives every patient the right to request a list of every individual who accessed their medical record. You can request this from the hospital. So, if you are concerned about possible snooping, you can get this information rather than hope that the hospital will catch misbehavior.
Most hospitals check audit logs in some fashion to try to detect abuses, but what they check varies. You may also be able to ask the hospital to flag your records as confidential which might add an extra level of monitoring and auditing.