Undecided on kids. None or one?

[alittlebitmanic]

I am really stressing myself out over this at the moment, and I just can't decide whether to not have any children, or whether to try for just the one. I wanted to post on here for some advice or if anyone might have any insight that would be helpful to make my decision.

For the longest time, I wasn't sure I ever wanted children. My boyfriend and I love to travel, a lot, to far away places, go diving, generally live a carefree lifestyle, and we can be quite lazy to be honest sometimes. The rest of the time I am racing around with my type A personality, trying to plan everything and do it all at once.

I am 29, he is 30 and we have been together over 10 years. We've spoken about it and he is in the same place as I am, totally undecided and can see pros/cons to both sides. One thing he is very worried about, and this has started to worry me too, is the possibility of having a disabled child.

We both plan to keep working and he travels a lot for work, and I suffer from thyroid/hormone imbalance and adrenal fatigue which I am working to get under control or get rid of. I know it is a LOT of work raising children and I just don't know if we could handle a disabled child. My boyfriend has twins in his family with severe cerebral palsy and I just don't know if we could do it.

More than one child for me is going to be too much, but I am thinking of having just one child as this might be a great balance. Still a bit of freedom/time to ourselves, more money to focus on that child and the possibility to still travel with the child. We will have both sets of parents close by to help out too.

I'm just wondering if having the one child is that big a lifestyle change? Obviously, I know it's a huge change, but once your child is a little bit older, do you still get time for yourselves? I love the idea of being a parent in some ways, sharing hobbies, doing arts and crafts, having the family all together at Christmas etc, but I just can't decide what's right for us. How do you come to a decision on something so huge?

Some of the positives I can think of: Raising your own person and educating them etc, giving our parents the chance to be grandparents, having the experience of being a parent - might regret it if we don't, gives our life more meaning and purpose, sharing hobbies and doing fun activities together, being a family unit and hanging out with friends/family that also have kids

The main negatives: a will lose a lot of sleep which I need a quite a bit of right now, less time/freedom to do adult things, restricted with travelling, juggling work and parenting, I will probably be tired all the time in the beginning, teenage years, risk of not having a healthy baby, less money. (the only major ones here would be travel and the baby not being healthy)

I am going around in circles and stressing myself out here. Can anyone offer any insight or how I might be able to make a decision? There are several reasons I don't want to be too old a mum, so my cut off is age 32 - which doesn't give me very long to make a very monumental life decision!

How do I make it?

We will need ivf to have kids and im unsure if its what i really want. Its difficult

I was similar to you. It's such a difficult decision. Having children is not obligatory. I never felt any 'overwhelming urge' to have them and couldn't understand the apparent obsession with getting pregnant. I ended up having two and am extremely happy. But I think my life would also have been happy, in a different way, without. I'm not much help! Good luck.

Do you need to make a hard & fast decision now while you're still young? I'd just have a think about it every year or so. You might both want a child or indeed children in the next few years. How you feel now may not be how you always feel.

I say no. You don't seem able to imagine or accept how even one child changes your life, your sense of self, everything. Don't do it.

I'm just wondering if having the one child is that big a lifestyle change?

Oh my GOD I can't even begin to tell you how BIG the lifestyle change is with just one child! Big doesn't even begin to cover it - massive, huge, whatever, it's a TOTAL life change. At least we found it to be. Everything about your life will change. Though having said that, it does depend on how much support you have around you - some of my friends have very involved parents (ie grandparents to the child(ren)) so they were able to cope a lot better in the early days, get some sleep while the grandparents looked after baby, grandparents brought them food, cooked for them, cleaned, did laundry, ironing, washing up, bought supplies, changed nappies etc; now that the kids are older the grandparents do childcare, take them for a week at a time, babysit regularly so the couples can have date nights etc. Man am I jealous!! We have no supportive family, so it's been just us ever since baby was born 4 years ago, and it's a hard slog. You really don't sound convinced - and I worry that if you do have a child that your lifestyle will change so much, and there's so much agro to deal with (nappies, breasfeeding, mess, crying all night, no sleep, no time to yourself, then if you go back to work it's a nightmare juggling everything) you may resent the baby, and that wouldn't be fair to the little mite. You have to really want it to be able to put up with the trauma. Additionally, just getting pregnant and having the baby may take a lot of courage - you never know if you'll encounter issues, we did - low fertility, miscarriages and worse are possibilities. I totally get your feeligns on this, I was similar - pretty much didn't want kids, dh and I were happy with that decision, loved to travel etc. Then one day when I was 38 I suddenly thought 'i want a baby!' At which point it's not necessarily 'too late', but fertility is reduced, and if you encounter any problems you just have that much less time to try to sort them out. Sorry for rambling, good luck with your decision. Maybe you should wait a while at least before deciding.

