Will this make juggling 3 kids easier?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have three kids and no help and a full time job and I also volunteer in the community and find it all manageable. And honestly I have a next door neighbor with one five year old who regularly seems ready to pull her hair out and I kind of look at her like 'really?'

But the fact is that every person is different and what one person can handle and be happy doing is not what another person can handle and be happy doing.

I do not think cutting your income in half is going to help ANYTHING. It sounds like you shouldn't have a third, or like you should wait a few years so you have kids more spread out and less needy. There's no shame in that and you do your husband and your kids a service by knowing your limits and staying within them.

Right? She wants to give up half her income and her nanny. I don’t think she even realizes the stress of being with young kids all day vs. working. And I say this as a WAH mom of 3. My work days with quiet mornings drinking coffee on the sun porch while checking emails, then going to the gym on my lunch break, are SO much less stressful than even a long weekend with 3 kids at home. I can’t imagine going from working to being home with 3 kids including a newborn overnight. With less disposable income on top of it all!

Unless OP were proposing leaving big law or something, I don’t see how switching from a flexible WAH job to SAHM with an extra kid would be less stressful.

[Anonymous]

If you decide to have a third kid, keep the nanny, the cleaners and the job. You’ll find it much less stressful. A husband job change and a cross country move caused me to go from a similar set up (minus the house cleaner) to SAHM when my kids were 1, 3, 5.

I was pretty burned out at my job (sounds like you still like yours), so I was at the time fine with it. I enjoyed many parts of it, but staying home plus losing half out HHI made it quite stressful. Kids are now older and I’m back to part time WAH mainly because his job doesn’t allow him to help with any of the afternoon/evening driving kids around.

[Anonymous]

Why don't you keep your job, and have your husband become the SAHD?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you keep your job, and have your husband become the SAHD?

LOL

[Anonymous]

Going from 2-3 isn't as hard as going from 1-2. Your older ones will be in school right? I think you can keep the nanny and the WFH job, until at some point you'd rather SAH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Going from 2-3 isn't as hard as going from 1-2. Your older ones will be in school right? I think you can keep the nanny and the WFH job, until at some point you'd rather SAH.

I very much disagree with this. 3 kids means that you have at least a 4 year difference between first and third. Stages of life are very different for many years, different friends, different activities, different schools, etc. Two kids of similar ages can often be a pack… 3 kids… not so much.

I have a 10, 8 and 4.5 year old and the jump from 1 to 2 was much smaller than 2 to 3 in our case. Our oldest is into sleepovers and orchestra, our youngest just dropped his nap and is still in PK. In order to make everyone happy, we always have to divide and conquer. Had we only had a 10 and 8 year old we would not have changed much

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Going from 2-3 isn't as hard as going from 1-2. Your older ones will be in school right? I think you can keep the nanny and the WFH job, until at some point you'd rather SAH.

I very much disagree with this. 3 kids means that you have at least a 4 year difference between first and third. Stages of life are very different for many years, different friends, different activities, different schools, etc. Two kids of similar ages can often be a pack… 3 kids… not so much.

I have a 10, 8 and 4.5 year old and the jump from 1 to 2 was much smaller than 2 to 3 in our case. Our oldest is into sleepovers and orchestra, our youngest just dropped his nap and is still in PK. In order to make everyone happy, we always have to divide and conquer. Had we only had a 10 and 8 year old we would not have changed much

+1

Mine are 12, 10, and 7.5. Actually having the third baby - adding a third to our family - wasn’t as much as a sea change as when we added the second. But the day to day of having three is very, very different than with two. Ours are reasonably close together and definitely have things they do in a pack, but it’s not the norm. We love having three, but it’s a whole other ball of wax than two.