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[quote=Anonymous]We planned our only. We went into it thinking we'd have one or two. We were happy with one and while there was a brief period of baby fever for a second, ultimately we decided we'd rather be the best parents we could be to our only than potentially overextend ourselves with two.

Factors that played into our decision:
- Challenges from our own childhoods. My parents had more kids than they could really handle, and I was not well parented. I had to do a lot of work on myself as an adult to address deficiencies. I wanted to do better by my own child, and knowing both how extra kids adds extra stress, and also what it means when kids are neglected, made me cautious.

- Related, we had no support from extended family. On the contrary, we are the primary caregivers for my MIL and we each have a sibling who is not fully independent and needs a lot of help. Again, this just made us ultra-aware of not overextending ourselves because we don't have people who can come help us in a pinch, and we have several people for whom we ARE the people who help when help is needed.

- We really value both travel and education and want to be able to afford both for our kid. This wasn't the central factor and if we'd really wanted more kids and thought it was otherwise a good idea, I don't think we would have held of for these reasons. But it is a source of pride and relief to me that we don't have to stress a lot about affording college for our kid, and that we can take interesting family trips together without family size being a limiting factor.[/quote]

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