Reply to 1 kid vs. 2 kids - how did you decide?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We were ambivalent about it. I have loved every moment of being a mom, but really did not want to go through the baby years again and sleepless nights. There are also specific health risks for me with another pregnancy.

At the same time I knew we would never regret another child and would love having them in our lives in future years, and this would be priceless.

We would have loved a sibling for our child though at the same time recognize some siblings are not close.

Finances would have been tighter but we could have afforded it, and would have just made the 12 weeks paid parental leave for federal employees, for each of us. We didn't have that with our first

I got pregnant, and DH had a scary health problem which fortunately was ok in the end. I had an early miscarriage in the midst of that and felt relieved, esp as pregnancy carries some risks for me and one/both of us needs to be there for our child we already have. At mid-40s and late 30s for me, we just felt done like our family is complete. We have family and friends in areas of the country where a couple our age has kids old enough to be out of the home already as a grown adult, these are people who stayed in the hometown didn't move to DC.

I love our family the way it is and being able to focus all our time, energy, and resources on our one child. I like the older kid years much better than the baby years, as cute as babies are. It is the right decision for us.[/quote]

Same outcome, similar story. We thought and thought and pro’d and con’d and ultimately decided to try for a second. For the record, I don’t buy any of the arguments about having a kid so that your first kid can have a sibling. I think that’s really flawed logic, and as a second child in my own family, I sincerely hope my parents didn’t have me to entertain my sibling, or so that my sibling could benefit from the “social” experience of my existence. There is plenty of research out there about how siblings do not offer the benefits (social, emotional, etc) to each other that we as a society believe they do.  So when we were thinking about the idea of a second child, I thought and still do, that the only GOOD reason to have a second (or third, or fourth) child is because you and your partner really want to raise another child. Full stop. Using the aforementioned reasoning and after a long period of pro/con-ing, we decided to try for a second child.

Anyway, I got pregnant immediately, which was not the case the first time around and was somewhat unexpected. Like PP, I had a miscarriage. After the miscarriage...although we both felt sad, we also felt deeply relieved. It made us realize that we had been “bracing” for another child. That we had planned to “endure” the short term squeeze of a baby—an experience that was incredibly difficult for us with our first child—for some long term benefit that we imagined (more adult children at the holiday dinner table?) but that may not even come to fruition, or that may not actually be that important to us. So the answer came out of the relief. We figured we’d re-visit the conversation regularly and if we changed our minds, so be it. We haven’t changed our minds. Kid is younger elementary. 
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