post #21 of 21
11/15/08 at 1:47pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sihaya View Post
I'm interested in input from moms of many and those with large families.

As a short background, when we got married, I said I didn't even want to talk about kids until we'd been married 2.5 years. Shortly after the wedding, I changed my tune, but only wanted one child. By the time I got pg 1.5 years into our marriage, I decided I probably wanted two, definitely two if the first was a boy. In the weeks before and after my son's birth, I decided that pg and birth was so great that I'd like three. A few months later, I started toying with the idea of a large family and after talking to DH, we settled on six.

While I won't use hormonal bc, we don't have any religious convictions that prevent us from using FAM/NFP, don't feel called to be "quiverfull," and would like to choose the spacing between our children.

My issue is that I am very tied to 3 year spacing. I think 2-3 years is a good amount of time to give my body to replenish nutrients and re-balance hormone levels between pregnancies. I would also like the youngest child to be independently mobile, verbal, pottying independently (we're EC dropouts ), weaned (or only bfing at night/naps), and done getting their baby teeth before having another.

With six children all three years apart (and assuming we continue to get pg as easily as we get older), that means I'll be 40 for #6. DH and I are fine with this plan, but I would like to hear from other moms who have this spacing and either have large families or plan on having large families. A lot of my friends are planning much closer spacing for much smaller families and I'm second-guessing myself. Maybe we shouldn't shoot for so many or maybe we should compromise on the spacing as I get older.
I'm the oldest of 11 kids, and there are two sets spaced a year apart, one set spaced 3 years apart and the rest are 2 years apart.

So the two oldest are 1 year (me and my sis) and the 2nd and 3rd youngest are 1 year. Two kids in the middle are 3 years (but I think this was due to a m/c).

My take from the experience of growing up with a big family is that spacing is important for the mommy's health and not so much for the convenience of who is in diapers or of having to take care of two small babies. It seems after 3 or 4 kids that another one in the bunch was just more fun and logistics and as long as mommy could keep up with them, everything was merry.

I'm hoping to space my kids out so that I get pregnant when the last babe is no less than a 1yr old.