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When I was young, I used to pretend I was a mom to twins. Alexander and Alexandria had faces I couldn’t quite envision, but I shuttled them from one place to another in my bedroom. Back then, I knew a family of four was the cultural norm, even though I was an only child.
My parents had a good reason for our family size. I was born with congenital heart disease and had expensive open heart surgery as a toddler. We were a one-income family, so they fully invested in me. As a teenager, I traded playing house for summers at art camps in New York and the UK, where I wrote poetry and painted still lifes in oil. I learned to dream big and entered adulthood thinking I could be anything — an artist, a mother, anything. It was all on the table.
I met and married another artist. Although we worried about how parenting would alter our career goals, I couldn’t imagine not having children with him. But if we started a family, he told me he wanted two kids. At first, the thought of having my childhood fantasy come to life felt like dumb luck. Yet, days after our son was born, I feared I could never love another child as deeply as I loved him. I told my husband, “I’m not sure I have the space in my heart for two.”
Parenthood altered my relationship with my husband
When my son was a newborn, I had postpartum depression. By the time he was 1, the depression still hadn’t subsided. My husband started an intensive project that provided significant financial stability. As a college professor, my summers, once reserved for creative projects, were reallocated to childcare.
I developed a deep knowledge base of kid-friendly activities and reigned over our domestic sphere. I felt like I’d traded my ambition for motherhood, and I resented the satisfaction my husband gained from his work even though it provided financial security for us.
When we initially discussed having two kids, we talked about having them three years apart, but by my son’s 2nd birthday, this idea no longer appealed to me. I started to realize that while I originally worried about not having space in my heart for more than one child, it might be more accurate to say that more than one child might not leave me enough room to still love myself.
We have so much as a family of three
Around my son’s 3rd birthday, my best friend asked if we would have a second child. Whenever people asked this, I gave a pragmatic answer, citing financial constraints. But I knew she craved a deeper truth. “Being a trio is actually perfect,” I said, unsure at first if I believed myself.
While the previous answers I’d given to this question had a ring of truth to them, they also weren’t truly mine. They felt off-the-rack; they’d do in a pinch, but they weren’t made for me. This answer felt tailor-made, and it fit perfectly. My son would start preschool in the fall, and I would regain time. I needed this time to nurture my ambition. I knew that growing into myself would make me a better partner and mother.
Later, I told my husband. He revealed he’d been working toward the same realization, though for him, it seemed like a more painful dream to let go of. He’d truly envisioned a future with two children, whereas, for me, it had been more abstract. Still, he said it before I could: “What we have is just as good.”
The three of us have so much. We have the financial ability to pay for summer camps and vacations, invest in college savings, and buy a Bay Area home. We have time to work on our relationship and the capacity to help each other grow into ourselves for the rest of our lives.
This doesn’t mean we don’t mourn the path we didn’t follow. Every artist knows you finish a piece because it is time to be done, not because it is perfect. There will always be some kind of void in our lives, but building around it together deepens our relationship. What we have to work with is becoming just as wonderful and big.
