u/faithle97

Update: wow this sparked so many more comments and conversations than I thought it would. I’m just going to update this because I’ve replied to a few comments with the same thing so it’ll just be easier for me to clarify here. Basically this all boils down to me wanting these conversations to be had so that women (sahms, working moms, whoever) has access to factual info and options so they can make educated decisions for themselves and for their families. Not decisions based on fear. Not decisions based on societal labels. But real educated decisions based on knowing realistic options for their specific circumstances. I hate the “all sahms are screwed” narrative because some young woman could hear that and automatically think “well I don’t want that to be me, guess I can never be a sahm” and that’s it. So she never explores her options or knows that there are ways to make the decision with safeguards in place to protect herself/her children. Basically knowledge is key, knowledge is power, these conversations are important, negative blanket statements help no one.

This is more of a rant than a discussion but I’m just so annoyed with this notion that many people have that if you’re a sahm you’re automatically screwed in terms of finances (for yourself). Of course there are cases where women do fall into bad situations and/or don’t plan ahead accordingly and do get screwed if their spouse divorces them, leaves them, loses their job, etc BUT not ALL sahms are victims of that. I feel like it’s just such a bad light to paint sahms in like “oh she’s giving up her career and choosing to screw herself out of stable finances if she becomes a sahm and wants to spend all that time with her babies”. But then moms also get judged for going back to work and having “daycare raise their babies all so she can advance in her career”.

This all stems from a different post I saw in another sub and so many comments were like “I’m so glad I never quit my job especially when my ex and I ended up divorcing” or “sahms always say ‘I have a degree to fall back on’ but that means nothing” or “it’s so crazy how some women are okay with giving up career/salary advancements just to stay home with their baby”. Obviously I don’t speak for all sahms, but I personally have a degree to fall back on AND yes it is a highly in demand field that I know for a fact I’ll have zero issues finding a job in once I’m ready to go back (when my toddler starts school). No, not all degrees are useless even with a 4+ year resume gap. No, not all sahms are “screwed”. Some of us have thought ahead and have put certain protections in place for the “just in case” scenarios. No, sahms aren’t any less than other moms just because we’ve chosen to forego a salary for a few years. It just grinds my gears that so many people (especially other women!) put sahms down and paint us all as helpless, incapable, screwed women.

Maybe this isn’t the right place to vent about this but I just don’t really want to post it in the onlychild sub either. Maybe some of you here can somewhat relate ? And if not, enjoy my mental spiral lol

I’m just so tired of the narrative that an only child is the “lesser” option or the “last resort”. I’m an only child and have heard this my ENTIRE LIFE. People feeling sorry for me “being alone” or sorry for me “missing out” and hearing people come up to my mom and tell her things like I needed a sibling and how dare her for “only having one child” as if I wasn’t enough. As if I didn’t matter as much if I wasn’t some package deal with another kid. As if my value was less and “just me” wasn’t okay. Well newflash to all those people, my parents never ever made me feel like I wasn’t enough or like my mere existence wasn’t as valuable. I loved being an only child and still do as an adult. And now as a OAD parent the comments still suck. The stigma still sucks. The comments, questions, etc about the “guilt” for not “giving my child a sibling”. Like no, I DON’T feel guilt. I DON’T see having an only child as some “lesser than” choice. I don’t see my ONLY child as a last resort. I don’t feel bad about making my child the center of my life and giving him 100% of me. Why is my only child only acceptable if I’m not able to have more? Like I’m just “settling” with having one because I don’t have the choice to have another? No. It has been a choice and it’s been a damn good choice.

Only children aren’t lacking. Only children aren’t less than. Only children aren’t socially awkward or weird or any less capable or less amazing than any other child that has siblings. I’m just so tired of all the negative stigma and pity.

Okay. Rant over.

Can I just say that dealing with an alcoholic parent is incredibly hard, stressful, and even annoying at times.. but doing it as an only child with divorced parents just puts a little extra icing on the cake. Feeling a bit bitter about this situation. My dad has been an alcoholic since I was born and has gone in and out of sobriety throughout the years. Well, I’m an adult now with my own husband and child and it just really sucks feeling this weight always falling onto me when things turn south for my dad. Randomly getting calls from the hospital saying he fell in public and had to be taken by ambulance, randomly having him show up at my house intoxicated going on drunken rants, randomly getting calls from police officers/a mental hospital, then being expected to not only hold his shit down (taking care of his pets/house while he’s gone) but also still juggle all of the things I already have going on with my busy life as a mom/wife.. it’s just a lot.

