@infomommax I have 2. Going from 1-2 was hard for me. I lived in a fog until my youngest was about 3 years old. I have very few memories of my older child in that period because while my youngest was a baby and toddler I was so tapped out - I find that sad. I was in survival mode, working a stressful job and all that.
And yet… I desperately wanted a third. We tried for years on and off, but nothing happened. About 1-2 years ago I started to feel satisfied with 2. Now they are age 9 and 6 and it’s so wonderful. If my husband wants to go away for the weekend or he or I travel for work, it’s not a feeling of dread anymore, it’s a feeling of excitement! I love spending time with the two of them on my own.
I could write a lot about how thankful I am that we didn’t have three, but let’s just say we are thriving in life with two kids. We have amazing travel adventures together. We ski together and I’ll be sitting on a lift with my husband and two self-sufficient kids thinking just how HAPPY I am. My career is thriving as is my husbands. My husband and I have the household handled AND we have time for ourselves. I meditate, do yoga, go for long walks, workout in the gym. Life is great.
My gratefulness that the third child didn’t arrive is so profound. I sometimes think the secret to happiness might be to make peace with having one less child than you think you want. That energy I had reserved for the last child has gone to myself and my well-being.
@alovedivine Thank you! This is a very nice comment.
I know it’s silly, but we went from 2 to 3 dogs and 3 was too many. I fear I’ll want three kids because they are so fun and loving, but realistically it will be too many to enjoy.
@infomommax I relate. I definitely wanted a third because my love for my first two was so great. I also really wanted to be pregnant and experience having a newborn and breastfeeding again. But in reality I would have paid with my own well being, at least for the newborn period. And I wound up starting to think that while I’m sure my kids would adore having another sibling, they’d also love to have a mom who is thriving rather than surviving.
If I lived in a country where I had a years maternity leave, it may have been different. Going back at 3-4 months to a full-time high pressure career is so hard. And my career is who i am. I knew I’d never sacrifice it.
One quote that sealed it for me was “you cannot be generous in love to the detriment of your own well-being”. For me that had a lot of levity. I could have pushed through and had the third. Gone back to work with shitty US maternity leave. I could have white knuckled through and been “fine”. The love for that child would have got me through. But ultimately that wasn’t best for me. And I started to realize how much of a better parent I was when I wasn’t at capacity all.the.time. And so it is how it is. Two kids is for us. It feels right. It feels like the best choice. But goddam, I wanted that third child so much!!
@alovedivine I love this comment. I’m wrapping up my 3rd pregnancy and always imagined 4 kids but between two full time careers and the intensity of pregnancy and newborn time I am starting to think this may be the last one. Trying to find peace with it and enjoy the benefits of how close my 3 will be in age and what life might look like in later years when we’ve truly left babyhood behind.
@infomommax We have 4 kids (3 bio, 1 step). Our biggest issue is we have kids at 3 different schools, sports are all at different times, and it’s just hard to get everyone to the right place at the right time. Financially we make it work fine, time with the kids ends up working out (in shifts) but the constant taxi back and forth is a lot. Even if each kid only has one activity a season, it’s a lot.
@infomommax I went from 1 to 3 thanks to surprised twins. With 3 we both continued to work full time, but my MIL lived with us the first year, I have a fairly low-stress job, and we haven’t had to worry much about money thanks to two high paying jobs and family help. Even with all that, I feel like I am constantly behind at work and home, I feel like my twins don’t get the attention they should (though part of that is the twin factor) and life in general probably would have been better had I stayed home (I vehemently didn’t want to). Everyone I know with two seems a whole lot less chaotic and like you can both give your first a sibling but have enough time and energy to give enough of yourself to family and work. YMMV of course, and I may be looking at having 2 through rose-colored glasses because it’s a life I’ll never know.
@infomommax I have 3 and the 1-2 transition was the hardest for us. It went from one parent always getting a “break” to neither of us getting a break. First 2 are 2 years apart so we’re both needy. Adding the third was easy.
