The question that gets brought up to me most these days: “How
did you make the decision to have a 3rd baby?”. Or, said another way
by those not as subtle (most recently by my hair dresser), “Was this baby an
accident?” Lovely phrasing aside, I’m here to tell you how we know that three
is our number, and why not less, and why not more.
I think the biggest misconception is that we’re totally killing
the parenting game and decided to add one more since we’re on auto pilot over
here. This is definitely not the case, and our days hold plenty of
parenting and work/life balance challenges. The boys fight just as much as they
get along, and there is a lot of patience, grace, and love that is required to
navigate the uncharted waters of parenting our 5 and 3 year old boys. Our lives
have also always included international travel, which sometimes feels like an
insurmountable feat with two—let alone three--littles. Matt and I have been
able to divide and conquer (or something very minimally resembling it) with two kids
until now, and thinking ahead to how we’ll be able to travel with three kids,
and all that that entails (cost, car seats, sleeping arrangements, rental cars)
is enough to completely overwhelm me. So what the heck are we doing?
The shortest and easiest answer is simply this: I just didn’t feel like we were done. The
thought of completely moving on from this phase of life, as intense as it is,
with the baby years in the rear view mirror, got to me more and more as we
continued to celebrate birthdays for the boys. For a little while, I thought
that maybe I was just one of those people that would never want to stop, always
craving a newborn in her arms as a way to try to freeze time. It’s really hard
to grow up. It’s painful to have to move on to the next chapter. It’s hard to stop
dreaming and buying pregnancy tests, hard to give up that exciting and nervous
high that makes your stomach flip-flop, hard to stop imagining the future with
little people that you’ve never met yet. As it turns out, the moment I first
saw this baby on an ultrasound was also the one where I knew that this would be
the last time. I knew that our future was now going to be spent taking care of these
three babies that we had been given, and I felt an overwhelming sense of
completion. I feel like we anxiously gambled and ended up with
healthy pregnancies and babies, three for three (my miscarriages aside). I knew
that this baby was the missing piece to our family, and now that we had her, it
was all I ever wanted. I just couldn’t ever fathom asking the universe to give
us even more.
Another reason why we decided to have a third baby is for
our boys. The gift of a sibling, a best friend, trumped any back-of-the-mind
concerns on how we would afford college tuition for three kids. Oskar,
especially, had been asking for a baby for a long time, and seeing his excitement
bubble over with every pregnancy milestone and doctor’s appointment he’s tagged
along to validates our decision tenfold. The classic, “How do you want your
Thanksgiving table to look in 20 years?” question also resonated with me, and the
choice to give our boys another person to love was honestly made with my heart
instead of my head in many ways.
Finally, I never went into August’s pregnancy thinking it
was my final time to experience it. Parenting a 21 month old and a newborn, I learned,
allows for little time to slow down and relish in the “lasts”…my last newborn,
last time nursing, last first words, last first holidays. To be honest, I existed
in survival mode for well over a year after August came along, and never got to
really hold on to it, enjoy it, then let it go. I ached to be able to do that,
just one more time, and am so grateful that I now have that chance.
The same way I intuitively knew we needed just one more baby
is likely the same way I know that this will be our last. I know that this is
the perfect number for us, for our finances, for the way we want to live our
lives, for our mental well being…for my patience, sanity, and amount that I’m
able to extend myself. I want to work, we want to travel. I think, and hope, we
can still swing it with just one more addition to our family.
I know lots of people struggle with this very same question—are
we done having babies? Finality is a tricky thing. My best advice is this: if
you don’t know, do nothing. I think the answer will make its way to you in time.
For us, three is it. Both my head AND heart know it this time, which is just about the happiest you can feel.
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