And yes, I know these would still be problems if I had siblings. I know even if I had siblings there would be no guarantee they’d participate in helping. I know the issue is the alcoholism/divorced parents, not lack of siblings. But sometimes this weight is just so heavy. I have a friend who also has an alcoholic dad but at least her parents are married so her mom still takes the brunt of the responsibility. Basically sometimes I just wish the responsibility wasn’t always falling on me. Rant over.

Wanted to add: I’ve overall enjoyed my life as an only. But this is the one point of contention that’s followed me my whole life. When my parents were together/I was a kid, it was “my mom’s problem”. But since they’ve gotten divorced (a long time ago) and I’ve become an adult, it’s now become “my problem” and I honestly kind of hate it.

My husband and I are trying to potty train our 3.5 year old and are just getting more and more frustrated by the day. We’ve been trying for a year now since he was 2.5. His resistance for sitting on the potty is just getting worse and worse. It’s gone from some fear around sitting on the potty then going to hide somewhere, peeing on the floor, and having him help clean it to now he’s fully capable of holding his pee FOR HOURS (his record is 15 hours which almost prompted an ER visit) and fights us to even sit on the potty. We’ve tried rewards, we’ve tried visual timers, we’ve tried Cheerios/glitter/sticker in the potty to encourage “aiming for it”, we’ve let him pick out his “new big boy undies”, we’ve read books/sang songs/explained it all every which way you can think of, we’ve tried the warm water “tricks” when we have rarely gotten him to sit on the toilet (to help ‘release’ the pee), we’ve tried the intense 3 day pantsless method and more gentle lower pressure methods, literally anything and everything .. we’ve tried it.

But now we’re at the point where he’ll hold his pee (keeping his underwear dry) but the problem is getting him to actually release that pee into the potty. He was also withholding poop to the point of severe constipation which finally made us visit his pediatrician who told us to start him on MiraLAX to break the “pain/poop/withhold cycle”. Which now he has been pooping (thank god, the screams were awful while he was trying to painfully poop before) but now he’s been pooping in his underwear. So no pee accidents, just poop. Strong resistance to even simply sitting on the potty. When I say strong resistance I mean screaming “no!”, crying, having a whole meltdown, physically fighting us even if we would try to force him to sit (which we’ve read/been told is not something we should do).

So I’m at a loss. Obviously he can’t hold his pee forever. He doesn’t care that he ends up having to help clean up his poo. He doesn’t care that he’s holding his pee for such long amounts of time. He’ll tell us he needs to pee but wont sit on the potty. He’ll wait until shower time at the end of the night and pee in there. My husband has even tried getting him to stand to pee which was successful one time and that’s it. Now he’s even been resistant to standing too.

Has anyone dealt with potty training a kid like this? I thought it was supposed to get easier with time not harder. His pediatrician recommended behavioral therapy because even he didn’t have any other advice for us.

I just wanted to share about our recent vacation we had for the 4th of July weekend with our only since it was such a fun time.

Our only is 3 years old and we took a little family vacation with me, my husband, my mom, and my stepdad to one of the Disney hotels. This is something that I never got to do as a kid so I was SO excited to finally be able to go as an adult with my own kid lol we did a character breakfast where all the main Mickey and friends characters came out to say hi/give hugs/take pictures while we ate breakfast. When I tell you the look on my toddlers face was pure joy, awe, excitement, all the things .. it was truly so priceless to see him so happy. After that we went to one of the waterparks where we enjoyed the lazy river, wave pool, and toddler water area. Then we checked into our hotel, grabbed dinner, and had even more water time by the pool.

We literally ALL had a blast and it was nice having so many adults with our only so we could kind of “tag team” a bit in terms of entertaining, supervising while another adult went to do something, having an extra set of hands during meals, etc. Idk there are some moments where I question our decision to be OAD, but every time we travel as a family I feel I’ve made the right decision. I know I wouldn’t have the capacity to enjoy our vacations as much if we had multiples and constantly had to “divide and conquer” everywhere we went.

Hi everyone, sorry if this has been asked before. I perused the old posts but couldn’t find any answers to this question.

My family will be staying at All-Star Movie during 4th of July weekend. From my understanding we won’t be able to see fireworks from our resort but are there any recommendations for where to go see them that’s somewhat close by? We aren’t going to the parks -literally just doing the chef Mickey breakfast at contemporary morning of the 4th, one of the waterparks after that (because free tickets so why not lol), then planning to hang out at the resort the remainder of our weekend. We’ve previously stayed at fort wilderness and know you can see fireworks from their beach area, so we know that’s 1 option, but just wanting to gather all of our fireworks viewing options so we can make the best choice for us 😊 thanks in advance!

