Guest Author - Erika Krull

It may seem rude, but people can’t seem to help themselves when they see parents out with small children. Ask a mom who’s ever taken her kids in public for 5 minutes and she can repeat some of the comments she’s heard from strangers and acquaintances. “You have three girls – are you ‘going’ for a boy now?” “Don’t you want more than just one?” “It’s so nice you have one of each.”

Most of the time, people you meet in the grocery store line mean well. However, when you get such comments over and over, it can beg the question “what’s next?” If you are in a state of flux about your family status, these very innocent comments or questions can sting somewhat. Are you actually happy with the current amount of children? Are you privately sad that you don’t have one of your gender? What if we did “try” one more time to see if we could get a boy? Would it make things better or worse if we did?

For those of you who are possibly struggling with this right now, I’ll provide a few bits of reality to help you sort things out. For those of you who have already made your choices, this will be interesting for you to see how you made your decisions. None of this is at all intended to belittle or downgrade having an only child. It is simply meant to illustrate what happens and changes as children are added to the mix.

Parenting strategy – Certainly, there many differences between being a one child family to a two child family. When you add a second child, your attention and energy is instantly divided. This is not at all to say that your love is divided, like you only have half as much for each – more on that below. However, it definitely takes a little more planning to be sure your oldest child is not able to wander down the street while you feed and rock the newborn to sleep. You have two separate children, and also a unit of “the kids” now. The upside for this arrangement is that you still have an adult hand for each kid when they can walk, and you can get in on “family of four” travel and restaurant deals.

When you add a third, the strategy changes dramatically. Up to this point, you’ve been utilizing a “man to man” defense – the parents are in equal numbers to the kids. Once you add one more, you now switch to “zone” defense. Everything gets just a little bit trickier now. And if you are a single parent with two or more, you’re in “zone” defense also. The interesting thing about having two versus three is that it is not the same as “two plus one equals three.” Some days it really feels like “two plus one equal eight or fifteen”. That additional kid throws the orbits of the family members off just enough to really cause a ruckus. Your family is now some different kind of thing altogether.

Love for all - There is some beautiful cosmic time-space phenomenon that occurs when you become a parent. You are allowed the capacity for massive amounts of love for each child you have in your family. Your personal “love bank” doesn’t just double when you add a child, it somehow gets bigger exponentially. If you have more than two children, look for this to expand in ways you can’t explain. Hope for just a fraction of this expansion for your bank account.

Resources – Let’s face it - when you add more mouths to feed, backs to clothe, and brains to educate, the resources are going to get stretched. There are all kinds of stats on how much a child costs to raise, and it certainly makes a difference. The good news is that there are all sorts of creative ways to make finances come out in the end. Coupons, carpooling, and downsizing are all good ways to make it work.

There are probably many other factors to consider, but these are a few big ones. Just something to keep in mind – don’t have more children just to fulfill some sort of emptiness or lacking in your life. Trying to “have a girl” or being terribly worried that your only child will be too lonely may be a very slippery slope to head down. Add to your family for the joy of it and because you think you can raise spectacular children to add to the world. Most of all, enjoy your children all along the way, no matter how many there are.