Wife wants another. I'm not excited about it

[alsdpa]

Over the past few weeks my wife has been more direct in asking about having another kid. She (38) is the middle child in a family with three kids and I (39) have a younger brother. Our son (5) has started making comments about not having a real brother (his brothers are all stuffed animals). Most of our friends in town have two or more kids.

My son's birth was scary. My wife was in labor for over 12 hours and then had an emergency c section due to a prolapsed cord. Everyone was fine but it's not an experience I want to repeat.

I love being a dad. I am just not excited about going through it all again with another kid. Our son was not a so-called angel baby. He refused to be swaddled and did not sleep consistently untill he was about four.

I am happy that the baby years are behind us. I feel like we have a good family and nothing is missing. I also like the idea of the three of us traveling more.

My wife feels like she has to have another kid because she will reach an age soon where she can't.

She says she wants for our son to have a friend and companion in life. We don't have any extended family nearby so he doesn't have a bunch of cousins or other relatives he can visit. He has a lot of friends at school but there's no way to know how long he'll stay in touch with them.

I want my family to be happy. But I don't want to carry around resentment for agreeing to have a second kid. Any advice?

 

[jperenon]

@alsdpa I had my second daughter because I felt guilty for not giving my first a sibling. A single child was almost taboo in our friends circles and families.

Looking back at this train of thoughts, I think I was wrong on a number of things :
* When we had our second, quality time with our first has falled drastically : we couldn't give her as much time as before and on the first week, when I told her I couldn't play with her because I had to take care of her sister, she said something like "before, daddy and mommy only took care of me "
* We are more tired and have less patience in general with our eldest daughter.
* The interaction are not so great : when her sister was a little baby, the older one wanted to manipulate her constantly but we couldn't let her, of course. Now they are fighting a lot on who will have this or that toy. Their age gap is 3 years, I guess yours' would be 6 or more.
* I can be very protective of the younger one, and become stressed when she's crying. I sometimes lose my temper with my eldest daughter when she makes too much noise while the navy is crying or sleeping.

So, all in all, I don't think that giving your single child a sibling is a good enough reason to have another child.

You and your wife should rather be asking : do we want to do it again because we love parenting? Do we want to do even more parenting?

 

[alsdpa]

@jperenon Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

[lonniebiz]

@jperenon this would definitely be me… I’m grappling but leaning towards the one. I’m getting my rhythm back now that he’s 3 and in preschool so you get those thoughts about: I can do it again! but I know it would be a big hit to everyone in almost every way. I don’t think we should do it.

 

[born94]

@jperenon This is such a good answer. Thanks for sharing!