I have an 11 year old daughter. She has deep red auburn hair with my smile her daddy’s nose and the best of both of us. She is our heart and I can’t imagine life without her, but she is an only child for a reason.

It is rude to ask people who have one child when they are having more because it may not be in the cards for other people.  You should never ask someone this question or any question relative to people having children it is tacky.

Anyway my husband and I have been together since we were 16 and he had a shitty home life and had to take care of his younger brothers so he didn’t even know if he wanted children.  We decided after we got married and spent some time with our friend’s children that we weren’t necessary going to try, but if it happened then it did. All of friends said it took them around 6 months to get pregnant and since I knew nothing about getting pregnant or being pregnant I said we have time, but a month and half later we found I was pregnant. The way we found out was kind of awesome it was on my husband’s birthday. We were so excited and when we found out it was a girl my husband had tears in his eyes. I had a fairly easy pregnancy but at 8 weeks they told me I was more than likely going to have a miscarriage because my uterus wasn’t growing and back pain. I was about 2 weeks passed due when I had her naturally (I refused drugs which is a personal choice everyone is different) I couldn’t breastfeed and we went through a list of formulas for her.

She wasn’t an easy baby. She had colic and never slept while I was dealing with Post-Partum issues even when I denied it. There are parts of her life as a baby and toddler I can remember clearly, but when she was young I was diagnosed and our thought s about another child were gone.

It is amazing even when people knew about my illness they said it was selfish for me to use my illness as an excuse for not having another child. It isn’t selfish don’t ever tell anyone that it is a selfish decision it is for the safety of myself and the child. I talked to my doctor and all the meds I’m on aren’t safe to take while you are pregnant so I would have to wean myself off of those onto something not as strong to take while I was pregnant and then there were increase chances of miscarriages followed by the let’s hope the meds work. If I ever became manic or depressed and no one was around I could’ve easily killed myself or the baby. I also didn’t want to expose this child to the predisposition of having any of these illnesses because there are genetic factors with each one of them, but even with that would I ever change my mind about my daughter? I would love to say no, but I honestly don’t know. I see it in her the things she does like when I was younger and I worry she has it too. She’s seen child psychologist before about her anxiety, but I see her mood, here re/ actions to things and it was just like me and I pray that she isn’t cursed with it too. As a parent all you want to do is protect your child from everything but to know that I could’ve gave her something so serious hurts. I don’t want her to be like me, to go down the same roads I went down (I am hoping that if she is that my knowledge of everything will help.) She always says she wants to be like me but I don’t want her to be like me. I love her more than anything else in this world, but I never want to see her suffer through this shit.

The decision not to have more children was mostly mine and my husband supports and respects my decision, but don’t ever tell someone their reason for not having children is selfish because you don’t know the whole story. So I decided to not have any more children because of my mental health.