Can We AFFORD a Second Child?

As exemplified in previous posts, much of my “down time” is spent thinking about whether my husband and I should try to have a second child. Lately I’ve been wondering if, as parents, we invest all of our financial, physical, and emotional resources into raising Emmy as best as we can as an only child, rather than spreading ourselves thin by giving her a sibling.

It’s a tough call. There are so many “pros” to having a second child. Em would have a playmate for life. She and her sibling would be able to learn, laugh, and grow together. Oh, I know that it wouldn’t be all roses and rainbows, and that as sure as the sun rises in the east, my two children would also bicker, pinch each other, steal each other’s toys and try to get Mama and Dada to take sides. But they would also be able to share secrets, build imaginary worlds together, and turn to one another in moments of distress.

Not to mention how much I would like to just experience pregnancy again. I know it’s crazy, but I really DO MISS the first trimester morning sickness. I miss having to eat crackers all day long. I miss chocolate tasting like tinfoil and having an aversion to broccoli. I miss the magic of watching a little spot inside my body grow slowly into full sized baby with two hands and two feet. I miss the feeling of “wow. I’m actually doing this. I’m actually making a baby.”

But then there are the “cons”, of course. And these days, with the economy being so horrible and showing few signs of improvement, the “cons” seem to sometimes speak louder than the “pros.” I mean, seriously, let’s put aside the conversation about the emotional and physical energy required in raising two children. Can we really AFFORD to have a second child?

As is, having just bought our first home, we’ve got a mortgage to pay off, as well as my student loans, and all the usual bills: gas (ugh - $100 to fill my tank? i need to invest in a great bicycle), food (yikes), utilities (blech). And then there’s Emmy’s daycare. I’ve told my husband that for the money we spend on Emmy’s two days a week of care (ONLY TWO DAYS!!), we could rent Emmy a small apartment, baby-proof it, fill it with toys, and just drop her off there FIVE DAYS A WEEK. C’mon, she’d be fiiine! She’s a resourceful 17 month old!

We’re not struggling, per se, but we’re not exactly enormously comfortable with our money situation these days either. We look around at other families who are in much worse shape than we are, but are still managing to raise more than one kid. My husband and I talk often about how the “squeeze” we are experiencing is only a temporary situation; in four years, Em will be entering Kindergarten (free!), one of my student loans should be paid off (woo hoo!), a miracle may occur and one of us may get a significant raise or promotion (let me dream, please), and we may actually finally be able to afford to go on a really nice family vacation.

That is, unless we have a second child. If we have a second child, we will be spending more money on daycare for at least another five years. If we have a second child, we will have a second mouth to feed, a second child’s medical bills, and a second child to eventually send to college (hopefully). Plans for family vacays to the Galapagos Islands may have to morph into more realistic and affordable family camping trips (don’t get me wrong, I love camping, but its not the same as visiting the Galapagos). Money will be tight not just for a few years, but maybe for our whole lifetime.

I’ve heard other moms say that once you have one child, you might as well have another. It makes no difference. Are they talking about the financial impact of having two children, or just the emotional and physical aspects, I wonder?

I’m not even sure that I will be able to get pregnant again, but on the off-chance my body cooperates and is able to play greenhouse to another little human being, I’ve got a serious question for all the mommies out there with more than one child: Did you experience a huge shift in your family’s financial “comfort” with the birth of your second (or third, or fourth) child? Would you recommend to others that they have a second child, even if it means their family’s budget would be tight?

I look forward to hearing from you!

It’ll Be Like an Amusement Park. Only Better!

That is what I told my 17 month old daughter as I strapped her little unsuspecting body into her car seat. ‘Twas a cold and blustery Saturday, and the plans I thought I had made for the weekend kind of “went away.” I had searched my local paper’s entertainment section for something, ANYTHING really, that would provide an hour (or two, or three) of amusement outside of our home. But alas, I discovered that THIS was the weekend when New York’s Capital District had apparently banned all kid-friendly activities, and local parents were going to need to get resourceful in finding ways to entertain their children.

So what did I do? I made the most of the situation, of course. I decided to find ways to transform an ordinary day into a fun, amusement park-like experience, in a wallet-friendly kind of a way. All it took was a little imagination, a handful of patience, a tablespoon of reckless abandon, and a willingness to ignore the people who were looking at at us like we were crazy.

