On whether to have a second one.

My wife and I have a 2 year old, and are currently in heated debate about whether to have a second child. We’ve been having this debate for over a year. One morning we totally want to try for a second, and the next day we are totally dead-set against it. Not that I’ll let it influence our decision, but my parents want us to have a second one. They say it’s really not as tough as the first. I have my doubts. Together my wife and I endlessly volley pros and cons to each other. The cons include health concerns such as the fact my wife is in her early 40s and had a very tough labor the first time (the hospital mismanaged her delivery with an early epidural and it took 40 hours) and the increased chance of something going wrong with the baby itself, obvious financial concerns which means less trips and luxuries and more worrying about the future, and emotional concerns as well even if baby and mom are healthy... we both LOVE our daughter and are so happy we had her. But those first couple months were tough (not least of which, because our daughter had to be quarantined in NICU with pneumonia when she was a couple weeks old, which traumatized us a bit). Even after she was recovered, things were tense. I have a demanding job, and my wife was on sabbatical at home all day while I was at work and so we argued a lot. She was lonely, we were both exhausted, neither of us were sleeping, and it took a huge toll until our baby was 3 or 4 months and things mellowed a bit. Neither of us want to go through that again. The terrible twos are easy street compared to that. We both have some freedom back, and we’re reluctant to sacrifice that all over again. The pros are of course the fact we know we’d eventually love this second kiddo as much as we do our first and we want to give our child a brother or sister. But for all our talk, we can never cross that threshold into “let’s go for it”... we always waffle and default to our endless debate about it .... So I wonder if there are couples who had the same indecision about a second one and what you decided in the end and how that worked out for you.TLDR; my wife and I can’t decide whether to have a second child, and I’m wondering if other couples wrestled with that same kind of indecision. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2KP1EEz