Do you know anyone with one kid who wanted just one kid?

[Anonymous]

I had our DC at age 42. Would have liked one more but had a hard time transitioning to parenthood and were concerned about the risks. Now wish we had. Likely would have caused financial stressors.

[Anonymous]

Had my son at 27. He’s now 5 and life is awesome. You couldn’t pay me to add another. (Well, maybe if you paid me enough to fully fund #2’s college so I didn’t have to stress about that!)

[Anonymous]

One is a lot more work in
Other ways. Especially for my shy only, weekends are exhausting to set up play dates and entertain her. We wanted only one and it’s the biggest regret of my life that we didn’t try immediately for a second.
I’m too d for it now. Have two if you can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One is a lot more work in
Other ways. Especially for my shy only, weekends are exhausting to set up play dates and entertain her. We wanted only one and it’s the biggest regret of my life that we didn’t try immediately for a second.
I’m too d for it now. Have two if you can.

How old is she, a toddler? We have a shy only, and have not found the weekends to be exhausting, especially now in elementary. If you find the weekends to be exhausting with one, you might find them even more exhausting with two young kids.

[Anonymous]

Me. I'm not good with kids, including my own, but DH threatened to leave unless we had one. So we had one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What people’s real reasons are for having only one child and what they say in polite company are two different things. Two women in my family have only one child. Both had traumatic births and neither wanted to repeat the experience. One had to get a hysterectomy in her 30s to attempt to fix the damage. I think traumatic births and and birth injuries are a lot more common than people realize.

I read one study that found that about a third of women who had given birth by forceps or emergency C section said they did not want to have more children because they did not think they could go through that experience again.

What stuns me and continues to stun me, is that anyone ever feels entitled to say “you need to give Larla a sibling!” Or “when are you having another?” It’s so insensitive.

+1. To listen to me talk you'd think that I have one by choice. I'm not telling people about the 5 IVFs, 3 miscarriages, and river of tears. It's not their business.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One is a lot more work in
Other ways. Especially for my shy only, weekends are exhausting to set up play dates and entertain her. We wanted only one and it’s the biggest regret of my life that we didn’t try immediately for a second.
I’m too d for it now. Have two if you can.

How old is she, a toddler? We have a shy only, and have not found the weekends to be exhausting, especially now in elementary. If you find the weekends to be exhausting with one, you might find them even more exhausting with two young kids.

She is 6. It’s gotten harder the
Older she is. I’m not saying two wouldn’t be exhausting but seripuslynif you are considering a second, do it now and just get through the early years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Me. I'm not good with kids, including my own, but DH threatened to leave unless we had one. So we had one.

What the hell...that's crazy. You should have been the one to leave your husband!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One is a lot more work in
Other ways. Especially for my shy only, weekends are exhausting to set up play dates and entertain her. We wanted only one and it’s the biggest regret of my life that we didn’t try immediately for a second.
I’m too d for it now. Have two if you can.

How old is she, a toddler? We have a shy only, and have not found the weekends to be exhausting, especially now in elementary. If you find the weekends to be exhausting with one, you might find them even more exhausting with two young kids.

She is 6. It’s gotten harder the
Older she is. I’m not saying two wouldn’t be exhausting but seripuslynif you are considering a second, do it now and just get through the early years.

Kids are really different. We have a shy/introverted only who LOVE his quiet alone time/downtime. Weekends with him are quite relaxing. I sometimes think that he's lucky he's an only because I suspect a sibling would drive him insane!

"Have two if you can" is advice that only makes sense if you know exactly what kind of kid you're going to end up with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is PP above who is struggling with this decision now -
For those of you who reached your decision to just have one with such confidence, how did you go about getting to that point?

A few things—one, before my son I did feel that something was missing. Now I don’t.

When I imagine another child with us, I feel like they are “intruding” into my son’s little life. Silly but the truth.

I don’t feel the obligation of my son having siblings and most reasons to do that come from a place of fear (omg but he’ll be alone!!!) which I just wont make huge life decisions based on.

Those are a few thoughts

Wow. This is really smart, and helpful. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

yeah me I only want my son

[Anonymous]

My dad. My parents were both 23 when I was born and my dad never wanted any more. I have a feeling even the one kid was as a concession to my mom. It eats my mom up inside, she is the kind of person who wanted 5 kids. It's really sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What people’s real reasons are for having only one child and what they say in polite company are two different things. Two women in my family have only one child. Both had traumatic births and neither wanted to repeat the experience. One had to get a hysterectomy in her 30s to attempt to fix the damage. I think traumatic births and and birth injuries are a lot more common than people realize.

I read one study that found that about a third of women who had given birth by forceps or emergency C section said they did not want to have more children because they did not think they could go through that experience again.

What stuns me and continues to stun me, is that anyone ever feels entitled to say “you need to give Larla a sibling!” Or “when are you having another?” It’s so insensitive.

+1. To listen to me talk you'd think that I have one by choice. I'm not telling people about the 5 IVFs, 3 miscarriages, and river of tears. It's not their business.

Same here. We needed 3 years of various infertility treatments before DD was born. Now after a loss and 2 failed FETs in the past year -- barring a miracle, we are done. With the exception of our parents, people think we are one and done by choice. I'm so sick of being asked why I don't want to give my DD a sibling, like people just assume that all you have to do is blink and become pregnant. We tried. It didn't work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Me. I'm not good with kids, including my own, but DH threatened to leave unless we had one. So we had one.

What the hell...that's crazy. You should have been the one to leave your husband!

Is this the woman who had one kid she didn’t want and then adopted a second kid she didn’t want? Haven’t seen you on here in a while!