Going to throw a spanner in the works here and ask how you'd feel if you went ahead and discovered you were having twins (or more)? Another aspect to think about OP.

Honest question for the group, esp QueSera

When you talk about the scale of the change in your life, did you feel that immediately (upon birth, when DC was newborn, an infant etc.) or did the level of change grow with time?

Don't have one. Just don't. Firstly, because you'll struggle to find only children who truly enjoy(ed) it

Absolute shite, or in modern parlance 'fake news'.

The scale of change for me was immediate, dramatic and all encompassing. I did not resent it or miss my former life for a moment. Its like falling head over heels in love. Everything you do and think revolves around this new person and its amazing. I was delirious.

I desperately wanted children and I have two. But they are incredibly hard work, exhausting, and we now have zero disposable income. So we went from being a couple who loved to travel to not leaving the country for four years because we couldn't afford to. Some days I long for free weekends to relax and be me after a busy week. I wouldn't change it, but I truly don't think parenthood is for everyone.

Don't do it unless you are prepared for your life to completely change. Having one child is just as hard as having 2 children. In many ways it is harder as you will have to be your child's playmate as well as their parent. I adore my DD with all my heart and never regret having her but it is tiring and thankless work a lot of the time.

Having a child is life changing - your life will change forever. It's not like weighing up whether to move to another city or something. If you have to weigh up pros and cons of starting a family, I'd suggest that you make sure you have excellent contraception and postpone your decision. It's not fair to plan to bring a child into your life when you're not sure that's what you want. (Accidental pregnancies present a different sort of decision to the one you're making - so I'm speaking specifically about purposely trying for a baby that you're not sure you want.)

First, dh was a very happy only child even though aspects of his childhood weren't great.

We had an only for 7 years & compared with two children 1 is very easy to slot into your life without huge amounts of compromise.

My siblings both decided not to have children and have more disposable income, more down time and its just easier all round not to deal with the demands of a child/children.

Also when a child comes along it is often the mother's life that completely changes. When he travels for work what do you do now? Because what you'll be doing in future is having all the childcare responsibility.

Wow - thank you to everyone who responded.

To everyone who said 'it's simple, you just don't want them' - I can see your point, because this is a complete unknown to me, but I really am undecided. I would have no problem admitting that I don't want children - in fact, for years that's what I have told my mother. But lately I have started to think differently - admittedly it's all over the place, sometimes I think I want one, then I am not so sure again.

Before, when I saw kids out and about, or screaming on an aeroplane I just thought they were annoying and couldn't ever see myself with one. Now I find myself watching them and imagining being their mother and how I would adjust. Once or twice when I come home from work and my partner isn't yet home, I visualise in my head what I would do after work and what our new routine would be.

To the person who said I would struggle to find only children who were happy about it - I am an only child myself and I was perfectly happy growing up. Though I was shy I soon grew out of it. I get on great with my mum, she bought me up alone with a help from my grandparents who helped out with the school run etc while she worked full time.

Rioja123 - It's not that I am trying to talk myself into it, so much as really wanting to think this through. Obviously my lifestyle the way it is now, is all I have known since being an adult so it's hard to know what I would be like as a parent.

seafoodeatit - I agree, I have written several pro/con lists but it's completely stupid! I can't make a decision like that from one of my many lists!

theiggorcist - I am aware of that book and several blogs like it, which show me it is possible. But I can only imagine how much things will change when travelling with a baby/child. It's tempting to borrow a child and take them with us to see how we cope!

I do have several friends who are pregnant right now, which I am excited about as this will give me a bit more exposure to babies/kids, and might help me to make a decision. I have spent no time around babies at all, so it's all very alien to me. Older children I have a little more experience with, and I don't struggle to know what to do with them so much.

Is it really true that the majority of people immediately know if they want kids? I am a huge over thinker about pretty much everything in life, so it just be my personality. Obviously I would hate to rush into a decision and regret my choice. I can see myself with just the one child - then we can dedicate our time, money and effort to them, and ensure they have plenty of activities where they are around other kids.

