to make children visit GPs

I had a childhood where there was a lot of mental cruelty ,physical cruelty too but more mental cruelty. Your children are also dealing with mental cruelty with these visits .It may not be the visits to granny that's causing it but the mood and shouting at from daddy is. Are you as there mother going to allow this to happen twice every month. It will damage them for life and trust me I know.
Do something about it now . Either tell him he has to visit them alone and to sort his own head out before he takes them with him again or get out of their fast for the sake of your children .
Why is he afraid of his mother ?
Has this always been the case?
I think he should stop pandering to her and grow some balls. Husband is the problem here not you and not Mil.
You sound afraid of rocking the boat with him .Mental abuse is worse than physical abuse in my opinion .
Don't stay with him for the children s sake , that is the worst thing you can do .
There is just so much I want to say here but I'm getting anxious just thinking about it .

He's can "minimise child support payments" ??? Are you not living together then?

Gummydrops I left an abusive situation with three small children and literally nothing, we had no money but we had peace and I gradually built a new home for them I actually feared for my life which I afterwards believed was not a real threat at all but a bullying tactic I don’t think he was a bad man he just didn’t know how to handle a wife and a family and finances or put anyone before himself I don’t bear him any ill will but I recognised I was better alone with nothing, than carrying on being a non person living on eggshells
Only you will know when the negativity of your life and the upset to the children’s lives is ENOUGH
Good luck for your future

I think living with this situation is doing more harm to your children than good. I suspect you could manage with help and advice from Mumsnet if you ditched this man . He sounds as though he is a bad apple which has fallen from a rotten tree. Small children are like sponges. They pick up on atmosphere and unspoken feelings. Sadly there are women who will not let their sons go and grow up to be men.

Sparkly, we wouldn't be if we separated. We do live together now.

Bluebelle, that is advice I will take to heart.

I know no marriage is perfect and some of them are bloody hard work, but I already feel I am working pretty hard at it.

He has refused repeatedly to attempt counselling and I have stopped proposing that. I think there needs to be a commitment to find a compromise for counselling to be successful and I am really doubtful he is willing to make any changes to get us on mostly the same page.

Would it be really awful of me to try and mark time for a couple years until I can get financially on my feet a bit and the eldest into school so I am not trying to find three sets of nursery fees?

There's no prospect of family help at all from my side, sadly.

gummybears if you don't mind me saying, surely your childrens happiness and your sanity is more important than anything else. Leave this awful situation for your sake. He is trying and reading this post succeeding in controlling your life. When you have to get his approval to spend anything on food or things for the children that is not good. In a good relationship and if he loves you (forget his upbringing) you and the children should be his first and only thought.
What's next after him holding the purse strings, will he start cutting you off from friends and your family, will he start making you tell him where your going, who you see or speak to.
I'm sorry for being blunt but think of you and your children as he's not.

Oh gummy you poor thing. It was obvious from.your first post he is abusive. Are you american? We have womens aid here do you have something similar.
You need a plan. You need to see an actual solicitor about what would happen in a divorce. Do you own your home etc.

Your very young children are being abused by their father. Shouting at them because they don’t want to go with him is making the whole situation worse. I find it hard to believe your DC are being treated well by their GM.

You are being financially abused and you should not be walking on egg shells around this bully of a man.

The only reason I would stay for now is until the baby is born and I had spoken to women’s aid to report the financial abuse (isn’t that illegal in the UK) and the abuse of your children. I would hate to think of him having them eow and treating them like he is now.

Then I would also plan to LTB, I know it as Leave The Bastard. Don’t waste your life living with this man and you don’t want your DC growing up to be like him or marrying someone like him.

Dear Gummybears, I have been in an abusive marriage, he was physically and mentally abusive to me from our wedding night. I know the pyscological abuse is the worse. I was told constantly how useless and worthless I was and how no one loved me because I was ugly, fat and horrible. The physical damage heals but the mental damages takes an awful long time to get over. I only got out when he started abusing our daughter physically, but the damage to her mental state took a lot to heal and in fact 35 years later is still rearing its head. You have to think of your children and what they are witnessing. I am so sorry you are going through this but you can be strong and make a better life for yourself and little ones especially with the new baby on the way.

You have a husband problem, not a MIL problem - why is he letting his mother say this stuff about you? If my MIL said anything like that about me (& she may well think it, she’s not overly keen on me) then my husband would pick her up on it. He wouldn’t be visiting at all given the behaviour she is showing.

