How much help you have
While you and your partner may not always agree on how to get your baby to sleep, you'll need each other's support - whether it's another set of arms when yours ache, or a hand to squeeze when your child's crying it out. If your current sleep methods are pulling you apart instead of bringing you together, it's time to regroup. Georgia mom Claire spent so much time rocking her daughter to sleep in the first year that some nights she didn't see her husband. "It put a strain on our relationship," she says. After months of his urging, she tried putting Mia in her crib while still awake. Mia's wails made Claire frantic, but her husband convinced her to keep trying. Now, says Claire, "She's asleep in five minutes. She's better off -- and so are we."
Hollace Schmidt"
Experts and moms weigh in on the ideal age difference between kids - Parenting.com
My husband and I decided to be a one-child family long before our son Oliver was born. With several years of reproductive-health scares behind me, conceiving a child felt like a Powerball win; I didn't need another chance at the jackpot. Scott thought we could avoid the inevitable slings and arrows of sibling warfare. We both hail from large families, in which continuation of the family name is assured through siblings and cousins. We were content with our decision, and our families took it well, too. A few months after Oliver was born, I bagged up my maternity clothes for a tag sale, and Scott started researching permanent birth-control options.
But one afternoon while absentmindedly sorting through blue and green baby clothes, the thought hit me like a punch: "I'll never sort through pink clothes." For years I'd imagined myself the mom of a daughter. After all, it had been a popular refrain throughout my adolescence ("I'll never tell my daughter what I think about her clothes," I'd intone to my mother). And I secretly hoped that my daughter would continue the tradition of attending my all-women alma mater.
It wasn't that I was disappointed with a son. To be honest, I was relieved the day we found out we were having a boy because I could work the experience of being the older sister to three younger brothers to the fullest. Hearing the door clang shut on my fantasy daughter, however, made me doubt. When acquaintances asked, "So, are you having any more?" my voice quivered when I answered no. A woman in my local mothers' group worried aloud, "How would you feel if something happened to Oliver and you didn't have any more children?" Did I really need another child as an insurance policy? One night when the anxiety felt particularly overwhelming, I asked Scott, "Is it okay if we hold off on that vasectomy for a while?"
"It's normal to wonder if you're making the right choices and decisions, no matter how many kids you have," says Susan Jeffers, Ph.D., author of I'm OK, You're a Brat! Setting the Priorities Straight and Freeing You From the Guilt and Mad Myths of Parenthood. "Even if you decided to have two or more children, you'd wonder if your life would have been easier with only one child."
Choosing to have one
Haseena Correia of Valley Stream, New York, mom to Zachary, 2, has long planned to have one child. "Once I understood how much work it takes to have a career and raise a child at the same time, I pretty much decided one was all I could handle," she says. Correia says being a one-child family allows her the right balance. "It gives me the joy of being a mother, but it's not too overwhelming to the point where I don't have any time for myself or my husband," she says. Financial barriers were also a factor in their decision. "With a mortgage, skyrocketing taxes, and two cars, we have to be a two-income family. Having another child is financially just not an option for us," she says.At some point, parents will need to ponder:
- Can we cope emotionally and physically with another child?
- How will we juggle another child with our jobs?
- Where do we want to be in three years? Five?
- How will another child affect our finances? What about our marriage?
- If we wait any longer to decide, will our choices be limited by our age?
There are social and emotional pressures to consider, too. "If your friends are having second -- and third -- children, you can feel left out," says Susan Newman, Ph.D., author of Parenting an Only Child. "Or you or your spouse may want more kids, but the other doesn't."
Sorting out our feelings on most of these things was actually easy for me and Scott. (It was the emotional pull that gave me second thoughts.) We have similar goals for the future, and we realized that with our temperaments, one child would be best for our marriage. We're happy for our friends who are having second and third children, but for us, Oliver completes our family.
Diana Burrell is the coauthor of The Renegade Writer's Query Letters That Rock.
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