Second child indecision

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Have one DC who is 2; a really lovely child who was a really lovely baby and the three of us (DH, DC and I) are very happy together. However, all our friends have had/are pregnant with/trying for their second child. I have always imagined a family of 2 DCs and DH would also ideally like 2 but equally, neither of us would regret stopping with what we're lucky enough to already have.

Money is tight and would be considerably tighter with 2, we have no family nearby so childcare is expensive and support is difficult, I am still working on rebuilding my career after taking a long maternity leave with DC1 and part of us thinks we'd never get as lucky a second time/why try to fix what's not broken/why rock the boat when we're all so happy, while another part thinks DC1 might like a sibling/would benefit from a sibling when they are older/can't untangle my ideal of a 2+2 family/don't want to be "left out" when all our friends are going on to have another 1 or 2 kids.

I realize some of these are trite reasons. I am totally paralyzed by indecision. We keep changing our minds and the lack of a final decision is driving me mad. We keep talking about it and not arriving at any outcome or just changing our minds constantly. Doing a bloody spreadsheet about it didn't help. I'm serious. An actual excel sheet on projected financial impact. Christ.

Can anyone help me move us toward a decision? What pushed you one way or another?

lol @ ladybeard

If childcare expenses are an issue, wait a bit longer so you only have to fork out nursery fees for one child at a time?

Or look at it this way: recent studies have shown that only children are happy children, because they don't have to compete.

When my sister had hers (identical) we read that they were a fluke on the mother's side (egg randomly splitting, but I guess could be a hereditary tendency??) and fraternal twins were from the mother producing two eggs - so also from her side (although tendency could be from her father's side). I seem to recall that it's nothing to do with one's husband anyway - the twins bit, I mean. I suppose he has to be involved in other ways.

Happy to be corrected on any of this though.

That's very interesting clam If I didn't have a deadline I'd be off googling it right now.

Well wikipedia says there's no known influence of the father on the "risk" of twins. So it must be true.

How old are you OP and your dh? can you perhaps wait a couple of years?
(don't feel pressured by what your friends are doing)

Oh I have this indecision OP. I need to start my own thread but you're not the only one feeling this way...

Whether to have a second or not was never in question for me - I am an only child and hated it. Still do, even as an adult. So, as long as nature allowed it, I was always going to have more than one.

Am 32 btw and DH is 37 so I guess we do still have time on our side; it's just my mum had me quite late after a gap and my overriding memory of her is of her being exhausted, preoccupied and just a bit knackered really, which am keen not to replicate if possible.

RL friends seem to have such extreme but also similar views on this; choruses of delight at the thought of houses filled to bursting with lovely babies and stories of fantastically close siblings as well as the "terrible" fate of "lonely onlies" (as one particular sensitive lady at playgroup put it when I revealed that DS is, so far, on his tod) etc. None of them seem to have, or will admit to having reservations or financial concerns or career considerations, which makes me feel a bit, well, mercenary and unnatural :-(.

So, is really good to hear all the different experiences and am very glad I'm not the only one grappling with this question!!

Nowt as lonely as being the only sibling left out of a close bond though. Its much easier to imagine a relationship that could exist with real people than ones that might have been.

This is a bit of a sweeping statement but in my experience boys handle being an only better than girls, especially when grown up.

Few of the men in my family are fussed about their siblings and could quite happily take them or leave them whereas sibling relationships seem to be so much more important to the women.
My own DS will be an only, I wanted a 2nd ( v badly at one stage) but was a bit poorly until he was about 5 by which time DH said no and I reluctantly accepted this and also had reservations about a large age gap.
DS is now 8 and is terribly happy, he loves to play with us or with friends but also loves time alone to play by himself, he's not at all demanding and life is simple, relaxed and easy. He doesn't long for a sibling at all, quite the opposite, when he visits friends and sees the arguments and aggro that go with it, he's pleased to come home to his quiet house. Whether this is a good thing, I don't know because I worry he's not being 'toughened up' by such experiences and he is rather nerdy but what I do know for sure is he is very happy with his situation.
I'm not saying 'don't do it' at all, as I say, I would have loved a 2nd, just saying don't fret too much about the only child thing, it's not necessarily a recipe for loneliness and unhappiness, quite the opposite in my experience.

Don't feel bad about agonising, I think it's an important decision and not to be taken lightly. I say this as we forgot the condom one night, never thought I might get pg after 1 go (I'm getting on a bit in the fertility stakes!) and ended up with a bit of an unplanned DC2 nine months later.

It has been a difficult and exhausting year and while you never regret what you have, and I adore having both of them, I do find parenting 2 relentless and immensely challenging (quite a lot of this is just me being a bit incapable mentally though). DH in particular regrets not considering this properly as he now knows he actually wanted to stop at one which has caused quite a lot of difficulties.

I now also realise that feeling broody is normal and does not equate to needing to actually have another baby .

But I agree with everyone that says you have time on your side to decide. If nothing else a bigger age gap seems less exhausting!

Thanks again - going to speak to DH this evening about a decision to wait a year, scrape together some buffer savings, see how we feel at that stage and choose to go for it if it feels right at that point. Bonus points for reduced nursery fees and the potential to still be on maternity leave or reduced hours with baby number two at a time when DS1 would start school.

I have also phoned my mother to tell her she is wrong, wrong, wrong about twins. I gained no small sense of satisfaction from telling her that ladies on the internet had told me, so there :-).

I feel this has been the best use of a day off work in a long time - there's a joke in there somewhere about being productive/reproductive but it needs another . On that note, thanks for all your input, experiences and thoughts. Hope those of you that are on the second-baby-fence like me find a way to choose a side, eventually! Wish me luck with the DH chat :-)

I also did the spreadsheet thingy, well I made long lists of pros and cons. Ds is 5.5. At 1st we didn't have a 2nd because we could only afford one in childcare and so we decided to wait until ds started school. In the meantime I realised that I wasn't broody at all and that life with one was lovely and easy and so we decided to stick with one.

But I kept coming back to the idea of a second, I couldn't let the possibility go, although I felt no broodiness at all, that's where the spreadsheets came in. So for about a year I tortured myself over it. I decided to try for another just to be on the safe side, did, then had a v v early miscarriage. I felt relief . Then I definately decided to stick with one.

Then about a month ago for the first time since ds I actually felt broody. It suddenly felt like the right time to have dc2. I am now 4 weeks pregnant (all happened very quickly!). This time I'm ready. I'm not having any significant doubts unlike last time. This time it feels right. So they'll be a 6 year age gap. I will give birth a few weeks before I turn 36. It took until now for it to be a decision I was fully behind.

So I recommend waiting until you actually want a dc2. HTH.

I don't think the twins thing is necessarily wrong. On the father's side it can skip a generation.

Eg your father is a twin and had the disposition for twins on his x chromosome. He can't affect your mother who gets her genes from her non twin disposed parents but can affect you because you get an x from your father and x from your mother.

This may not affect your son who gets his x from you and y from his father but could affect his daughter.

Doesn't mean it's gospel though.