This is a collaborative post and does not necessarily reflect the views of this blog and its author.
Deciding whether to keep popping out children is a big decision. Family planning is a big part of life for a couple, and it can feel a little bit too final to close the door on having more children. It leads to a lot of long conversations about whether you feel complete as a family. The idea that the pregnancy that has just been completed with a healthy, bouncing baby at the end could be the last one is a tough pill to swallow, but it’s a conversation that has to be had. It’s a tough call even if you have a large family because it’s the memory of all those firsts that leads you to have one more. And then another ‘one more’ after that becomes the next topic of conversation.
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Going backward and forward over the decision about whether you have completed your family is natural. When you’ve experienced the joy of having your first-born child handed to you, still slick with vernix and shouting their arrival into the world, it’s a very difficult thing to let go of. Many wonder whether if they don’t have that ‘one more,’ will they regret it? You can speak to other couples, other families, and even your own parents to find out whether you are truly done with the parenting train. No more carriages need to be clipped on, and it’s time to leave the station. For some couples, the decision to stop having more children once they hit their magic number is an easy one. It’s always easier to say no to more children when you’ve just put them all to bed after a long day of bickering and arguing. But then you look at their sleeping, rested faces so relaxed and beautiful, and it melts your heart.
When you are truly ready to say no to more children in the family, you have to have the conversation about birth control and who takes the hit there. She’s gone through months of pregnancy and the symptoms that come with it, the sleepless nights, the changes to her body and then the hours of labor that could end in a C-section. It’s only fair and noble that if you have decided to stop having children, you contact Comprehensive-Urology.com and book in for a vasectomy. It means that your partner doesn’t have to use birth control that is hormone based, and it also means that you are 99.9% covered for stopping baby production. Before you do that, though, you need to be one hundred percent sure you are done with expanding your family. Vasectomy is very final, and a reversal is expensive and has no guarantee of working. Here are some of the best signs around that you are done with adding more carriages to the Daddy train.
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- You are happy for friends who are having more children because it means you can soak up that newborn smell and get in a lovely snuggle, but you get to hand the baby back at the end of the day, or when they cry or start to smell.
- When the day comes to sell on all the baby paraphernalia, you celebrate with a bottle of wine and a meal, knowing that you have a whole garage or loft space to convert now you don’t need to store the crib anymore.
- Sleep. You are finally enjoying having all your children sleeping through the night until the morning, and you finally get a full rest. You don’t pace anymore; you don’t wake to the screams of a new baby who is desperate for a feed. Colic is no longer a factor in your life. Once you taste the sweet honey of sleep, you never want to trade it in again. Even for that new born smell.
- You no longer freak out when you hold your kids. Wobbly heads are no longer a factor in your panic stations, and you no longer need to know the signs of a dehydrated fontanelle.
- Your partner has gone back to part-time work now all the children are at school, and the income you are enjoying is worth the end of the new baby train.
- Vacations abroad, meals out in restaurants without highchairs and no longer having to battle a baby on a diaper change in a public bathroom are all very good reasons to celebrate.
- You look around at your family, and you just know. People will tell you that there’s no way to know you’re truly done with more children, but you just do. You don’t look at newborn babies and feel that pull of broodiness anymore because you’ve done it and you’re happy about the next chapter.
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Expanding a family is exciting, and you know this because you’ve been there, done it and cleaned the puke off the t-shirt. When you start out, the only thing you want to do is rock that baby in the middle of the night, rub their tummy full of wind and mash their bananas for weaning. Having a new baby is the right thing to do when you are in that frame of mind and ready to embrace the poonami diapers and the sleepless nights. But there is a time where you are clearly moving into the next phase of life, where you want to be done with diapers and attend the Little League and know you are ready to keep the kids up later for movies. You can live a different way when there are no babies holding you back. You can go out in public without an arsenal of baby things, and you can get to know the personalities of your children and teach them how to skate, ski and dance.
When that day comes where you don’t feel that pull deep into your heart, and you don’t feel paralysed by indecision, you will know. And the feeling of knowing you are done and ready to move forward with raising your family instead of creating it is a fantastic one.
