Honest Women: We Chose to Have One Child

I am a stay at home mom of an eighteen month old boy, Lucas.My husband and I originally said that we never wanted to have any children but we each changed our mind when we were in different countries for two weeks. It took us four years to act on our decision and after a few months I fell pregnant. We said that we only want to have one child and after a while people have stopped asking us when we are planning on having another.

Our decision to have an only child is based on a number of factors including my mental illness  (I live with generalised anxiety disorder and depression). Planning on having a single child has allowed me to enjoy the journey more…knowing that this is the only time that I will have these experiences.

I am still breastfeeding Lucas and he eats less solids than I would like and
while I am planning on letting him self-wean it would be easier if he was drinking less but I am comfortable with where we are on this journey.

Before Lucas was born I made the decision to cloth diaper and I am glad that I did. My stash consists of about 27 nappies, mostly pockets and I love how cute they are and that in this heat Lucas can just wear a nappy around the house. The most common question that I get when people find out that we cloth diaper is “what about the poo?” which simply goes into the toilet and the washing machine cleans the laundry, I wash pretty much every other day and have not found it to be particularly arduous. We don’t exclusively use cloth nappies and when we had a rough time with my mom in law spending some time in the hospital disposable nappies were a lifesaver. (I might have taken advantage of a change of size to push out a load of laundry, but I make no admission).

Being a stay at home mom is both amazing and exhausting.  I love that I get to spend so much time with my little one but I really miss having some time alone.  There is a lot of joy in simple moments, and it is absolutely precious to watch Lucas explore his world and sometimes I mimic the way that he looks at things with total amazement which provides a contrast to the repetitiveness of nappy changes and feeds. Our days don’t follow a fixed routine but we are slowly developing a rhythm that includes time spent in the garden, reading aloud and just playing.

They say that there are no atheists in foxholes and I reckon that there are no atheists in motherhood either… I have never prayed the way that I did when my child hit his head at fourteen months or when he was running a temperature of over 40 degrees and I have no doubt that such desperate prayers will happen again.

Motherhood is the most difficult thing that I have ever done and my toe is just in the water. I must admit that I struggle with saying that I am a full time mom and I am glad that I have slowly been able to start doing some web design work. I struggle with guilt about having two degrees but not working in the legal profession while being certain that it is not the right fit for me.

I love being a mom but I would love a billboard from the universe telling me that I am doing it right. However I am coming to accept that motherhood doesn’t work that way: we show up, day in, day out, doing the best we can and take the small signs that we are doing alright…the smiles and hugs and growing independence of our little ones.

 

~ Trisha Cornelius is a mom and a geek. She sporadically blogs at trishacornelius.com and tweets as @trishawebs. She happens to be the crazy hippy who cloth diapers and breastfeeds her son while being completely cool with other people’s parenting choices that are different to hers. She has been known to play with code.