Edited to add: we’re willing to book a dining reservation at a resort if that gives us access to fireworks show viewing. I just want to know which resorts/restaurants we would be able to see from so we can sift through our options from there 😊

Just for fun, what’s your sign and what’s your best friend’s sign? And further yet what’s your partner’s sign? Past relationships (best and worst)?

I’m an Aries and ironically both my best friend and partner are Aquarius signs. I’ve previously dated cancer, Aries, and taurus. Fellow Aries was the worst relationship followed by cancer and Taurus wasn’t bad we basically just fizzled out and mutually parted ways.

Technically I have 2 best friends, 1 local and 1 long distance. The local one is the Aquarius and the long distance one is Scorpio. I feel like I have very different friendships/dynamics with both of them but it still works.

How about everyone else 👀

Not sure if anyone else can relate to this but I’ll preface this by saying, I’m in a friend group with 3 other moms. Amongst all 4 of us, there are 6 kids (all under 4yrs old) when we all get together. The other 3 moms are all pregnant right now so by the end of this year, our group will then have 9 kids amongst us.

We’ve all had this open offer to each other that if any of us needs childcare in a pinch or for a doctor appointment or whatever, that we’d be willing to help each other out. Which that’s fine, doesn’t bother me, I’m happy to help if I can and it honestly just hasn’t come up much in the past 3 years we’ve all been friends. However today we were all having a play date at my house and one of the moms asked me to watch her older son (same age as my son, 3.5yrs old) so she could bring the younger one to a doctor apt later this week which I said I unfortunately couldn’t do because of my own prior commitments. She was fine with it. However, other mom there (who also has 2 kids) looks at the other mom [who asked me] with a puzzled look because she didn’t get asked for the favor I guess ? And the one mom just says “oh I wouldn’t ask you to watch my kid, you’ve already got enough kids to watch [2 kids]”. Which in the moment I just laughed it off but in my head I was like “umm wtf ? We all have this same agreement and you won’t ask __ to watch your kid because then that would be 3 kids for her but if you asked me it would be 2 kids for me.. which is literally the same amount that both of you have daily..”. Which don’t get me wrong, again, I don’t mind helping out and my son having another kid to play with is nice. But just her logic of why she’s not open to asking the other mom (when they’re both about to have 3 kids each by the end of the year) was a bit annoying to me because technically.. yeah I’d prefer to *not* watch other kids, I like having my one kid and am at capacity with just him if I’m being honest (hence why I’m OAD haha). Sorry, I know I’m just rambling at this point. This all just happened so it’s kind of fresh in my mind, emotions and all. It’s just frustrating feeling like my capacity is invalidated by them and just the assumption that I can be the “dumping ground” simply because I have the least amount of kids.

Those who were fence sitting but could see themselves happy with either the current number of children they have/had OR with one more.. what did you end up doing? Did you stick to the current number or did you take the plunge and go for another?

My husband and I have one wonderful 3yo son. He’s the center of our world and he’s such an amazing little guy. That being said, pregnancy, delivery, postpartum it was all terrifyingly difficult. Much more difficult than I ever could’ve imagined. I had health issues from mid 2nd trimester onwards, a traumatic delivery (leading to us almost losing our son), and postpartum health complications -when mind you, I had zero health issues going into pregnancy. Then my son also had some health issues immediately after birth (quickly resolved thankfully) along with god awful colic and reflux that lasted until he was about 8-9 months old. Then he was a crazy young toddler climbing by 9 months and running by 12 months lol not to mention, my husband was in the military for the first 2.5yrs of our son’s life which left a lot of solo parenting on my part (another level of difficult I never would’ve imagined!).

All of that to say… I always pictured my future with either 1 or 2 kids. I’m an only child myself and have no complaints about it. My husband is content and mostly set with sticking OAD and most days I am too. But honestly, I could see myself being happy if we stuck to our current life OR I could also see myself being happy if we added 1 more to our family. Some days I think “this would be so nice to do one more time and I really think I could handle it” then other days I think “man, I’m SO happy I don’t have another right now”. If I picture my life 20 years from now, there’s no definitive answer for how many kids I see at my dinner table. If I imagine even 5 years from now, i can envision myself toting off either 1 or 2 kids to school, sports practices, etc.

