Unexpectedly don’t feel done?
3 was always “our number”. Spouse and I were both 1 of 3 (neither of us was the middle child so we joke that’s why we liked it as much as we did growing up lmao). We welcomed #3 last summer and found ourselves shocked to not “feel done”. Maybe it’s naive but I always thought there would be some big feeling of completeness, especially since with the first two I always knew in my heart that they *weren’t* the last ones. We have 3 of the same gender but we genuinely don’t care about that/it isn’t a consideration. I’ve always admired big families, while my husband and I aren’t religious ourselves we come from big Irish catholic families so our parents all came from 6+ kid families, i loved and miss the big family gatherings we used to have growing up (I’m one of the youngest in my generation so sadly we’ve lost a good deal of my side). I couldn’t have another if I wanted to right now since #3 is still nursing enough that my period hasn’t returned yet but we decided to not take any permanent measures birth control wise for now. I worry a lot about the future, we’ve already got more kids than bedrooms at our current place and the market right now isn’t great. In a perfect world I want enough rooms for each kid to have their own because i don’t want them to feel forced out when they’re 18 but I don’t know if getting a 5+bedroom home is realistic (at this rate we’d be lucky to find a 4 bed). But my husband thinks I’m too hung up on the bedroom thing because him and his siblings liked sharing, and he believes there’s still time for the world/economy/life in general to improve I guess for us to say no more definitely at this time. I’ve taken more of an interest in the big families of people I know but I’ve found out everyone I thought was “making it work” are getting a lot of family help (everything from cash to living with their parents to living in houses the parents gifted them depending on the circumstances). One family that has 5 I just found out doesn’t have health insurance for them, most of them are on food-stamps. A friend of mine accepts help from her parents even though they can be pretty mean because she can’t make life work for their 4 without heavily relying on her parents to help ferry everyone around where they need to go. We just don’t have that level of help so I only sign them up for stuff I know I can get them to and from myself. We actually pay one of my parents bills 😅 I don’t mean for this to sound like I’m judging anyone on any sort of assistance or who has lots of help. My circumstances made it so I was poor growing up but never qualified for assistance so I’ve always just figured out how to do without. When I hint about maybe not being done after all/leaving that door open for the future the moms of these families are the first to tell me to absolutely not do it and that they wish they’d stopped at 3, that 3 was the last manageable number. I would just love to hear from “average” people with big families I suppose, from people with big families that still love their spouses and their kids and lives 😅 the people I know IRL make me feel like an idiot for even considering it (which I definitely take into consideration!) but surely not everyone hates the big family life 🥹