Courtesy of the author
There were times when my son was young when I thought about what it would be like to have another child, but as a single mom, it just wasn't possible.
When I met my husband, we talked a lot about having another baby, but by the time we got married, my son was already 8 years old. That meant that even if I got pregnant right away, my son would be nearly 10 by the time I had another baby.
Having a newborn and a nearly 10-year-old boy seemed like what would be a large gap between siblings. Plus, with my son getting closer and closer to the age of 18, the thought of having to start over again with another baby was more depressing than anything else.
It felt like I was halfway to the finish line, and the thought of beginning again from square one was not appealing. The older my son got, the closer I was to being "done," and that felt like a relief.
I had been a single mom for seven years, and while I still look back fondly at that time of my life when it was just my son and I, I found motherhood to be exhausting. I sometimes wonder how I accomplished taking care of the two of us all on my own, and the only answer I come up with is survival. I can remember thinking when my son was born that I would never sleep again, and while that isn't true, I certainly never slept in late again. Even before I met my husband, I was already so burnt out.
Ultimately, my husband and I decided not to have a child together. One of the main reasons that contributed to our decision was that parenting my son was already a lot of work. While I had already parented solo for years, he had become an overnight involved stepdad. We are on the same page in that parenting is a full time job on top of our careers, so there is little to no time left for us to rest. When we aren't working outside of the home, we are at home working as parents.
There is no doubt that our age played a factor in my husband and I deciding not to have a baby together.
Since I already had a child when we started dating, he and I have never had the opportunity to experience our relationship outside of being parents. When my son graduates from high school, my husband and I will both be in our mid-40s. If we had decided to have another baby when we got married, we would each be almost 60 by the time that child graduated from high school.
While we are still relatively young, we want to experience life as a couple without kids. We want to spend our time working less and traveling more as soon as we possibly can.
I wanted to experience having a child with a supportive partner, while I think my husband didn't want to miss out on having his own child. So I was nervous to introduce my hesitation to have another baby into our conversation about having kids. But I'm glad I was brave enough to ask him to entertain the idea of what our life would be like without having another child. Until I brought it up as an alternative, he said he hadn't really thought much about life without a baby.
I have always felt like I'm not allowed to say how much work being a mom can be. For a long time, I felt ashamed for being exhausted by parenting. I always felt that the expectation was to have more than one child. When I found my husband, many people assumed that having a baby together would be the next step, and I know he felt that expectation as well. We're both glad that we allowed ourselves to even consider not having a baby, because in thinking carefully about that, we realized that having another child wasn't what we wanted. It was what others expected of us.
Every once in a while I'll think about what it would be like to have another baby. Mostly it's when I walk by an adorable set of footie pajamas in a store or encounter a storybook that I loved reading to my son. While on one hand it does feel sad that I'll never have a baby again, I always circle back to the same conclusion, and that is that we made the right decision.
Having my son brings the fulfillment to our lives that being a parent can provide, but footie pajamas are not a strong enough reason to have another child. I am no longer ashamed to admit that I'm already too tired for a second child. While being a mom is something I'm proud of, I am also very much looking forward to the next part of my life once my son is grown.
