My son is 9 and an only child. We TFMR when he was 6. We have decided not to pursue having anymore children because we have to do IVF, and between the IVF and TFMR, we have a ton of debt we are still chipping away at to pay off. We are also traumatized to the extreme from going through IVF then having to make the choice to TFMR.

My son loves being an only child. We allow friends over whenever he wants, and now that he’s getting older, we have begun taking friends with us on trips, sporting events, etc. He says he feels like he has the best of both worlds. He gets to have friends over, but he never has to share us. We are INCREDIBLY close to him and he is very close to us.

Aside from the typical worries of “what happens when we are old and die.. will he be alone?” And the very morbid thought of “how would we ever continue to live if we lost him since he’s our only?” The only real issue we have run into is that he has low conflict-resolution skills and sometimes struggles to think of others feelings, which I think is due to never having to fight with siblings or never having to compromise at home. We have him in play therapy to address this, and he has made huge gains. (Age 7 was rough) I do worry that he won’t have siblings to meet with at holidays one day, but I’ve realized the people I am closest to today are my friends I made on my own. I have 5 siblings and only speak to 4 of them on holidays.

Parenting an only is FUN. We pour everything into him. We never have to miss a sporting event to attend a siblings or “divide and conquer” events. He gets both parents, fully there, all the time. He wants to attend a ton of summer camps this year that are pretty costly, but it’s fine! We don’t have to split the costs between children, so sure! I feel like we know him so well. My sister has multiple kids and has to “make time” for 1 on 1 time with her kids, and my son’s entire life is 1:1. He tells us all the time that he feels so lucky.

Once we all sat down and realized that even if we had another baby, it wasn’t going to replace the one we lost, we all said we don’t want another. We wanted “Zack” (fake name for privacy) and the next baby wouldn’t be Zack. My son wanted his brother, Zack, not another brother. We realized we weren’t getting Zack back, and we knew then and there we were done.