To think a second baby would be too hard?

[justanoldhack]

We had our first baby at the very beginning of the pandemic. It was so, so tough. We had no help from family or friends, barely any professional support. Our baby was really unsettled most of the time. Hours of crying, terrible napper, multiple night wakings, our marriage was pushed to the limit and I was so unhappy at times and thought we'd made a mistake. Things got slowly better with time, and now we are in a really wonderful place. Baby is so happy and sweet, is now a brilliant sleeper, we have a bit of our lives back (well, evenings), I'm not constantly stressed out anymore and feeling like I'm stretched to my limits... Life is good.

But now of course we're thinking about baby #2. I did always imagine having more than one, definitely not more than two. But I'm really scared of screwing everything up. I feel like adding a baby into the mix will out us right back to square one. I also don't understand how we would cope with a toddler + a baby... It was hard enough with just one. And that's without any 'big' complications (I mean, Covid was a complication but no health issues, great pregnancy and birth, etc).

I'm keen to hear from those who were unsure and had a second - what was it really like? Is there anything that you think would make it easier? We really need to make a decision soon. I feel like I want another baby, but I'm so worried about the day to day and whether we will be able to manage.

Thanks!

Apologies, I meant 1st birthday

@justanoldhack could I also ask, do you think having a slightly bigger age gap would have made any difference to the intensity of it?? I'll be playing with fire to leave it much longer ( I turn 37 this year and had 2 miscarriages before my son), but one obvious solution is rather than ruling it out I try my luck with waiting for a bigger age gap (aka close to 3 or later), do you think that would have made any difference?? We had decided to start ttc in December originally (but can't face it, hence all these convos), which would have given us a minimum of a 2.3 year age gap

Ps 'running on cortisol' is a great phrase and exactly how I'd describe our lives already :/

We had DS1 in 2005, and DS2 in 2014, an almost 9 year age gap. That won't work for lots of people, of course, but it has worked really well for us. No sibling rivalry, no toddler-wrangling combined with breastfeeding, etc. You don't have to decide now (depending on both your ages or other factors). My parents had four children in a shorter time period than we had two - oldest was 7 when youngest born.

@Tor88 that's an interesting question... Yes probably a larger gap would have helped. But I was already feeling a bit over the hill energy-wise and also knew the longer we left it, the harder it could be to conceive. And they get along really well, who knows if it would be the same with a bigger gap?

It's such a personal decision and so many factors come into play. What's your partner like in terms of hands on support? What's their view on a second child? Without my partner I don't know where I'd be - I was utterly overwhelmed when #2 first came along and felt almost mad due to lack of sleep.

Does your family feel complete already? Is your work fairly flexible? Do you have a few people around you in a similar situation who you could do playdates etc with?

We definitely got to a stage where things felt easier with our first, still a LOT, but better. Perhaps you haven't got to that place yet?

I often think, I love being a parent, I love my kids, I just wish this was just 15% easier. I feel like I'm quite hardy and can generally cope with most things, but this feels utterly relentless some days. Why would nature make this so hard?! Then I keep coming back to the thought that we were never meant to raise children this way, all alone, in our bubbles (quite literally for us, as our first was born at the very start of the COVID lockdown 🤪).

It's a really difficult decision, but I think you still have time on your side.

@justanoldhack 15% easier is a great way of putting it!! I just need a little give 😂

My partner is a brilliant, hands on dad and would like another but also thinks he could be happy with just one. We've had our challenges over the past few years, mainly around him having more independence than I can (e.g. sports, working overtime), but we've communicated a lot and improved things, and I think we know that the balance would be better with two because we'd both be flat out 100% of the time, rather than so much of it just being on me (thinking more baby stage, mat leave, breastfeeding era here). We have some limited family support, my step mum is amazing, lives two hours away and is a saint when she comes. Mixed bag elsewhere. Our jobs are busy but flexible ish (9-5 but with some WFH).

I think you're right that perhaps we're just too in the thick of it to see straight still. I have been feeling the pressure to start ttc because it took us over a year to get our healthy pregnancy when we started trying aged 33 and I'm now 36. I think I may just have to take the risk that comes with delaying. Previously I'd been trying to focus on the end result - aka two kids. But I've been so desperate not to get pregnant again that it's just making me want to really think about this. I've started to think about all the pros of having just one, rather than just seeing the cons of having two, which makes me think it's perhaps not something that's driven purely by overwhelm. I also had an awful pregnancy and horrendous birth, of course that doesn't help with me then wanting to do it again. There feels a sort of freedom to thinking 'oh I don't actually have to go through it all again', which is a fairly new idea for me as I always felt so sure I wanted a bigger family.

Anyway, I am rambling 😂😂 I really appreciate your thoughts and your honesty about life with two. The bottom line/question I think is - you will never regret your second and it will be worth it in the end, but can you and your marriage survive those early years ....

It's not necessarily now-or-never aged 36 for you, OP. It does take longer on average to conceive after mid 30s, and some women can't conceive at younger ages than others, but there's no cliff edge inscribed in stone. I got pregnant very quickly at 36, my Mum did at 37 (with her fourth) and my sister had no trouble conceiving at 39.

If I could go back, I’d crack on sooner because it was this close to being too late and the journey was almost certainly harder than it needed to be. It’s different for everyone, and a bit of a gamble as to when the ovaries will call it a day.

One thing that can't be planned - each baby is different. No.2 could be the world's most chilled baby and toddler, or a nightmare.
My Mum says her third made her feel really smug, the baby fed/slept/woke on a precise timetable, slept through early, gained weight and height etc on a beautifully straight graph line that perfectly matched centiles. She thought she'd totally cracked this motherhood lark, everything was great. Then my brother was born, and it turned out she'd not totally cracked this motherhood thing....

@LondonLawyer I hear you in the age thing, thank you, I know I'm that old, though to add context I had fertility testing last time after miscarriages and I have severe endometriosis, fibroids and a low ovarian reserve, I paid for a very expensive fertility consultation who looked at my tests and said - IVF for you. We then conceived naturally and carried to term the following month, so who the eff knows, but that's where the age pressure comes from. I think we have come to the decision to at least wait until spring, and then re assess. We were supposed to start trying months ago on fertility advice, we just haven't been able to face it with life feeling so insane/cortisol driven. I am so lucky to have my boy, giving him a good life has got to be priority no #1, and im a wreck in pregnancy.

Apologies, I was talking in general, and specific women's circumstances are of course fact-specific.

One of the reasons (not the only one) that there is 9 years between my two is that I loathed being pregnant. I had hyperemesis with DS1, and ended up vomiting uncontrollably, often. It was less bad in later pregnancy and I did have some anti-emetics, but I still threw up every single day from 5 weeks* to full term, and ended up on a drip repeatedly for dehydration. There was a risk of it re-occuring, and it was a long time before I was able to even face the thought of it!

I definitely understand feeling a wreck while you are pregnant, and of course it's harder to be a wreck with a small child - at 8 years old DS1 could understand when I was being sick and I didn't need to worry all the time about his safety, and of course he was at school, too. But when I finally did get pregnant again with DS2, and did get hyperemesis again, I did cope with it, and have never regretted having him. It wasn't quite as bad with DS2, only a few dehydration-and-drips, but absolutely not fun.

The * is because it's the only time my Mum's been absolutely and categorically wrong, when I started feeling nausea she reassured me that it was horrible, but that it passed at 12-13 weeks, and in her four pregnancies she'd felt very sick in each first trimester but only actually vomited a couple of times. This turned out to be reassurance that didn't come true for me, although my sister was similar in terms of nausea until 12/13 weeks and not much actual vomiting.