First, I had to get some grocery shopping done. I decided to magically change this no-frills shopping trip into Shopping Trip Wonderworld for Em. Luckily, Em and I were dressed and ready to rock and roll at a time when most normal folk hadn’t even rolled out of bed yet. We had most of the grocery store to ourselves (which, much like visiting an amusement park during off-off-season, has huge perks).

For her first “ride”, I allowed Em to stand up in the main part of the shopping cart as I wheeled her VERY SLOWLY around the produce section. I told her to hold on tight to and yell “WOO HOO,” which she did, with gusto. I said to my daughter, “See!? This is KIND OF like a rollercoaster, just with the added bonus of fruity aromas.” For extra amusement, I let Em grab some navel oranges and throw them into our cart. Then, feeling extra daring, I let her try to grab an apple from the bottom of the apple display without making the rest of the Granny Smith’s tumble onto the grocery store floor. It was a near miss, but with my lightening-bolt mama reflexes, I was able to grab the few apples that threatened to hit the ground.

Next, I got the crazy notion that it would fun to simulate Bumper Cars. So I found an aisle where nobody was shopping , and took my daughter out of the cart so she could “get behind the wheel”. She giggled in delight as she pushed the humongous cart down the aisle, weaving back and forth as she went. It was definitely a wise decision to do this in the freezer section of the store, because it allowed for maximum movement with minimal resulting damage.

Of course, I had to let my daughter ride the conveyer belt at the supermarket checkout line. There are always one or two cashiers who refuse to let children ride on the checkout belt (claiming there are cameras watching them… baaaah humbug!), but most decent people take one look at Em’s excited eyes as she anticipates her (10 second ) ride down the aisle, and give in to her enthusiasm, despite the fact that it may get them fired. I had remembered to dress Em in an especially delicious outfit, complete with her “awww”-inducing gnome-like winter jacket. She was allowed to ride the belt. The checkout girl even let Em scan our lemons, which made my daughter incredibly happy.

We loaded ourselves (and a mere $15 worth of groceries) back into the car, with the appetite for adventure still coursing through our veins. Unfortunately, it had begun to hail, so a trip to the playground was pretty much out of the question. I was feeling adventurous, but not stupid.

I’m pretty sure the last time I took Emmy to the mall was when she was in my womb, back when her father and I would go see a movie and snack on ninety seven pieces of pizza (he would eat one slice, and I would eat ninety six slices. I ADORED pizza when I was pregnant). I don’t frequent the mall because it scares me a little, with its many many (sometimes angry, sometimes pushy) people and huge abundance of useless stores. But I decided that this day was the day for a mall adventure, mostly because I knew the mall had escalators, and also because the hail was threatening to punch a hole in the roof of our car.

Em and I quickly found the escalator. Up and down we went, screaming “Weeeeeee!” like it was the scariest, most exciting thing ever. I know an escalator’s motion doesn’t quite equate that of an amusement park Free Fall, but Emmy didn’t seem to mind. Moving stairs are very thrilling to her.

 As are gumball machines, I soon discovered. There are these stations of thirty or so gumball, sticker and prize machines located all over our mall. Em tried to get something out of every machine she encountered. She’d try turning knobs, stuffing her little hand up the dispenser, knocking on the glass (as if to say, “Hey there eensy teensy teeny weeny prizes. You look kinda bored in there. Why don’t you come out so I can put you in my mouth and choke to death?”)

For a true “Fun House” experience, I took Em to Sephora. There, we peek-a-boo’d in the many mirrors, made lots of funny faces, and monkeyed around with makeup (on my face, not hers). Being a mama with a small child, none of the sales people actually thought I was going to buy anything, so they left us alone, just checking in every once in a while to make sure the little one was not breaking all the perfume bottles.

In order to recreate a Haunted House, I took Em to the mall bathroom. There, the creeky stall doors made ominous noises and spooky characters emerged out of seemingly nowhere. Strangers murmured to themselves as they washed their hands for what seems like an eternity. The hand dryers sounded like angry ghosts. And you don’t even WANT to know what awaited us in the toilets.

Our day ended with a wild safari ride through the mall’s pet store. Emmy marveled at the bearded dragons, talked to the cockatoos, and attempted to free the bunnies from their cages. We were almost coerced by a sweet sales lady into taking home a sugar glider as a sweet memento of the day. It was so darn cute and cuddly, and Em thought it was a bear.

