Is a 2ed child worth it?

Guys I really need some serious advice!!! I have an almost 4 year old boy. I work full time and so does my husband (although his job isn't always secure) we are financially comfortable and we like to enjoy life. I dont have any family or friends or even a support network. We had to bounce of each other when I had my son and tbh it was really challenging. I was emotionally unstable for a long time and even held a lot of resentment towards my husband. But I am finally feeling myself again now that my son is a little older. However life is really exhausting between juggling a full time stressful job (i work in the legal field) and trying to be a good mother and wife. Sometimes I feel a deep sense of rage (I have PMDD). however I look at my son and my heart breaks. He goes to dat care 5 days a week but not the whole day. He starts late and his dad picks him up early but he plays with his friends during the day. My heart breaks because when he's home or I take him to the park or we're celebrating his birthday he looks so lonely. I feel so guilty it consumes me! I've been contemplating having a 2ed child just so he's not lonely and he has someone to grow up with. But im also not sure if I can handle a second. Life is already stressful. But people keep telling me to have another while he is young and its cruel to make him grow up alone. I just dont know what to do. Do I sacrifice my body and mental health all over again so my son has a sibling or should I just focus on him and raise him to be a good man and to attract good people? But the second option seems selfish?? I dont have any mum friends either. Sometimes I feel like people are a bit hard to talk to u I dont know why.

Can someone please shed some light on this? Did u regret having ur second? And the ones with one child, what has ur experience been so far? Please give me some honest brutal truths. Thank you!

Read more on Peanut

The views expressed in community are solely the opinions of participants, and do not reflect those of Peanut.

Learn more about our guidelines.

Add a comment

I’m in the same boat as you. I have a lot of guilt and anxiety over my son not having a sibling but I know the reality of what having another child would look like, I don’t have the mental bandwidth for it. Besides, having a sibling doesn’t automatically mean they will even be close and would you feel it was worth it to have one if they aren’t?

I have a 4 year old and 9 month old, so my eldest is going to school
In September so will be abit easier. It’s hard, I would say the beginning I was fine with when my second was born but now his on the move and his non stop it’s harder and more tiring. ATM my eldest gets annoyed because he can’t always play with certain toys because they’re a choke able size but that doesn’t last long.
But the best bit is the baby crawling love to him and giving him cuddles and kisses and then both laughing.
It’s all worth it when you see them like that.
Me and my partner had abit of time where we just argued a lot because him working, me tired doing all night feeds cooking cleaning but now we have a good balance and life is good. It’s a nice age gap as well. Xxx

I struggled with that for a long time and after reading up loads my feeling was: you cannot have another baby just because your son needs a friend, they might not even get on. The only reason you should have another baby is because you would like another baby yourself. By the sounds of it, you don’t and it’s so luck of the draw - you can have a really easy baby and then all is fine and maybe your son will like having friend too, maybe he won’t. Or you can have a difficult baby which puts more pressure on your relationship with husband but also means you can’t give you eldest the attention he needs.

We ended up having another because I wanted to. She is really easy but a Velcro baby. Screams when I am not with her and it also means I can’t give my eldest the kind of attention he used to get. He used to be so so good. He still is, but I can see he is playing up a bit because he doesn’t get the attention he used to get.

in our community

How would you feel?

If you were spending money on yourself for the first time in 2 years (I just went back to work after 2 years of being a sahm) and your husband made comments about ‘just cause you have it doesn’t mean you have to spend it’ or ‘there’s more important things’ would you be upset? Or?

Am I wrong or a mean mom

So my oldest is 13 turning 14 this year and she has the biggest attitude and smart mouth ever. Me or her dad will ask her to do something or do her chore and she will flip out run her mouth and just say off the wall stuff but then the next day she will ask if she can go to her friends house or go hang at the park and when I tell her no she makes me feel like a horrible mean mother. I try to get her to understand that you can’t act like that one day and the next act like nothing happened because she wants to do something. Am I wrong for this

Pls tell me it gets better

Been really struggling with my 4 nearly 5 month old. There seems to be more difficult days than good managable ones. He just seems so upset all the time, doesn’t want to be held or put down, lay down or sat up. I don’t know what to do

Missing my old active self

Hi everyone! I’m a mum to a 2-month-old baby boy. Before having him, I used to go to the gym at least four times a week or go for long walks. Right now, I feel like I can’t do anything. Because I’m breastfeeding, even going for a walk feels like a huge deal—I never know when he’s going to cry for food. I also can’t go to the gym because I moved here from Italy 12 years ago, and with my family over there, I have very little support nearby (my partner’s family helps a bit, but it's limited).
I spend most of my days sitting on the sofa, watching sunny days go by. I feel emotionally drained and really bad about myself, but I just don’t know what to do to start feeling better. To top it off, my baby will only sleep on me—if I try to put him in his carrycot, he lasts a few minutes before screaming again. Has anyone experienced anything similar? Do you have any tips?

Kindergarten anxiety

What are the anxious moms doing while we send our 5 year old to kindergarten? I'm considering sending my kid with a tracking device like an airtag, angelsense, or the life360 square. Are any other moms considering this and if so, what do you recommend?!

Mil rant

My mil must be absolute worst person for taking the word no!! She's been told 4 times if not more we are busy on Sunday she is not coming down!!! Our son is away to my mum's for a week we are taking a day just us but we have a wedding venue appointment we said we will pop down for half hour after appointment and she says yeah then I'll come to your house and you can take me home. Like what part of your not coming down is so fucking hard to understand!! So far she's did the I'm hard of hearing excuse the manipulation the gaslighting to the dictator mode. She visits every Sunday so we have told her we just want a day for just us as it's first Sunday since our son was born in 2019. I just want to shake her to listen!!! I just want a day where we aren't cooking big Sunday dinners and stuck listening to her gossip and bitch about people I don't give a shit about.