It sounds so very shallow, but the travel thing is a big deal to us. However, maybe that won't even be on our mind afterwards. It's not like we will never have the option again, my boyfriends mum doesn't work and both of our mums will be dying to help out, they have made that very clear. I am sure when the child is old enough we could get a long weekend or week away on our own if we wanted a little break.

I am also aware that once the decision is made, that's it, obviously we will always be there for our child even when they have moved out and left home. Travel may be somewhat important, but I think I would have no problems giving up nights out, alcohol, eating out regularly and some of our disposable income. We are trying to become a bit more minimalist anyway and stop buying ourselves things that we don't really need.

I would like to bring my child up to value experiences over things, so it's likely we would budget for more holidays, and not drown them in more toys than are necessary. I admit, one of the reasons is definitely for our parents to have a grandchild, but I would never let that make my decision for me. I just know they would be great, and very involved.

I might be putting a bit too much pressure on myself to make a decision, but with my fatigue at the moment, if I am going to do this it has to be while I am youngish, as I get older I may find I have less energy and struggle more with everything. At this age, and if we only have one child, I could go part time if we wanted to. If we really needed to we could survive comfortably on my partners salary, especially if the travel was to go.

I think while the child was small, we would probably be fine to compromise, (obviously no diving! and limit the travel, or maybe even bring our parents along!) and maybe figure it out as we go. I just don't know, it's not like you can do a trial run! It's weird that this is weighing on my mind so much, it's like a switch has been switched since finding out some friends are expecting, as it never been on my mind until the past 8 months or so.

This is getting rather long and I feel as though I am going around in circles. I am not sure what else I can do, or consider, to help in making a decision. Sure, we would probably be just fine as we are right now, but when we are older, and we don't have much family left, we may well regret our decision.

If it more people didn't do a bit of soul searching before they had kids. You've still got a few years yet, so maybe do your list of things you want to do before kids (if you have them).

Belleoftheball
When you talk about the scale of the change in your life, did you feel that immediately (upon birth, when DC was newborn, an infant etc.) or did the level of change grow with time?

For us (and obviously it's different for everyone depending on a lot of things, but enough of my friends had the same experience as me to know that I'm not totally abnormal) the change at birth was immediate and all-consuming. One of my friends calls it the 'baby bomb' - a bomb going off in your life that you weren't quite prepared for (her kids are teens now and she says they've never recovered from it!). Because of course you spend ages 'preparing' for the baby, and getting advice from everywhere you can, and read everything you can such as threads like this one, and think 'ok sleep deprivation, crying baby, constant feeding, endless nappies, no money etc etc, I get it, it's going to be tough' - but really the thing that hit me was that NOTHING can really prepare you for the full enormity of the change. Your body is not one you recognise, maybe you;ve got stitches all over the place, your hormones are going crazy, your pelvic floor might be shot to hell, you have this creature that you're totally responsible for but most of the time you might feel like you don't have a clue how to make him/her happy, if you're breastfeeding that's a whole other host of potential issues (i had chronic mastitis, for example, for months, the pain was horrendous, antibiotics, expressing round the clock). And any spot, rash, cough etc from your baby sends you into a panic. Sorry I could go on forever but you get the idea.

So the massive baby bomb is from birth. I would love to say that things get easier, and you do get 'into the groove' of parenting, but in my experience they just change (ie not necessarily easier). One stage is replaced by another stage, and it's always brand-new to you. (Having a second maybe it's easier, but then everyone tells you 'every child is different'.) Solid food, crawling, walking, potty training, massive tantrums, on and on; then I think oh this is the easy bit, wait until she's a pre-teen and then actual teenager??? Help! That's why mums with older kids may say to new mums with newborns sleeping peacefully in a buggy, 'oh enjoy them when they're so little, they're so much less trouble when they're babies, wait until they're 2' - infuriating to hear when you're the new mum because it often feels already overwhelming with a baby!

Oh I should add, the impact is felt, to a lesser degree, even before the birth - trying to get pregnant may require lifestyle changes, and pregnancy certainly does - eg alcohol. Pregnancy CAN be very very uncomfortable. It can certainly be stressful. And don't even get me started on childbirth itself.....

