To ask why you have just one child?

[WeWillRockEwe]

I am asking for some traffic. No judgement. If you have one child - how come you didn’t have more?

Btw before I have to edit - I can imagine many reasons why people might have one child only but I’m here today to ask people rather than guess/assume ❤️

Late baby (PCOS)
DP wasn't keen to have another (lazy f&cker and was SAHD and realised that once DS was in nursery/school it was a lot easier than with a baby
finally got pregnant and had a miscarriage
lost job day after miscarriage and as breadwinner there was no way i could get a job and get maternity rights within a decent time period given age....
Found it really hard as i desperately wanted more - probably only stopped in last couple of years (DS is 14!)

Adoption

Plus not wanting to take the increased risk having a child with complex needs as I had my first mid 30s so by the time we considered another the potential risks were much higher.

@Ljcrow , this should have been listed in my reasons, too. I was 37 and my DH was 43 when our DS was born, so I think we were already skating on thin ice, in terms of our ages, at that point. We were very lucky that DS is healthy.

I find it a bit bizarre that people still ask if we would consider a second now that I am 40 and DH is 46.

@Threetrees745 that’s not what I meant, so let me rephrase.

I found baby groups incredibly dull because the sole topics of conversation seemed to be babies’ feeding, sleeping and approaching milestones. Mind-numbing. I’m sure many of these women were intelligent and so it flabbergasted me that they seemed unable to speak of anything else. Maybe it’s because that time is so intense, I dunno - but I suspect I’m not alone.

I still get asked and I'm 42. People mean well but it can get tiresome.

I hit the jackpot with my dd after ivf. Did explore ivf a few years after dd (I was 28 when I had her), but it didn't seem worth it (cost, pain, potential heartache) so we didn't try. I'm extremely happy with how things turned out. We all have a great life. Dd loves being an only.

I just saw this on the Guardian article about the NCT. This is a horrifying statistic.

According to an evidence review by Nice, up to 49% of women who plan vaginal births will have urinary incontinence and up to 15.1% will have faecal incontinence for at least a year after birth.

So, to those of you who think it's "selfish" to "only" have one child. Yeah, I was selfish because I didn't want to be incontinent (among other things, as mentioned above)!

I am going to save this and copy and paste it on every stupid thread about mums "only" having one child.

This is so me and my son, he is absolutely my little buddy still at 12. Love our family but equally love time just the 2 of us. People have said ohhhhh you only have 1 and it’s a boy what a shame. He has introduced me to rugby, we strongly support a team something I thought I would never be into but I absolutely love it and love going to games as a family. I have friends with girls who are jealous of my shopping buddy, wow can he shop. Absolutely loves a day trip to London where he can shop for hours!!! We leave dh to work as he gets bored of shopping in minutes where ds and I love just spending hours browsing the shops, then we meet up with dh as our other shared love between the 3 of us is a really amazing restaurants so after an epic shopping trip we make sure we have booked a really special restaurant to try.

Had infertility and went through several rounds of IVF to have dd. Had a traumatic birth then complications which would impact on a future pregnancy/birth.
Sometimes think about what it would be like to have another but parenting is full on even with just one and I just love our life as it is.

I thought it was an excellent post which really resonated with me. Some people are just easily offended. There are intelligent women who become total baby bores unable to talk about anything else.

@Gingertam @Piglet89 @Threetrees745

The way I saw the baby group thing was that for some women (many of whom may be perfectly intelligent) “mum-ing” became their hobby. For example, they actively enjoyed things like researching which buggy to buy & discussing it at length with other mums. Whereas for me I was just happy to buy whatever second hand buggy I could find (assuming it was safe, clean & comfortable for my baby, obviously). The same way that some people are really interested in cars whereas other people don’t care as long as the car gets them from A to B.

My NCT group was full of these women who were perfectly intelligent but had no real hobbies or interests so being a mum became their hobby and full time topic of conversation so they would talk at length about baby meal ideas, because it had become a hobby for them.

whereas I would just feed DC whatever DH and I were having (modified as appropriate) and spend my free time doing my actual hobbies (mainly sport).

Don’t get me wrong, I love my child more than I ever thought possible. But my child is my child, not my hobby.

Money/childcare mostly. If I were to have another child, I would have to pay for childcare this time around (my DD is almost 13 so grandparents are a lot older now/ill health) which would mean there'd be no point in me working and then we'd struggle with money. We're happy as a family of 3 with some fur babies.

Broke up with ds dad when he was a baby and didn’t meet anyone else I liked enough to have more with.
would have liked one more in an ideal world.
Hated the thought of my children being separated to different houses every weekend.

Because I don’t care much for my siblings and didn’t want to inflict siblings on my child.
Because I had a horrible pregnancy and was left disabled by it.
Because I can give more time and energy to one, and both our lives are better for it.
Because I wound up being a single parent when my husband left.
Because I miscarried. Twice.
But most of all because she arrived and she was everything and I didn’t feel the need to do it again.