Alex & Daniel

Maria & Daniel

My name is Maria and I am 35 years old.  I am happily married to Jon and we have two boys Alex and Daniel.

We live in the UK and have been together for 18 years.  When I had Alex he was four weeks premature and weighed 4.5lbs.  It was hard looking after a premature baby but I loved every minute of it but I'm sure my husband would disagree.  He was adamant that there was no way he was going to let me have another one.  However seven forgetful years later Daniel came along he weighed in at 6.3lbs.  But this time Jon has made sure we are definitely not having any more because he's had the "snip".

Now Alex is 11 years old and will be starting secondary school in September and Daniel is 3 years old and will be starting primary school in September.  When Alex was a baby I had to go back to work for financial reasons and I felt guilty leaving him with someone else while I was at work.  Then when he started school  I tried to work during school hours but found it very stressful rushing around dropping him off at school then rushing to pick him up in time.  Work was hard because they were not very flexible where parenting was concerned, because most of us were mums they could not do any favours in case it left them short staffed..  So I found it very difficult getting cover for school holidays and sickness. 

My family and my husbands family live very far from us and even though they would love to help it is geographically impossible.  So I decided having another child would solve all my problems because I would stay at home and be there for both my children. But what I didn't realise was that this would be just as difficult.