SELF – Coco Rocha Loves Her Daughter So Much, She May Not Have A Second Baby
Family planning is no straightforward thing, and thinking about adding to a family can bring up emotions that can be confusing and challenging. Coco Rocha recently blogged about loving her daughter so much, that she was worried she could love another child as much. She’s not alone; anxiety about family planning is terribly common. SELF asked me to weigh in on why moms worry about loving another child and what they can do about it.
I was pleased to help – to read the full article, CLICK HERE.
Although many women share Rocha’s worry, licensed clinical psychologist Alicia H. Clark, Psy.D., tells SELF that men experience this fear as well. “However, it’s more common for women because they’re carrying the child, birthing the child, and maybe feeding the child,” she says. “It’s much more of a full-body experience for women than for men.”
Clark points out that these anxieties can be rooted in reasonable factors, such as how you can make room for someone else, how you’ll have the time to take care of more than one child, and how you’ll be able to afford it. “That points to things you can start to do,” Carpenter says. “Set aside special time with your older child and figure out how you can set aside one-on-one time once the baby comes, too.” But the fundamental anxiety has to with fear of the unknown, which is a big cause of anxiety in general, Clark says.
Clark says it’s important to talk your way through these feelings with a close friend or family member to get a firm understanding of where the fear is coming from. Mayer specifically recommends seeking out your mom and your partner’s mom to see how they reacted to those fears and feelings, if they have more than one child.
You may decide, for whatever reason, that having another child isn’t for you, and that’s OK. “That’s a very mature, important decision to come to,” Clark says. “The worst thing you can do is ignore your anxiety or think there’s something wrong with you for being anxious about this.” But, if you do decide to try to have more than one child, Carpenter says it’s important to know this: “You have far more capacity for love than you think you do.” There’s no scientific evidence to suggest that people love their second child or subsequent children any less than their first, she says, noting that she hasn’t heard that anecdotally either. Mayer agrees. “It is extremely rare,” he says.
