Second baby?
I always thought I wanted a big family. At one point, I was convinced I wanted 4 children. However, that seemingly wasn’t in the cards for me as I struggled with infertility and, after undergoing IVF, I gave birth to my daughter at the age of 38. My daughter is the gift of a lifetime and I have absolutely loved motherhood for the last 14 months. My husband grew up an only child and desperately wants to have another baby so our daughter will have a sibling. I’m honestly so scared to have another baby. Not because I don’t love motherhood or my daughter but because I’m scared of how it will impact her. She’s used to having us all to herself. I spend my days taking her to swim lessons, the library, music class, and baby gymnastics! We have playdates weekly and things are just rolling along really well. I’m a former public school teacher and, based of my experience, I want to put her in private school and that’s more realistic with one child. I’m worried adding a baby will be a negative experience for my daughter. She’ll suddenly have to share her parents, her activities will go down because I can’t feasibly drag a newborn to all those activities and engage with my daughter while there. I don’t have an especially healthy relationship with my 2 siblings, particularly my sister, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to foster a healthy relationship between my kids. I’m not talking about sibling fights and normal kid stuff but I wouldn’t want them to be competitive with each other, jealous, etc. I wouldn’t want them to be distant or have no relationship at all. I would like her to have a sibling because I don’t want her to have a lonely childhood and, I don’t want her to be alone when my husband and I start aging and eventually pass away. I don’t want her to have to take care of us alone or feel the burden or weight of that by herself. However, I have 2 siblings neither of which are helping in the care of our aging parents so I’m doing it alone despite having siblings. I also had an extremely traumatic birth experience, almost died, and am absolutely terrified of doing that again. I wish I had more time to consider but I’ll be 40 in October and I have to do IVF again to conceive so I really need to find some peace.