Has anyone pulled back on the number of kids they think they want?

[Anonymous]

Yes,
Growing up I always wanted like 4+ kids and was jealous of friends from big families. Once I got married I figured 3-4 kids. After being pregnant and dealing with one newborn stage, number dropped to one or MAYBE two haha. Due with my second- 4 years later- in a few weeks and kind of dreading the baby stage again

[Anonymous]

Yes, thought maybe 3 but now good with 2, and now they are 8 and 5 so not changing unless we have a real oops. Just can't handle juggling the needs of another one, 2 is plenty of work. I still get a twinge when I see cute babies but last week a friend with a toddling 1 year visited and after an hour I was exhausted and very willing to give the baby back. There's so much freedom in having somewhat older kids, I do not want to go back to the baby stage now!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, thought maybe 3 but now good with 2, and now they are 8 and 5 so not changing unless we have a real oops. Just can't handle juggling the needs of another one, 2 is plenty of work. I still get a twinge when I see cute babies but last week a friend with a toddling 1 year visited and after an hour I was exhausted and very willing to give the baby back. There's so much freedom in having somewhat older kids, I do not want to go back to the baby stage now!

I must say I kind of romanticize the baby stage because they are so sweet. And non mobile/non verbal! The years between that and the more independent preschool stage can feel long though. And I guess I just don’t want to outsource driving elementary school kids around to someone else. I see a lot of third babies living in the car seat and not sure how I’d feel about that either. My comfort zone as a parent is being able to give a lot of individualized time and attention, and once it goes over two you have to be more at ease with batching them together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Always thought I would want 2. But I'm very happy with 1.

+1

I realized that my previous "desire" for two was actually a social pressure and not my own authentic feelings.

Same. Especially because I had an easy, drama-free pregnancy and easy baby (breastfeeding was easy, he slept well very early on, perfectly healthy and happy). I actually loved being pregnant and I think that led to people assuming we would have more, and initially we were like, yeah, 2 sounds nice. But when I was honest with myself when the questions kept coming and coming about when we’d try again, I realized that I had a great experience I didn’t want to repeat again. For some reason, I received so much social pushback about that— including hints that I was somehow being selfish for not tempting fate and possibly having it not so easy the second time around. Now, my little boy is 6 and life is nice for us a family as we all get our needs met (I was going to say my dh and I split everything “evenly” so we never feel overwhelmed, but truthfully, he probably does more than I do, especially the emotional labor part) without feeling stretched. I like to travel or just enjoy our area and go here and there at the drop of a hat (thankfully DS just rolls with traveling and is a lot of fun), I like owning my own business, having time to work out, spend what I want, etc. I just can’t imagine having another one and feeling as free. I enjoy my friends’ and relatives’ kids and think the sibling dynamics are cute, but want zero part of a larger family day to day.

Could have almost written this whole thing myself, sub DD for DS.

[Anonymous]

Wanted 2 then had 1 and was done. No regrets

[Anonymous]

I always expected to have three, but stopped after two because I didn’t think we could fully enjoy our two with a 3rd. I love that my two get along great, are fun to travel with, and we have the financial and emotional resources to give them everything they need. Three would have been too much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Thought I wanted three but after two, that feeling went away - I felt like the family was complete, I didn't have money/energy/emotional bandwidth for more.

In my case, DH was fine with any number of children as long as we had at least one and not more than three, so it was pretty much my decision. It may be different if the spouses disagree on the number.

Same here.

[Anonymous]

Yes. We had talked about 3-4 children. DD1 came along with a picture perfect pregnancy followed by horrific PPA and PPD. We went for #2 and DD2 pregnancy required 4 months of bed rest but postpartum was ok. I am not sure I want to risk the burden on our family of another difficult pregnancy and/or difficult postpartum period. I know they are short periods of time in the grand scheme, but those dark days are long when you're in them.

[Anonymous]

DH is oldest of 3 (all within 5 years) so we thought we'd also have 3 close together. DS2 came along 19 months after DS1 and turned our world upside down! I say this as lovingly as possible, I couldn't handle another kid like DS2 so we're not risking it! And on a more serious note, I also know my marriage wouldn't survive. DH and I both WOH and have jobs we love, I don't think we could manage being stretched any thinner. 2 is more than enough for us!

[Anonymous]

My husband went the other way. He wanted one and said he would've been ok with none if we were unable to conceive easily. After we had our first, he got the baby fever like mad. We had our second last fall and I told him I was pretty sure I wanted to be done. He was SO sad. He's still trying to talk me into a third. Nooooooooooope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Initially wanted three but pregnant with #2 now (third trimester) and this will be it for us. I can't handle the mental or physical demands of another pregnancy.

OP here. I love pregnancy (except for first tri). First year is a bit of a marathon. I guess I waver because if someone would tell me you can have your third child as a two year old I’d be tempted. But then imagining that child growing into their own set of activities and so on, for some reason juggling all three schedules of non-driving little people — that seems like a lot.

I wanted three but after two felt like we’d have a really rough time handling the first two years of three kids. Busy the time I felt like I could handle a third I felt too old. Now with both kids are well into elementary school I am so glad we stopped at two. One had baseball 5 days a week plus a music lesson once a week. The other has soccer three days a week and swimming once a week. It is crazy. The kids never have a game/recital/etc. that does not have at least one parent but there have been enough times that they overlapped that I know with 3 that wouldn’t be possible.

We are pretty much the same. We had two relatively close together and then one child was seriously, life threateningly ill for a time. He recovered and is completely fine but it made us pause for a while and really think about what it would be like to have 3 kids, particularly when there is no guarantee they will be healthy. In the meantime our two kids got older and now, like PP, are involved with their own activities. I feel like we're so busy. I sometimes wish we had a third but on the other hand it's fun to really start doing more adventurous things (trips, etc.) with two older kids.