One or Two

I've been so busy, that it looks like one blog post a month will have to do these days... This is what's been rumbling in my brain lately.

I’ve been thinking a lot about whether we should have another child or not. The reality is that I’m not getting any younger – I just turned 35 and if we are going to have another child, we should start thinking about it now. Although, my son is almost 8 months old and I’m really enjoying my time with just him. I can’t imagine having another little one right now (even though it won’t be right now) and it’s hard for me to wrap my brain around the fact that we’d be raising two children.

Raising children in general is hard. Parents do it to their utmost capability, but to me, this is a very scary thing. It scares me for many reasons and unfortunately this stems from all the not-so-pleasant things I’ve experienced in my own life, and also the unpleasant things I’ve seen in the work that I do. I know what’s out there; I see the pain, the misery, the poverty, and the injustices. Now, there is a big, big, cynic inside of me and I know that this side of me tends to dominate so if I put this aside I really can, and do, see the beauty in the world. But the world is a very, very complex place to live in and it will never be simple - not in my world at least (it'd be so boring!). But really, how do I set aside my own biases, my own realities, my own fears, when I’m raising children?

When I tell people these things, they think I’m crazy. They say I’m thinking way too much about all of this and that I should just chill and enjoy. Ah, if life could be this easy for me. I’ve chilled and enjoyed in my life (almost too much at times…) and now I’m a real adult, I’m a freakin’ parent! To me, Parent is a loaded word. It’s a role in life that can have so much impact; it is so influential. I’m responsible for another human being; this is something that I cannot take lightly. To raise one child is hard enough, so how do I become comfortable with two. Also, I want to believe that there are really important reasons to why you bring children into the world and I don’t want to just have them, just to have them.

So anyway, this is what I'm battling right now. I'm right in the middle at the moment, 50% of me says don't do it, 50% says do it. I do need to decide somewhat soon though and I'm not sure what it will take. My husband, of course, has a say in this. I asked him the other day and he said it's too soon to talk about this. I liked that answer.