If we did have another, I’d most likely half some of the same medical issues come back up during pregnancy and I would need a c-section, according to my doctor. Which scares me. Also my mental health took such a nosedive and it took about 2 years to recover from that and get to a decent mental space (even with meds and therapy). Financially, we would be just fine so that thankfully isn’t a concern. Mostly it’s health related concerns (physical and mental) both in myself and my husband (he got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease about 1.5yrs ago which still isn’t well-managed yet). Space-wise, our house is on the smaller side so adding another would require some “Tetris-playing” of furniture lol but it would be doable. Now we have more family help than we did when we first had our son so that would make things a little easier. Plus husband is out of the military now. BUT I’ve been a sahm since our son was born and I am really looking forward to going back to my career once he’s school aged in a couple more years, idk if I’d want to restart that clock again.

If you’ve made it this far with reading my rambling thoughts you’re amazing. Anyone else relate?

My luteal phase has been extended because my period just refuses to come. I’m 3 days late now and I’m just so exhausted, moody, anxious, and now this morning I also woke up with a dull headache that won’t go away. On top of it I had a bunch of kids in my house this morning for our pre-k homeschool group and I could just feel myself internally exploding and wanting to crawl out of my skin because of the sensory overload- they found a sensory bin of dry pasta that I forgot to put away (so partly my fault) and proceeded to dump it out all over my patio before I could stop them, plus the toys everywhere, the constant fighting over toys, constant needing to intervene with the younger ones (little siblings of the pre-k kids), and just the general noise. Add in the headache, constant “mental noise” from the mental load of general motherhood, trying to also keep track of the conversation with the other moms, and it’s just too much.

For reference, I only have 1 child and even his chaos and noise can be a lot for me some days but I’ve learned how to manage with just us 2 together. Plus he’s also just not as wild by himself compared to when his friends are around (actually our days are pretty pleasant with just us if I’m being honest). And really, none of the kids behaviors were abnormal or “bad” but it was just a lot. It’s just really hard for me to go from 1 kid (my own) in my house to suddenly having 6 kids (all under 4yrs old). My nervous system is shot after this morning. I just want to sit in a dark corner and cry. My therapist diagnosed me with adhd recently so I know that’s also part of my sensitivity to the sensory things/getting overstimulated easily.

Idk where I’m going with all of this but I just needed to rant.

Those who take an SSRI intermittently for their PMDD, which one do you take? I’ve tried taking SSRIs continuously but never loved all the side effects. I recently tried Zoloft intermittently but felt way too much emotional blunting (I felt so numb and paralyzed I couldn’t even get basic tasks done around my house until it wore off). Now my doctor just prescribed Paxil to take intermittently but I’m worried about the weight gain side effect of it (amongst the other possible side effects, I just know weight gain is a really common one). She said those are my only 2 options for intermittent dosing.. so I’m wondering what is everyone here taking intermittently that’s working for them?

**Want to start this off by saying, this is in no way a dig towards the OAD parents who don’t have a choice or have chosen to be OAD due to difficult circumstances.**

Just need to rant for a second about how when you say you’re OAD, people just jump to the conclusion that it must be for a negative reason -like that you hate motherhood/parenthood, have a difficult child, can’t afford it, etc etc. Granted, my husband and I are oad for MANY reasons, some of which are “negative” and some of which are “positive”. But it’s just annoying that people can’t seem to fathom willingly choosing to be oad for positive/happy reasons like simply *being content* with your family of 3 or wanting to pour your full focus/energy into your one child.

I think this is just hitting me because while I did have a difficult pregnancy, traumatic delivery, difficult postpartum, and generally just struggled with the transition into motherhood .. I also truly do see all of the positives with having one child. (I’m an only child so now it’s kind of cool to see the parenting side of it after living through the childhood side of it). I also finally asked myself, “if I *didn’t* have those difficulties/trauma surrounding pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.. would that *actually* make a difference right now about my decision to have another?” And my answer was no, it wouldn’t. Even if I had the most textbook pregnancy and delivery and had a flawless postpartum, I still wouldn’t be chomping at the bit to have another child right now (for reference my only is 3yrs old so many of my friends are pregnant with their 2nd or even 3rd babies right now). I honestly LOVE pouring my whole self into my one baby and I love not having to feel like I’m missing out on meeting his needs because I’m stretched thin caring for another baby.

Anyways, if you read this whole rant you’re a trooper. I truly love this subreddit 🫶🏼 it’s been so helpful and given me so much support when I’ve really needed it and have felt so alone in this OAD journey (I don’t have any oad friends lol)