Second Child Dilema...

Broaching this senstive topic to Calculus is proving to be so hard for me. I know what his thoughts on the subject are, which are very different to mine. But I know, above everything else that this has to be something which both of us want and that there are no in-betweens.

I have been pretty clear from the start that if I have children, then I want more than one. I have not been overtly maternal - its not that I dont like children. I love kids, but did not want any of my own when I got married. I was perfectly happy to lead a life without any and in our conversations before we got married, we had both agreed that having children would not be a big priority for us. However, after 7 years of married life, my maternal instincts blossomed and I wanted a child at that very moment. I am not entirely sure what brought about that change, or if anything triggered my feelings to alter but change it did. Calculus was rather surprised by my transformation, but to his credit he was very supportive with my choice. We were very fortunate to discover that I was pregnant, very soon after we decided to have a child.The pregnancy went along well, we have a beautiful daughter who is nearly 10 months old and is good as gold.

Now I want another one. My reasons are many - I have thoroughly enjoyed motherhood. This of course, is a large part because of the little one. Even though I should probably call it quits when I am ahead, my body craves another child. Also I have such a fulfilling, close and wonderful relationship with my siblings that I want that for my daughter too. In these days of small, nuclear families, siblings are all the more important. She does not have many cousins either - just a brother from my side of the family, who is 16 years older than her and nearly from a different generation. Not to mention the fact that he lives in India, which makes it difficult to begin with for them to form a bond. Things might have been different, had we been in India, even though the age gap would still be a factor.

Calculus has just one brother, whom he is not close to at all. His brother has one daughter, about 3 years older than ours. Yet I dont see them being close at all, mainly because we dont meet them. They stay on the other side of the pond and the chances of us meeting often seem very remote. That means she will not have any cousins whom she will be close to, from Calculus's side of the family either. I worry a lot about how things will be for her once Calculus and I are not around. It would be so much nicer for her to have someone she pick up the phone (or even better meet) and share joyous news, or could be just the fact that she has somebody to whom she can moan about Calculus and my annoying ways, when she is a bit older. Close friends do fill that gap to some extent, but I would be much more at peace with myself if I know that she has a sibling whom she can be close to.

Calculus has never been close to his brother and his argument is what if our children turn out like them. I have no concrete response to that, of course one can never tell how things will turn out, but I am hopeful that with the right environment at home and our influence, our children will turn out to be close to each other. There are no guarantees in life, but this is a calculated risk I am more than willing to take.

All the online resources on the net suggest that I should NOT nag Calculus - something that I know already and hence am doing the next best thing - blog about it. Jokes apart, I am old already and am not doing myself any favours by waiting. We need to plan so that I can get the whole baby thing done soon. I dont have any illusions about how difficult things will be - specially because both our parents are old and so we cannot expect them to help us out again. But we are in London, fortunate enough to be in a city where we can get help. It is undoubtedly expensive, yet it is an extravagance which we now can afford.

In the past, we have spoken about adoption. But now that we have a child of our own, I am scared of this option. I am not entirely sure if I trust myself entirely to treat both children (adopted and the one of my own) equally. I have a friend who is in a similar position - she had a baby boy of her own. When her son was nearly 6 months old, her partner's brother's children were put up for fostering and subsequently adoption by her partner's brother. Both she and her partner did not want the children to lose contact with the other siblings as well as their family, so she and partner adopted one child and the partner's parents adopted two children. My friend finds it extremely hard to treat her adopted girl and her own son equally and I have seen her struggle through my own eyes. She is committed to change her attitude though and is working hard on it, yet the fact remains that treating the two children equally does not come naturally to her. There is always a feeling almost of over-compensating the adopted child, to ease off any guilt. Having seen her struggle through it, I am in two minds now. Its not as if to say that I will feel the same way, but the seeds of doubt have been sown in my mind.

So what do you 'only child' readers of mine think ? of course, others too are welcome to add their thoughts.