A friend recently asked me if Matt and I had ever thought of having more kids. ‘Sorry, if this is too personal a question, you don’t have to answer it.’ She added. I had no problem answering the question and telling her my story. She told me hers, I told her mine.
Of course, having kids has, at different stages of my life, been a major topic of thought and conversation - as it is for most people. Everyone has their own unique story when it comes to this part of life, which can involve the whole spectrum of human emotions and experiences. As with so many things in life, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.
From a fairly early age, I always knew that I wanted to be a mother and the joke was always: ‘the more the merrier.’ But I was also always somehow aware that a big gaggle of kids was not in my future. I didn’t finally meet John and get married until I was leaving the 20s behind and entering the early 30s. For a number of reasons, I spent much of my 20s in anxiety and depression when it came to relationships and I wasn’t able to form one stable enough to last. Those experiences made my marriage to John a hard-won happy ending to a challenging time in my life.
Unlike generations before us, family planning is a real thing a lot of young families do now, at least many that I know. Couples consider their desired lifestyle and economic situation, etc. before having kids. The reality of the life John and I had in store for us probably meant that we’d have two kids. I know John would have voted to cap it there for sure. I always joked about having a few more and I remember sitting on a friends couch when I was pregnant with Klara and declaring that if I had the means of a couple like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, I’d probably have six kids too, knowing full well, that that was never going to happen.
I was fortunate enough to get pregnant with Klara almost instantly when John and I started trying and Klara, aka. 'Peanut', was born on August 23rd, 2011, I was 34 at that time. On November 21st, 2011, John unexpectedly passed away and that of course brought any plan to have more kids to a grinding halt. In the year that followed, I made my unequivocal peace with being a single Mom with an only child. Given how long it took me to establish a lasting relationship with John and given the fact that I was living in rural Vermont which limits the pool of potential partners somewhat, I was fully convinced that I’d be single not forever, but for a long time. Not only did I make my peace with having no more children, but I also started to actually like the idea. I appreciated that I would get to enjoy these young years with Klara once and then when she was a bit older it would just be her and I and we’d have lots of flexibility to enjoy all sorts of adventures together.
Life, in its true spirit, had other plans for us! Rather unexpectedly Matt entered the scene and when we started our relationship in February of 2013, I was about to turn 36 and he had recently turned 28. The possibility of having another child entered my thinking fairly soon after Matt and I got together. Given Matt’s age, I was convinced he’d want more kids, but to my surprise, I myself was struggling to readjust my attitude and newly found peace with not having more kids. I was not even so much thinking about our external circumstances, the fact that we were living with my first husband's parents, the fact that neither one of us had very secure or lucrative employment, etc. I just plain didn’t want another child, I liked the freedom of just having one. When Matt and I started actually talking about it, to my surprise Matt told me that he felt he was too old to have kids. I laughed so hard when I heard that, I thought it was hilarious! But I was kind of relieved and we set the topic aside. We decided instead to go about fulfilling Matt’s childhood dream of getting a husky. The second one was a surprise and completely unplanned! Both of them arrived within a couple of months of each other in the summer of 2017.
I think back now about the years since 2013, our 4 years living with John and Rosa, and our move into the new house (see the post ‘A Year of Glamping’), all of that would have had to look very different by necessity had we had another child.
In an interesting twist, this past summer, the summer of 2020, we actually changed our minds. Being in our own house now, with Matt in a good job, and being homebound with a lot of domestic time, it seemed that a second child would not be such a great ‘inconvenience’, it could actually be a nice addition to the gang. Well, I am 43 now about to turn 44, and the biological clock is not in our favor. We did, for a while, stop all preventative measures, but the chance of any surprises is pretty slim. We are also not determined enough to help things along with the aid of modern medicine; if it happens that’s great, if not, that is just fine as well!
So, there it is, the answer to the question, which I didn’t feel was too personal. In fact, I prefer answering and talking about questions that really matter and move people’s lives rather than trivial banter, but of course, that too has its place! No doubt one day Klara might want to know why she had no siblings while growing up and here it is. When we do bring up the hypothetical thought of a sibling for her, she's usually not impressed. 'After all', she says, 'I do have a brother, Sebastian!'. And that's, of course, true! Her half-brother, Sebastian, is in his early 30s, but given the age difference, it’s not quite the same as the experience of growing up with a sibling.
Image: First ultrasound image of Klara, aka. 'Peanut', at about 7-8 weeks - February 2011