"I feel lonely and sad when I play on my own"

[tibtop]

I'm a single parent, there is no father , I can't say more because it will be identifying. The quote in the subject line
is what my 5yo said to me tonight. I feel like a piece of shit for not providing them with a sibling, even tho I've been trying my damnedest since they were less than a year old. I know this is an infertility thread, a place specifically for the pain of adults trying to conceive and if there's a better place on Mumsnet for me to talk about my child's pain on this subject, please tell me where. I'm doing more IVF and prepared to adopt (my child knows this) but scared of social workers not approving me because of my shit family. I do have a support network but it's not brilliant. My child is lucky in that at least they got to go to school for most of lockdown, but everyone my child knows has more than them. My heart just fucking breaks for my child. My siblings have chosen to become awful adults, and they often weren't that great as teenagers etc, but at least I wasn't lonely. I want to scream for all that she's gone thru and is going thru, and it's all so unnecessary, I know I could have had another child a long time ago if I'd just been given chance, month after month of delays because of clinic fuck-ups, prolonged miscarriage etc etc etc. This is the second week of the school holidays, God knows what I'm going to do in the summer holidays if I'm not pregnant. I'm so angry and so broken, a childhood of abuse for me, so much bad luck as an adult but I still worked ridiculously hard to make the world a better place and I have to keep fighting and fighting and fighting every day for my child. How shit must it be to live with just one person and they're permanently distracted by body ivf, because there's literally no other way for me to be about it, the clinics have proved to me time and time again that they can't be trusted. We used to have a fuller life before covid, I just hope our life goes back to normal at least on that front, to help keep the loneliness at bay a bit whilst I carry on the fucking slog for a sibling.

What Your child has said though doesn't specifically refer to a sibling? You could just as easily take that to mean a parent play with them? Do you play with them? How old are they? Because if there is more than a couple of years age gap they are unlikely to play together anyway unless you adopt a child of a similar age and even then no guarantees? It seems a bit unfair to deliberately bring a child into the world with no father to provide a potential play mate?

Sounds like it could be related to how their school life has changed, I don’t think 5 year olds worry about whether they have a sibling. You say they went to school throughout lockdowns, so they probably couldn’t play together with other kids with the same freedom pre covid. The words also sound like something they have overheard - everyone from the public to the media is talking about loneliness and how kids are missing out on normal social contact.

Only child families are also much more common these days, I know several couples who would ideally have had more but cannot afford to, so have chosen to focus their time on one child and hopefully have a bit more financial stability, so over time, I don’t think your child will feel ‘unusual’ for not having siblings.

I understand if you're upset because you want another child. Perfectly valid. As PPs have said, it's unlikely that your child is too bothered by it though. It's more likely to be your fixation than theirs. I think it's easy when we want something badly to perceive everything as being worse for not having it. I would focus more on this How shit must it be to live with just one person and they're permanently distracted by body ivf. You have more control over this. Having suffered infertility, you know how precious your child is and your biggest regret could be being distracted to the detriment of your happiness with and gratitude for your DC.

I know it's difficult. I have one via IVF and want another, but I'm going to try my best to remember how lucky I am to have him because at one point it seemed an impossible dream and I would literally have given a limb for just one child.

Good luck