She doesn’t sound a good influence for the kids either. You need very very big family boundaries around her.

Gummy - do please get in touch with CAB or anyone else who can tell you exactly what you would be entitled to if you leave your husband. If you are able to gain custody of all three children, surely you are entitled to some help if you cannot support them. A good solicitor handling the divorce should be able to mimimize the risk of your husband concealing part of his income to wiggle out of paying child support.

If you want to leave him the first step is to find out what divorce will entail regarding custody of the children and income, and of course, whether you have legal grounds for a divorce.

Sounds to me as if you are in a coercive or psychologically intimidating relationship where you are cooperating with your abuser. I assume your OH is taking full responsibility for contraception. Can you not make your own arrangements with your GP so you can be sure 'accidents' do not happen?

You say you had a socially conservative upbringing. Was your marriage arranged and will your parents turn their backs on you if you leave your husband. I think your MiL is the least of your problems. I would talk to your health visitor, Citizens Advice, or other health or social professional you come in contact with about the problems you have.

Gummy I don't say it often but this is a totally toxic situation. The arguments and shouting will be affecting the children, your health is suffering, no body is happy. Why are any of you still visiting this awful woman? Why is your husband taking her side? He may refuse counselling but you can go on your own to get advice. You must speak to somebody - this is never going to end well

Monica, I have tried various forms but everything hormonal has intolerable side effects, including in the view of my consultants seriously worsening episodes of depression. I have been well for about five years now and cannot with small children return to how unwell I was. I either have to trust this person I married, or get a surgical sterilisation, and the latter is my only option. No one has three failures.

It wasn't arranged, I am not from a culture where that is practised. I am however from a family (very extended, friends as well) where the belief is that you tolerate whatever crap your spouse chucks at you including violence, alcoholism, gambling addiction, the whole range. I have been told "you don't have any real problems". The family support angle isn't something I could rely on.

I am very socially isolated as he has a long term pattern of insisting on spending time with any friends I make via work, hobbies, anything really and then offending them to the extent they won't be around him any more. To be honest I have made no effort to make another friend circle since the babies started arriving because it hurts to lose people over and over. He has also driven off his only friend of his own by being sexually inappropriate to his now-wife who appears to have urged an end to their contact.

It's been about a year and a half since my last consultation re divorce. When I still practised I was a family law specialist and i fear that this experience of assisting other people through some godawful divorces into very difficult post-divorce lives is frightening me. Frankly although I implicitly trust the professional judgement of the various people I have consulted, they all have extremely downbeat views of the likely outcome re custody/finances which has also flattened me a bit. If it was just me thinking this could be rough, I could put that down to pessimism but having it reinforced by others is difficult. The problem is they have all agreed with my assessment of the situation (I may be foolish, but I'm not stupid) and my courage has sort of failed me.

The suggestion I should return to individual therapy is a good one. h always objected to this before as he is quite paranoid I "could be talking about him" and this could in some way affect his career. But I will invent a plausible cover story.

I had a pretty dysfunctional childhood and therapists have spoken to me before about being comditioned to accept ill treatment. I think I need to re examine this problem, and probably soon.

I don't ever want to be a bad mum. It is the one thing I couldn't bear to fail at. I am scared I am failing.

Oh gummybear the more I read about this horrible man the more worried I become. Just find an escape route for you and the children please go live in a women's refuge and get help and advice from them . I am certain that you will feel so much better very quickly .
Forget about the Mil she is not your problem the husband is and you need to escape .. NOW!
If not for your own sake then do it for the children before one or all them inherit this behaviour or suffer the rest of their lives from his torture.

It has become more and more obvious as you have revealed more, that the problem is your husband and his coercive, bullying treatment; behaviour that your small children are picking up on. The 'accidental' conceptions are a classic tactic to keep you dependant upon him. Frankly, the apple has not fallen far from the tree where this man and his Mother are concerned. Do you have any colleagues from you work days that you could contact and ask for advice? You seriously need to get yourself and your children away from this abusive man, his Mother is the least of your problems. There are many on here who have been through similar situations, and some of them years ago when walking out on an abusive relationship wasn't as accepted as it is now, when the help just didn't exist. Listen to what these brave women tell you, get help and get out.