The Mother-of-One?

I picked up a parenting magazine today, and they had an article on a family who has no schedule. Their 2-year-old decides when he wants to eat, when he goes to bed, and when he gets up in the morning. He goes to restaurants with his parents, and apparently eats anything from Asian to Greek, though he prefers McDonalds. And the thought struck me - this is a family that has only one child.

In English we have the expressions "mother-of-two" or "mother-of-three" - you see it in articles. Gina, a mother-of-three, did thus and so... In Swedish, the same expressions exist. Två-barns-mama or tre-barns-mama, and even fyra-barns-mama, which would be the equivalent of sainthood in my book. But there are no expressions for a "mother-of-one" or an "ett-barns-mama".

Reading the above article caused me to remember a news segment I saw on Today or some such show when I was in the US on "Diaperless Parenting". Wow - you can avoid the whole discussion over cloth versus Pampers by just potty-training your three-month old. The segment had moms with their babies, who were in real undies from extremely young ages. The moms just put them on the little potties every five or so minutes so that they would figure out when to go. Several thoughts struck me on this one, number one being that these were families without wall-to-wall carpeting, or even rugs, for that matter! Also, that these were moms that had ample time to spend with their child - and of course, that these were moms with only one child. Can you imagine the chaos of trying to put the baby on the potty every 5 minutes while your 2-year-old is throwing a tantrum? And how could you ever leave the house?

Anyway, back to the mother-of-one... How wonderful it must be to have the time, freedom and flexibility to be a mother-of-one! How much quality time has Christopher missed as the youngest child of mother-of-three? (He might not be 3 1/4 and still in diapers...) Of course, being a mother-of-three lets me really appreciate the times that I get to be a mother-of-one...