Reply to Regret not having one last child

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "Regret not having one last child "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I know how you feel and I have a lot of empathy for you, because my husband was adamant (sp?) about no third and I was so sad for a while (I finally won out but that's not the point).

I would have you consider what having a baby with the ages of your other three kids would be like. All you know is having kids close together, so you don't have experience with a larger age spread.

It would be very hard to go back to baby nap schedules and sleepless nights and bottles and baby food and cleaning the high chair. It would be hard to cart a baby around to the older kids' sports and activities. It would be hard to convince the others to include the baby in things. The baby would have to grow up like an only child in so many ways, or at least have a radically different relationship with their siblings than the others did. It would feel lonely in some ways -- the families you're friends with via your other kids likely no longer have babies and would look at you with pity that you are beholden to baby and toddler difficulties. And the families in the baby's cohort will be a lot of new parents, which is so different.

It would also make you feel very OLD -- all the other moms in your 4th's cohort would be like 30. And a pregnancy and postpartum at that age, compared to how you felt with the other three, would make you feel so tired and worn out. Even having my third at 37 vs. my early 30s made me feel this way. (I know 42 year olds have babies all the time, but this is still a reality, and will be a noticed difference for a mom who had her other kids young).

I don't even have that big of a gap between my 2nd and 3rd and I still really feel this! The age spread is what you need to be thinking about most. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics