Long before my son was born, my husband and I had agreed having only one kid [1] was right for our family. After my son's birth, surrounded by the chaos and engulfed by the sleep deprivation [2] brought on by an infant, we became even more firm on being "one and done." Even though I could definitely see a benefit to having more, I was happy with the decision — or so I thought.
It wasn't until recently that I realized my position on the subject might be more up for debate than I had thought, all thanks to an app on my phone.
In my notes section of my phone is a list of baby names [3]; even though most of them were accrued during my pregnancy, I've been adding to the selection, curating names for a possible person that I had thought I didn't want.
Certainly, naming a child is one of the more interesting and fun aspects of being pregnant [5], but this is more. These new names were developed, combined with middle names, and in my head already ascribed to a hypothetical child. Having seen what our DNA combination looks like, it's easy to craft a fantasy of a whole image of another baby, complete with a name and a defining trait.
Maybe everyone does this and I'm not alone. When I asked my friends who are done having children if they did anything similar, I was given an emphatic, "No." Either they're lying to me or I'm lying to myself about my desire for only one.
Even knowing this, I still scour the top baby names list of the year [6], mostly in hopes that my son's name is still out of the top 100 [7], but also to keep an eye out for anything new and interesting. As I read the lists, I'll make note in my phone of anything that seems right for this hypothetical child I'm not even sure I want.
It's a good thing I'm not a betting person, because I have no idea whether or not 2018 is going to bring us another child. If my phone was into gambling, though, I think I know how it would bet.