@infomommax For me, I was not ready, nor expecting, going from 1-2 being so hard. Everyone will tell you that 3 is hard, but most say 1-2 is easy, well it’s definitely been an adjustment. My husband wanted 3 and I always said “let’s see how 2 goes” and I’m now 99% sure we are done at 2. Juggling 2 kids and two different schedules and not feeling like you’re constantly failing someone has been hard.
My job is very flexible. I had 6.5 months of leave. I just returned and my first week back I had to keep my daughter home two days from daycare. It’s not ideal. Plus my husband does appointments and sick days and all that as well. Maybe if we had more family support and they were local we would consider 3, but we don’t have that and I don’t feel like feeling like a failure constantly. I’m also at the point in my career where I’m not actively trying to be promoted but I still want to do well.
@infomommax 2 -> 3 means we’d be selling the cars to buy mini vans, plus 2 kids would have to share a bedroom or we’d need to move. I know these are small things in the grand scheme, but important to point out there’s some logistical factors at play too.
@infomommax I have 2 with a third on the way. Having them in the same daycare is a huge benefit - same dropoff, same sicknesses. Right now I feel that 2 is not much harder than 1 was. We'll see how 3 feels... Also I am dreading the point when they become older and we need to drive all of them to activities.
@infomommax In my experience anyone with more than 2 kids has a ton of help from grandparents or some other source.
I have two kids. Thankfully I have a flexible wfh job that I despise. My kids are constantly sick. One rolls into the other. Or daycare has a snow day. We have been to the ped every week for 10 weeks straight.
Our plan is for me to quit my job when our oldest is in school because we don’t know how we can have two jobs with the school calendar/hours.
@yeast786 I was just talking with my husband about how it might be more beneficial for me to be part time when they are in school vs now anyway (it’s not financially an option now, but this makes me feel better).
Plus, less worrying about how to get days off for field trips and such.
@infomommax We have 4 kids, ranging 6th grade to new preschooler and both work FT office jobs.
I love babies, newborns are my jam, so even sleep deprived I've never had ppd or any serious emotional thing when adding a child
I could feel my work performance dip with the birth of each child but (not to brag) I'm good enough at my job even with the dips I was always still a top performer, got my most recent promotion when my youngest warms 10m
pre covid, my parents helped with sick days (not sh much now). Post covid I can do some work from home (though not with a toddler). Dh and I just split sick days and there have been really rough patches where we miss a lot of work be we both have decent pto so we made it work.
honestly the hardest period was last winter and it was a combination of DH needing to put in a lot of OT and one child signing up for a time intensive extra curricular. I felt like I was doing the whole thing alone and never saw my husband, and I got really resentful if he was home and not engaged with the kids since he was so often gone
so with that in mind I think it's REALLY critical to us that both our jobs are normally zero OVer time.
in general , it is much more stressful now when the kids all have different schedules and extracurricular. Schools are not designed for full time work, I can't drop my middle schooler off until after 8, and he has special needs that keep him off the bus. This means my work schedule is 845-5, which eliminates most classes my other kids wantto take unless I find them a different ride. I feel bad , like I'm making them miss out.
I am stressed often, I think the #1 thing I didn't understand when deciding to have four was how much patience it takes to be mentally present and calm with 4 different sets of needs and 4 different demands on my attention. It is very challenging.
We both work full time, and my husband often travels for work. We only can make it work for 2 main reasons:
1 - I work from home. I can't have the kids, but I have flexibility. If they are sick or there is a snow day, they can stay home and I don't have to take off work.
My husband's whol family is here and incredibly involved. He was traveling, day care was closed, and I needed to work so Grandpa had them. I couldn't make a parent activity due to a meeting, so grandma went instead. After we had our 3rd, our 2nd brought home HFM the very next day. We all got it (except my husband) and even the newborn did. Grandma took them HFM and all so I could tend to the baby while dad worked.
