Guest Post: Adding to the Family

Margaret Latham – Blogger / Wife / Mom – Margaret Blogs with the goal of helping others be better Mothers. She strives to share tips she discovers with as many as she can. She hopes to look back on her blogging work someday and her families lives as she documents things online. 

There has been a debate going on in my family for a little while as to whether we should have another kid. We even brought my son into the conversation to see what kind of pros and cons he could come up with. Of course, it can ultimately come down to whether we end up having a kid or not. It may be out of our hands.
After all, birth control doesn’t always work, and just because we are trying to have a kid, that does not mean that it is going to happen. I know couples who try for years before they have a kid. Fertility was never an issue for us in the past, but it could be now. That’s all beside the point, though.

The real reason I wrote this blog was to talk about our conversation as to whether we should have another kid or not. We already have one and he gets lonely sometimes. My spouse and I want him to have someone to play with, and we know that the sooner he gets a little brother or sister, the easier it will be for them to grow up together. Our son is only five years old, but he already understands that having more kids is more or less a choice. His view is that he wants a little brother, though a sister would be nice too.  He doesn’t understand why we don’t just have one.

As far as he can see, there are only positives to making the family larger, because he is looking at having more people to play with as opposed to playing by himself. That’s what little kids look at. The only factor they consider when it comes to anything is how it will affect their playtime. That’s why they give so much trouble to go to bed sometimes. It means that playtime is over for the day.

We haven’t told him about all the factors we have been considering. Another child means another mouth to feed and a whole lot more expenses it means nine months of travail for his mother and extra working hours for his father to be able to afford everything. It means a huge extra burden on our family that can’t just be easily absorbed. We aren’t independently wealthy and some months we live from pay check to pay check.

We also look at the positives, though. Having another person in our family means that we will have even more great memories to make. We get to experience a lot of cute baby things all over again, and we will be introducing a whole lot more opportunity for joy in our lives. We would look forward to our son having a lifelong friend, be it a brother or a sister.

Deciding whether or have a child or not is not just about weighing the pros and the cons and seeing which ones holds more weight. We have to think about how it affects us now and in the future and if it is the right thing for our family. We have to consider if the joy of having another kid is something we can balance with actually being able to care for the child. We think it may be selfish to introduce a child into the world that cannot be properly cared for the way that we want him or her to be care for.

We know we can provide a loving home, but can we devote as much time to the child as we ought to? Will there be times where we need to hire cleaning companies such as Diamond Cleaning in Calgary to do the household chores for us because the workload of taking care of two kids is too much?

Of course, lots of people have far more than two kids and handle it just fine, but we have to look at it as not just adding a kid but doubling the number of kids in our home. That’s twice as much laundry and food for the kids and twice as many places to sleep.
That’s two sets of school supplies and a whole lot of diapers before we even get to that point. The financial part of it is one of the biggest points against having a kid, but we know that if we decide to have another kid, we will make it work no matter what. We will make ends meet and fully provide for our child in every way possible.

We haven’t made up our minds yet, but we know that we don’t want to wait too long to make the decision. If we decide to not have a child, then nothing changes. We have to break the news to our son and deal with his disappointment, but other than that, everything stays the same. Adding a child to the family brings with it a whole lot of change, and that is perhaps the biggest reason why we haven’t said “yes” to the idea just yet. Change is scary for anyone, and it was scary for us when our son was born. It meant that a lot of things had to change, and we know the change probably won’t be so severe this time around, if we choose to have kids. Still, we are happy with where we are for the most part, and having a kid disrupts a lot of that. I don’t want to sound too cold and clinical about the whole thing, but a part of me knows that we have to look at things logically.

We are both still on the fence about having a kid, and we know if one of us agrees that we need a kid, then our son will back us up all the way. It will be two against one if one of us is still a holdout, and that may not last for very long. I’m sure I’ll be posting in this very blog when we decide one way or another and why we decided what we did, but for now, this is a blog about indecision and a way to express my thoughts about the whole situation.