How many children should I have? Is Double Trouble?

How Many Children?

I'm 42 years old and my only child will be two in July. A year ago, my husband and I decided that we would only have one child. Now, I'm starting to have doubts about an only child. I really don't want her to grow up without siblings, even though she has cousins near her age, I feel that the bonds between siblings are so much stronger.

Still, I am concerned that another pregnancy will not go as smoothly for me or result in another wonderful, perfect child like we have. Since I was a "mature mother," their nice way of saying old, I had to go through extra ultra-sounds and additional testing throughout my pregnancy. Everything went fine and we always had good news at the end of every test, but the night before each test I was a nervous wreck...what if...? On top of that, I had an extremely easy pregnancy--no sickness, no issues. Everything was perfect and my daughter is beautiful, smart, and healthy.

So, now I'm two years older and I think I want to do it again but I can't help worry about the what if's. I know science/medicine is good, but with the increase in autism and all the possible birth defects associated with mother's age, I think I'm tempting fate by trying. Should I leave well enough alone or am I doing my daughter a disservice by letting her grow up an only child? I would love to know what other only children think and also what other older mothers have thought when they were in this predicament themselves.

Oh, and I forgot to mention how my husband and I are thinking that life is getting a lot easier as our daughter gets older and that we can do a lot of things we used to do. Do we really want to go back to sleepless nights and all that? We also got rid of tons of the baby stuff when we decided that we wouldn't have another one.

Am I being selfish? Or smart? I don't know how to deal with these mixed emotions and I'm usually pretty good at reasoning things out, but as the clock ticks, I feel like I'm even more and more undecided.