It really takes having a village to be 100% honest.
@infomommax We have two kids (ages 3 and 1.5) and both work full time. It’s a lot, I’ll be honest. So many people said 0-1 kid was the hardest transition and I strongly disagree, the transition from 1-2 was harder on us. Sickness gets passed back and forth and between both kids and also parents. Another factor was it was hard for either my husband or me to get any time to ourselves. We’re both introverted so we struggled with that. Work wise, I ran out of leave and had to take some unpaid when I got sick at the beginning of June (our leave replenishes July 1). Overall I love seeing the sibling bond and wouldn’t have it any other way but it was a tough adjustment for us.
@infomommax Luckily the transition for us from 1-2 was fine, had baby early November (so around the holidays) and right after big sister turned 2. The problems came when she hit 6 months and started getting ear infections. Daycare was constantly sending her home bc of fevers and the specialists didn’t prioritize getting her in quickly….I think we were at 12 ear infections by the time her surgery was scheduled then she got c diff, couldn’t get surgery and had a severe ear infection they were hesitant to treat bc of the c diff. That instance kept me working from home with a baby for 3 weeks.
I took 9 weeks off then part time from home with baby for 4 weeks - this worked best for the type of work I did. There wouldn’t have been 40 hours for me after being out 9 weeks so I slowly ramped up and by the time I was back in office I had a full load.
@infomommax We always thought we'd have two. Now our first is 18 months old and...we're not sure if we will be having a second. We LOVE being parents and she has always been a very easy baby and toddler, but my husband has an autoimmune condition and the daycare sicknesses always become BIG deals in our house because of that. We also want to ensure we have the time and money and resources to always comfortably take care of this one, take vacations, not have to turn down grabbing food when we're out and about because it's convenient, etc. So....while I would love a second because I've found so much joy with the first, I think the responsible decision for us is to stop at one.
@infomommax Mine are 5, almost 3, and I'll have a newborn in Nov.
Thankfully (ugh I'm afraid to jinx this) illness hasn't been too bad. However I do take a ton of time off especially at this time of year for school orientations, parent teacher conferences, doctors appointments etc. There is a lot of pressure to volunteer in their schools too. And it is so hard to keep the house tidy, just the sheer clutter and laundry is difficult to manage (and I even have the privilege of working from home, so I can knock some stuff out during the day.)
I always feel like I'm not "doing enough" at work and know that my colleagues who are childless or working fathers are doing more. However I don't regret 2 kids, don't think I'll regret going for more, and I would consider a fourth kid even if I wasn't so tired of the newborn phase, breastfeeding, and the constant fight and stress that is finding quality infant and toddler childcare.
@infomommax It's been...a lot. The only way it works is because we both wfh ( kids are in care) and SOMETIMES have family help.
Daycare illnesses are massive pain the first year. We had a nanny and my oldest just brought illness home to the baby so we paid the nanny for nothing usually. Now that that part is over it's WAY easier.
@infomommax Hats off to the families with two FT working parents who don’t have work from home options at all who have more than 1 child. It would not have been possible for us to have two if we both worked full time due to day to day chaos (like the good kind but still) and the sick time issues with kids. There is no “making up time after hours” in healthcare. You’re either on site billing patients or not.
I work M-W 27 hrs and husband works full time. The M-W is great because by the time some illness incubates in my kids, they don’t get sick until Wednesday-Saturday or something and are usually better by Monday. If you get exposed to something on Thursday or Friday you’re saying goodbye to a large chunk of that next week. This scenario saved us probably 2 weeks of PTO combined when our toddler got the stomach bug, flu and strep within about 4.5 weeks. We missed like 1 day each!
TLDR no way we could have more than 2 kids and in our professions, 2 would have been tough because neither of us can WFH with a sick kid due to our healthcare jobs. I see friends who both work from home or at least one parent WFH full time who have two and it works.