But then Em started crying (a snake must have looked at her in a snakey way), making me realize it her naptime was fast approaching, and like all good things, this adventure had to come to an end.

Sure, it was no trip to Disney. But it was a heck of a lot cheaper, and for a toddler (and her mama), it was almost just as fun.

There's Never a Good Time

I am not a “by-the-book” mom. If you asked me what method of child-rearing I use to make sure my daughter is not being totally traumatized by her early years, I wouldn’t be able to name an “ism,” or refer you to a doctor or parenting guru. For the most part, I’m just parenting “from the hip,” the way my gut tells me to. I’ve been using my instincts as my compass, and hoping for the best. When I run into a real parenting fix, I have a wise older sister who I consult, as well as many online parenting forums that will either tell me I am doing a horrible or super job, depending on their perspective.

So I’ve made some major parenting decisions over the past 17 months, not because I read about them being amazingly beneficial to my daughter, or because a professional told me to do so, but just because they felt “right”. I’ve chosen to breastfeed my daughter for an extended period of time, and have been co-sleeping with her since the day she was born. Again, I’ve made these decisions not out of an allegiance to “attachment parenting” (though I’ve been told that is what I am doing), but just because they made me feel like I was mothering the way I wanted to mother.

Of course, these two decisions have had quite the impact on our family lifestyle. Up until this point, I’ve let Emmy breastfeed on demand, without limits, regardless of whether nursing was being used as a source of nutrition or as a source of comfort. Nursing was the first way we bonded when Em emerged from my womb, and has remained a steadfast way for us to have some important mommy-daughter time over the past many months. But as Em’s now nearing the year-and-a-half mark, the process of weaning has been pretty huge on my mind, and I am beginning to think we need to start pumping the breaks on our endless feeding sessions.

As for the co-sleeping, well, as a family we’ve half-heartedly attempted (on many occasions) to get Emmy to sleep in her crib for more than an hour or two, but it hasn’t worked. So I’ve gotten used to having Em in bed with me, her arm slung around my neck, or her entire body draped over me in some weird, contorted position that only a toddler finds comfortable. To be honest, I kind of love it. I love watching my daughter’s sleeping face, or kissing her when it seems she is on the brink of having a nightmare. But I also really miss cuddling with my husband. And I miss sleeping for more than two hours at a time (without being woken by a breastfeeding or screaming Emmy). And I know that as long as Em’s in bed with me, the night feedings are not going to stop, which means that the process of weaning cannot begin.

I’ve been talking about transitioning Emmy away from co-sleeping for months and months now, as a first-step towards the weaning process. In my mind, I’ve been waiting for a “good time” to begin this transitional phase, but that time never arrived. First, Emmy started teething, and I hated the idea of making her sleep by herself in her crib when she needed more comfort than usual. Then she got sick, and I didn’t want her sleeping by herself for fear that she would stop breathing because of congestion, or choke on her own vomit. Then Em started teething again. Then she started daycare, and I was afraid that too much change at once would send our little girl over the edge into a state of toddler-sized depression. Then she got sick again. Then she started teething again. And on, and on.

As my husband told me (during a long heart-to-heart session this weekend that proceeded an argument about our current family dynamic), there is never going to be a good time for change. If I continue to wait for the perfect time to transition, I will still be breastfeeding Emmy as she walks down the aisle on her wedding day, and her future husband will have to be ok with us all co-sleeping together. None of us want that to happen.

After a long good look in the mirror, I have admitted to myself that the excuses I have been making, in waiting for a good time to transition my daughter out of co-sleeping and breastfeeding, are excuses born out of my own fears. I am the one who is afraid of change, because I am as attached to my daughter as she is to me. It may make me a horrible mom, but I kind of sort of definitely LOVE Em’s dependence on me. It makes my heart a little sad and heavy to think about the fact that she is growing up, and she doesn’t really NEED me for her basic human needs, like eating and sleeping, anymore.

So the truth? I need this transition as much as Em does. I need to learn how to show my mommy love to my daughter in new ways, and how to encourage her independence as a part of that love. I need to understand that my daughter will still love me, even if she is not curled up in my arms for eight hours a night. I get it. I need to do this. And as much as I want to say that now’s not a good time, it’s probably as good as its gonna get.