I'm sure there are people out there who get (and stay) preggers easily, have an easy pregnancy with minimal side-effects, an easy birth, an easy baby, a lovely helpful partner, lots of supportive family around to help out etc. But many people do not have this experience, so i'm only giving my own and my close friends' experiences.

Perhaps the biggest shift is the sense of repsonsiblity, you are responsible for this little being. You will feel all their joy but also all their pain. When they are sick or suffering, it tears your heart out. You may develop fears you never even thought of before. The world suddenly seems so full of dangers that you want to protect them from. And the permanancy of parenthood - ie you can divorce or ditch anyone else in your life, but you will always be a parent (even parents who abandon their children are still parents).

It's the hardest thing in the world, but for many people the most rewarding; but it really isn't something everyone should feel the need to do.

We travel
With 2 dc's. Having more than 1 doesn't inhibit what we do.

I'd also say that there are plenty of only child families who are happy & well adjusted.

Not having kids is great with all the materialism, traveling, alone time you could want but when you have your baby & hold them in your arms, get smiles, watch them grow etc that love & feeling is priceless.

I didn't want children. Then fell pregnant accidentally with DC1. Then added DC2 (deliberately) and DC3 (another accident).

I love them more than any other people on this planet. But I was right first time - I'm not a natural mother.

Haha didn't even get to the impact it can have on your relationship with your partner, your parents, in-laws, siblings, friends, your sex life, your social life, your holidays, your career ....

Thanks QueSera (and SunmerHouse) I realise it was a bit of an odd question. Because I never really felt the baby bomb, I can't help but worry that I'm somehow 'doing it wrong'.

I had DD in October last year, and there have been moments of utter desperation (ten days in when I wondered if any of us would ever sleep again, when she had her injections and had a temp of 40' and I beside myself with worry) but aside from that I don't feel like my life has changed that much, I still feel very much like me - it's just now I have little, inquisitive, smiley, often shouty beast to do it with. I love her beyond compare, but I always knew hoped I would.

I'm reassured by what you've said that that is likely the luck of the draw (easy conception, easy pregnancy, awful birth the type where we nearly didn't make it, quite an easy going baby (most of the time, and could change at any minute), we didn't breastfeed (medically unable following birth) - which I think helped give us an earlier routine, and I'm very lucky with the support network we have.

I see raising DD as the most complex and important project management task I've ever had, since she was conceived I've felt an enormous pressure and responsibility for what was then something the size of a lentil and now, approximately the size of a large and angry cat.

So maybe my baby bomb was encased in the pure gratitude that we both made it, so felt less of a body-shock. I imagine being a bit older than average (37) and having seen my nearest and dearest start their families helped too. I was just wondering if it hits later and some day it'll feel like my life has turned upside down.

Thanks again (and OP sorry to derail!)

OP it is a hard decision and you are right to think about it seriously. I didn't want children for a long time and even when we were trying for a child I still wasn't 100% sure it was what I really wanted. As I said previously I love Dd(6) to bits and I wouldn't change anything now but equally if I hadn't fallen pregnant I don't think I would have missed having a child.

I think the biggest impact with having children isn't the time it takes up, the money, the lack of sleep etc. It's the responsibility.

I'm not sure if I was a good mum or not when my children were small, I think I was a bit too stressed, but I had some great times and I love them with all my heart and soul.

They are fabulous teenagers though and I am really enjoying this time in our lives and of parenthood.

Children are small for such a short time.

I do feel like its been big change personally.. I have a beautiful smiley little DD who is 1 year old.
I wouldn't change how much my life has changed for anything. You adapt! And imo its amazing being a mummy.
Its the biggest mixed bag of emotions you will ever feel and believe me you feel every emotion possible.
Happiness- when she wakes up and gives the cutest sleepy smile ever.
Sadness- when she is has fell over and hurt herself.
Worry- when they have their vaccinations and aren't reacting too well.
Jealously- when she only seems.to say "hiya dada" and never says mama anymore lol
Annoyance- when they have tantrums when you tell them "No!"
Pride- when they wobble their first steps
Despair- when you think you aren't being the best mum you can be.
It goes on and on....
Only you know what's right for you and i hope your very happy in life no matter what decision you make xx

One child changes your life completely. I have three and the second and third just fitted in.

I thought i didn't want kids till it hit me like a ton of bricks in my mid thirties. I Just had time to have two, and it's been great, but it's really hard work, ( no family help)and I never get enough time to myself.