Reasons for you not to have a 3rd, OP:

*risk of having a kid w/ a disability or autism goes up the older and your DH you get
*you're in the "easy years" right now w 2 elementary school kids. That's the easiest part of parenting for most people. Baby/toddler years and teenager years are the hardest. Life is almost certainly going to get a lot harder once your older 2 are in middle/high school and if you also have a baby/toddler when they're in middle/high school, it will be very hard
*stretched too thin. Your current kids need you and will continue to need you (and may even need you more in the coming years). Right now you and your DH can go 1-1 with each parent going w/ 1 kid. If you have 3 kids you can no longer do this and your kids miss out. I'm from a big family so I know that this is true. Time is finite. Even if you have support and family help or nanny or w/e, nothing subsitutes for parent involvement/attention and kids need that and miss out when they don't get enough of it.
*risk of pregnancy and/or birth and/or postpartum complications goes up the older you get, even if you're generally healthy and your previous pregnancies/births were easy
*people in their mid-late 40s and up get tired, slow down, have health issues way more than people in their mid-late 30s and if you get pregnant right now, you'll be hitting that stage (late 40s) by the time the 3rd baby is the age your current kids are now. Think how much harder that'll be once you're older, tireder, less healthy, etc.
*if you get pregnant now, your 3rd baby will be born in February 2026, and will graduate high school in 2044 when you will be in your late 50s and probably wanting to retire in a few years but will instead have 4+ years of paying for college/grad school (not saying everyone does that but most on DCUM probably do).

Anonymous wrote:No one ever regrets having more children.

That is not true. The vast majority of parents love their kids but that doesn't mean they don't regret the choice to have children at a certain point in their lives. People just don't ever admit that they regret it (even on an anonymous message board they probably would be uncomfortable admitting it!) because then people might think that means they don't love their kids and that is too painful to imagine...they can't bear to admit it even to themselves. But yes, people absolutely regret having children.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had my second at 37, and it’s definitely not too old. My neighbor had her third at age 48, and even that’s not too old, watching her. Running after babies keeps you young.

m

A third at 48 is definitely too old. Anything north of 40 is old and the end of the cutoff is 45. It’s not only about your youth at 48, but that you’d be parenting a 17 year old at 65. My mom recently turned 70 and if I was only 22, that would stink. She is thankfully in good health, but aged quite a bit between 60 and 70.

But at 37 it’s no big deal.

god, is that you? you seem awfully sure of everything

Anonymous wrote:I had my second at 37, and it’s definitely not too old. My neighbor had her third at age 48, and even that’s not too old, watching her. Running after babies keeps you young.

m

A third at 48 is definitely too old. Anything north of 40 is old and the end of the cutoff is 45. It’s not only about your youth at 48, but that you’d be parenting a 17 year old at 65. My mom recently turned 70 and if I was only 22, that would stink. She is thankfully in good health, but aged quite a bit between 60 and 70.

But at 37 it’s no big deal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had my oldest kid at 30 and my youngest kid a few months after turning 38. Don't underestimate how much more exhausting the pregnancy might be. DS is almost 3 now and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel more than I did during my older kids' toddler years because I've been through it before, but, man, the pregnancy and first year were brutal.

I had my first at 30 and my third at 38. I had my first two close together so I felt much more tired at age 33 with a 2 year old and a baby than when I had a third child at 38 when my kids were 5 and 7. I also was a working mom with the first two. My maternity leave was exhausting and going back to work felt like a vacation.

With my third, I had 2 kids in school and I stopped working so it felt very manageable.

I'm considering doing this yet I don't know if I want to put my body and health through another pregnancy and birth. I also don't know if stopping working is something I'll regret down the line, but I don't want to go through pregnancy and parenting an infant while working full-time again.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are lots of posts by parents who love the large age gap but has anyone been part of the older kids whose parents had another kid much later? From the kid perspective were you close with your youngest sibling or not until adulthood.

Most people I know who were the kids in this scenario did not appreciate the change in family nearly as much as their parents proclaimed they did. They also didn’t have much of a relationship until they were all adults due to being at such different stages of life. Some resented being expected to babysit.

I was an older kid in a large age gap family and I LOVED having a baby sister. We were a super active family and she didn’t change the dynamic that much because she would just come along for all our activities. She was a very chill kid so this might not have worked with a different personality type. We are still very close as adults and I love having a cool twenty-something to teach me about Gen Z.

I was also one of the older kids who liked having little siblings as a teen. It was fun. We’ve all always been close.