[pavel_lishin]

> I still wonder how anybody could voluntarily opt for a second one.

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.)

[pavanred]

I know a couple who had their second kid while they had a small child already. They share the same feeling about it being very hard. But, their reasoning had something to do with how they grew up and how their kids would.

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.

[toasterlovin]

It's really hard. Our second came while the first was still under 2 years old. Like you, we live far from family. We were fortunate enough to be in a multi-bedroom house, though. Still, our marriage almost fell apart.

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...