Deciding on Number of Children - Page 2

[SilverFish]

we both decided on two before we got married. haha, i actually had a 5 year plan when i was 20 and we'd only been dating a few months... i'm very lucky he didn't get scared off and run away! we ended up pushing the 5 year plan back a bit and then i thought i'd want to space our two at least 3 years apart. then we actually got pregnant and now i'm thinking i want another one sooner than 3 years and gulp... maybe even more than 2!

our original plan to have only two was based off of wanting to have the disposable income to travel, to keep up our fairly expensive creative pursuits (me printmaking, him photography) and just to have a more relaxed pace of life in general. we are both social introverts... i kind of hated having siblings at all, and he has one sibling... we both would have been happy with being only's. i liked visiting homes of people who had large numbers of kids, but never wanted to live there, if you know what i mean.

however, as i get older, family becomes more and more important. much as i have my differences with my two sisters, spending our first summer together with my parents, sisters,our husbands and the first two grandkids was really amazing. i had this vision in my head of 5-10 years down the road, each of us with a couple more kids and this great happy family gathering. it would be the extended family that we only got to experience once or twice when we were young (since my dad's side is frankly disfunctional and no one really managed to get together that often, and my mom's side has no other children our age)...

both reasons (wanting to have time/money/energy to do the things we love, AND wanting to have lots of siblings to have relationships with) have plenty of merit. i know my sister is planning on 5-6, and the positives of having a big happy troup of kids to play with are hard to ignore.

i honestly think we will have to play it by ear. my dh would be very hard to convince if i did decide to have a third. it would either have to be an oops or twins or something to get him over that initial hump. but, since our dd is only 7 months and i'm already having crazy newborn lust, i may have a hard time stopping at only 2.

[bjorker]

Glad I found this thread. I'm struggling with this concept now. I always thought i'd have one child, and changed my mind when dd1 was 4. Now I have a 3 month old, dd2, and am already thinking about having another! I feel like something is wrong with me, since this is SO different than how I felt in the past. I just don't feel "done". DP is on board for another child sometime in the future as well, but then I get freaked out thinking about it b/c he's 42 and already had a heart attack... what if something more happens? What if he's out of our lives before our hypothetical third child is even 18? And is that a good reason to stop when i don't feel "done"?
Is this just a phase?
Why am i suddenly obsessing over this?
Etc etc.

Anyway thanks all for your responses, I'm off to read more of them in this my time of crisis.
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[lizsky]

Originally Posted by aquarius aspiring

How did you (and your partner) decide how many children to have? Did you have a set number in mind before even your first DC was born? I've been reading a lot of threads in which mamas aren't sure they're done having babies.

We always talked about "maybe two" "way down the road". I felt so fuzzy about it because motherhood seemed so incompatible with my academic world. But then I had several friends who waited until they were well established professionally who had a lot of fertility troubles. And then I had a really weird cycle where my period was 5 weeks late (and I had had very reliable cycles previously) and I took a bunch of pregnancy tests and I felt sad when they were negative...that's when I knew I really did want to be a mom and that I didn't want to wait any longer. The experience of pregnancy, birth, and helping my daughter grow has been amazing. And I've suprised myself by wanting to get pregnant again right now! (even though it is not sensible timing and we plan to wait a bit).

Originally Posted by aquarius aspiring

Of course, I know that anything could happen with fertility, pregnancy, birth, and children themselves. We could plan for three and end up only having one child.

This is very true. You are wise to be aware of this.

Originally Posted by aquarius aspiring

Another aspect would be finances. I would like to be a SAHM. DH has a good full-time job and so do I, but we'd have to live on one income if we had even one child.

I recommend trying to live on one income and put the other in savings before getting pregnant...will give you the opportunity to learn how to live off 1 income ahead of time so you'll be ready to do it later.

Just keep talking to each other, talk about how you'd feel in certain circumstances (infertility, special needs child, living more frugally etc...) and take it one day at a time