Hbell

I’ve never commented, but I feel compelled because I often feel unseen when I read through threads about having children and hope that it fills in a space that even one other person can relate to. I have always wanted to be a mom and it is one the most incredible things I have ever done. I always thought I’d have more than one child. I also never considered the complicated ways it would impact my life until unexpectedly getting pregnant with an IUD on our engagement trip a year before my wedding to my soulmate and years before we considered having children. I understand and relate to the idea that you can never regret having a child—my daughter has expanded my heart in unimaginable ways and is a source of daily joy and love and awe and stress and exhaustion. I often crave to have this kind of love with more beings, to see her with siblings, to experience this heart opening love again and again. And while I am still a toddler parent, I feel strongly that parenthood does impact your relationship and your life in ways that are beautiful and ways that are immensely hard. There is so much joy and there is a lot of loss too. While love is not finite, we also are beings with limited capacity to meet our own needs and the needs of others, and every being we bring into this world puts new demands on that capacity. I feel like many people see the choice not to have children or to have one child as a choice where you are robbed of extra love in your life and I have not experienced that at all. I was deeply in love with my husband and immensely fulfilled before our daughter. Seeing him as a dad is heartwarming and beautiful and also we have far less time and energy to invest in our relationship with each other—that energy is now invested in our family. It is purposeful and joyful and it also will never be like it was with the two of us when we were our each other’s whole world, and were not always connected to this other precious being, constantly thinking of her needs over each other’s and our own. Part of why I chose to have our daughter and why I’ve wanted another child is to have more inextricable parts, to divide my love further so there is less fear of loss, so there are more beings in my family to connect to me and to each other. But the reality is still that it is division. It is division of the time and energy and space that it takes to nourish loving and supportive and fulfilling relationships, time I already don’t have enough of with my two humans I love with my whole heart (not to mention my other family and work and adventure and the many things that brought me such joy before so much of our world became our daughter). I don’t know if this helps with your decision, but I hope you know your life can be absolutely full no matter what choice, and there is a need for mourning of the other paths no matter what choice you make as well. Sending love ❤️