Dealing with comments about only having one kid..

I have one kid. He's two. He's a handful. But I feel like I can't say anything right when it comes to how hard it is to be a mom.Whether I say, "Oh, it's not too bad. There really are harder jobs out there and difficulty is pretty subjective," or I say, "Parenting is so hard! Being a mom is the most trying, exhausting, and difficult job there is," the response is the same:"But you only have one kid."It makes me feel pretty invalidated. And to add salt to the wound, we've been trying to get pregnant for about a year. People treat me like I'm selfish because I only have one kid. And since my life is "easier" than theirs I just need to shut up and stop complaining. I could go on about how everyone needs to be able to complain/vent occasionally (occasionally!) and that it doesn't mean they hate the thing they're complaining about, but that's a topic for another day.I guess I'd just like to feel like I'm a "real mom," too. I come from a culture where people are encouraged to have kids and big families are pretty common. In fact, I'm the oldest of 12 kids. I don't know if that lifestyle is for me, but like I said, we do want at least one more. But the comments start to sting and it just feels like a very middle-school mentality where you have to constantly reverse one-up each other by saying things like, "Oh yeah, well I have two kids and I work full time, so my life is harder than yours and therefore you don't deserve my sympathy and, in fact, you should feel sorry for me ."Anyone else out there with "only" one kid? Do you get these kinds of comments? How do you deal with them? Do they ever stop?TLDR: People constantly respond to my comments by saying, "But you only have one kid.." and it's frustrating/invalidating. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2mx2tmc