Lol, you have no idea whats coming for you when you have a baby.
Happily our 5-month-old only wakes up a couple of times in the night, and has always been a good sleeper. I'm hoping that once he starts eating more solid foods he'll be able to sleep through the night in the next month or two, but even if he doesn't I'm still very definitely counting our blessings!
I still wonder how anybody could voluntarily opt for a second one.
Thank God for the hardwired unconditional love for one's own children (I have heard that occasionally it doesn't work — poor souls). And still, I never even remotely expected anything like what has happened.
We're opting out of that. I have no idea how people do it, especially with another small child in the house. (We also live far from family, in a one-bedroom apartment - when someone wakes up in our home, there's a 50% chance that everyone wakes up in our home.)
Both of them had siblings growing up, and by the time they had their first kid, they had this good family support system - parents (grand parents to the kid), siblings (aunts/uncles to the kid). Even after their parents are gone, there still are their siblings (their spouses and kids) that still are part of that family support system, an immediate family that you can trust and rely on (at least in most families, I guess).
They were worried that for their kid when he/she grows up, after they are gone, there would be no immediate family left at all. No siblings, so no aunts or uncles or cousins. This is made worse because the age when they had their first kid was almost a decade later compared to when their parents had their first kid. And, it doesn't help either that families are more spread now with people moving to different parts of the world for opportunities and careers than it was a generation ago.
Maybe just space them out? We had 2.5 years between the 2nd and 3rd and those extra 8 months made a world of difference. Not sure how old yours is now, but the difficulty of raising kids is an exponential backoff kind of a thing. Our oldest is 4.5 and, honestly, hardly requires any work. We basically just make her meals, but we could probably even teach her how to do that...
I too was unprepared for the level of hell a child brings. But, unconditional love and all that jazz.
For sure though, one is enough for one lifetime. My cousin is on his fourth; no idea why he hates himself so much.
He tells me that it eventually gets easier, as they get old enough to help take care of the young ones. I assume it's similar to how you learn to echolocate if someone stabs your eyes out, or how you learn to pick things up with your feet if someone eats your hands.
* My mom has 11 siblings.
* My dad has 6.
I've got one child, and I while I could have another I think two would be my limit. Having two screaming children seems like it would be stressful enough, I can't imagine having more than three!