I'm A Mom Content With Just One Child

This year I have exchanged daytime naps for nighttime sleep induced by mommy singing. I think it's a decent trade-off really. At first, I hated losing naps. But I have come to learn that most of the time it's more convenient. It has freed up our daily schedule quite a bit and permits me to do other things, like work for the family business a little bit.

I think the thing I love the most is how tired my sweet boy is at the end of the day. Now, I know that seems crazy, because when he's tired he can be a bit...emotional. However, with him being so tired, he's ready for bed when it's time and eager to fall asleep to mommy's singing. 

I would say most nights after he falls asleep, I lay there for just a little longer. I hold him, smell his head (yes for some reason I just love his smell!), kiss his cheeks. I do this because I know that moments like this will fade. Someday he won't need me to sing him to sleep. Someday he won't even want me in his bedroom. So, for this time I embrace it with all I can. I try to remember the feeling of his tiny body sighing with exhaustion as he slowly drifts into dreamland. I take a long moment to pause and soak it all up. He is my only child and I love it.

There are so many of these moments that I am thankful to be able to be really in. Thus is the luxury of only having one child. I get to really attend to him and every moment. And just to be clear, I am in no way saying that parents with more than one child cannot be attentive. It is probably more challenging, but I have no way of making that call as I am not a mother of more than one child. That said, I can only imagine based on my own observations of people with more than one child that it would not be for me. I have a hard enough time being mindful and in the moment. If I had to attend to more than one child I might lose my sanity completely. 

For as long as I can remember I wanted to have two kids. I thought this was the perfect number. One for each parent. But then getting pregnant seemed to be harder than I expected and I didn't have my first child until I was 30. And the pregnancy was pretty fine. I did have GD and gained a ton of weight. I had a hard time sleeping and the birth did not go even remotely as I envisioned it. But in the end, we got a wonderful little guy. And I have been loving him as much as possible since then. 

For a little while, I had some serious baby fever. But when I did the pros and cons list, I just knew in my heart that it wasn't going to happen. My husband wasn't ready, I was not mentally ready for the stress of another infant, I love sleep, I didn't want to get huge again, the risk of GD is high as well as getting Type II diabetes, I'd have to go through another C-section...the list goes on and on. And when I really thought about why I wanted another kid...I truly could not answer that question. It was just an instinct. It was just a feeling. It was not practical. And my son reminds me every day that he is enough. He is enough for me to have in my heart and my life. (Not implying that for others wanting more means you aren't satisfied. This is just my journey and my opinion.) For me, he is enough. He is exactly the child I always dreamed I would have. I don't want to have to split my attention with another child. I like being able to give him all of me when we are together. I like being able to be really there for him. 

I am often asked when I will have another child. Sometimes harassed even. And my answer now is "No. No, I do not plan to have another child." I have let that instinctual desire float away like a bubble in the wind. It was hard to let that float away, I'll admit. But I think for us, our little family, this is what is right. This is our family and it works just the way it is. We are all happy. We all have what we need in this. It's good. We're good.